Omi and Winant in their article, “Racial Formations” enlighten the readers on the precepts about race and its classifications. The authors assert that race is communally constructed by offering elaborations on its framework and how race is placed in different groups. The authors explain that people view race differently and individually; thus, no one can generate an explicit definition. According to the authors, race is a societal notion rather than a genetic concept; thus, they see race as a process of racial pattern. By giving a case law on Susi Guillory, the authors show that race is a concept that integrates identity, racialization, and racial principles.
The authors show how Susie Guillory lost her liberty to change her racial categorization to black since the Laws of Louisiana did not allow the classification of people with one thirty second Negro blood. In another instance, the authors show how the assignments of racial grouping on birth certificates were legally wrong in the case against the State of Louisiana. In essence, the article shows that race is not about biological precepts, but rather on social classification. By discussing racial identity, the authors show that race is demonstratively influenced by the society no matter the principles that biological concepts may augur. In fact, the authors introduce a new ideology or theory on racism and race, by depicting the racial formation progression.
The idea that race is generally an ideological, biological, and social is brought to the forefront by the authors when they argue that Americans see race as a social arrangement phenomenon. In this regards, the article generates several theories that revolve around the process of racial formation. However, the theories revolve around religious, scientific, and political factors of human engagement. The authors introduce the precepts of racial inequality, racialization, and racial identity. By classifying race as a social classification principle, the authors justify racial inequality by arguing that people need such worldviews to define what divides the free and the enslaved or the superior and inferior. The article gives the biological basis of race as one that lies in the terrain of an innate trait for which skin color and further physical characteristics provide only the most noticeable indicator. The societal aspect of race generates a hypo- descent dynamic such that black as a word has different meanings within different communities across the world, but its signifier is not general. In this regards, the author define racial formation alongside eco, social, and political forces i.e. central axis theory.
Stereotypes and identity come to play in the ideological aspect of racial formation where people generate racial etiquette to guard against sexuality, intelligence, and athletic ability. On the other hand, the article presents the historical aspect of racial formation by offering the racialization theory. The authors show how people set up ideas based on stereotypes and identity that later define the racial classification of a certain race. Although the authors offer a detailed framework of race in historical aspects, they fail to depict race discursively. The authors do not offer a detailed definition of race, and one wonders how racial formation may synthesis without explicitly evolving over time; thus, the ideological aspect of race present a dull understanding of racial formation.
The historical aspect of racial formation challenges my mind greatly since evolution has always generated different ideas to people over time. I have seen a comprehensive change on the way people view racism and racial identity; hence, the article provides an extensive analysis on the definition of race. By integrating new ideas and theories, the article contributes greatly to the understanding of race and ethnicity in America.
