Racial Formation

Michael Omi and Howard Winant. Racial Formation. Oppression, Privilege, & Resistance. McGraw-Hill, 2004. Pg. 115-142.

“Race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies”

When race is mentioned, it is used to show that people are different. It also classifies people based on biological characteristic features. Race was used to scientifically classify humans based on these biological characteristics. These classifications are then used to prove that races have advantages and disadvantages. This however leads to the misrepresentation of people. Racial formations are formed from classifications like this. Omi and Winant define racial formation as the sociohistorical process where racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed. It is part of everyday life and classifies people based on race and things like racial stereotypes. Racial stereotypes limit our expectations of a race to their “classified” stereotypes. For example, the Model Minority Myth about how all Asians are good at math.

I believe the main argument in Racial Formation was to show how racial formations have evolved through time. They began with classifying races with science. Then from science they used politics. Both of these still discriminated against races. They would state that some races were of a “higher” evolution and others were not. Reading about how Jefferson used the scientific classifying of race, stating that the white man was better, just showed what racial formation was like that that time. This false logic led to discrimination against race, class, gender, along with other things.

The scientific way of classifying a race was wrong. A person’s biological characteristics can’t determine who they are and what they are like. Racial formation today classifies a race based on stereotypes and the mostly the media. The media sends out stereotypes that portray a race by their culture, clothes they wear, food they eat, etc. I think it is wrong to classify people by just race. It is misrepresentative and can give the wrong expectations for a person.