Race and Racial Formation

Omi and Winant propose essentially that "race" is not an objective description of physical or biological traits possessed by individuals because of their genetic inheritance. Instead, it is a psychological construct that is projected onto persons for complex socio-political reasons. Their specific formulation follows:

There is a continuous temptation to think of race as an essence, as something fixed, concrete, and objective. And then there is also an opposite temptation to imagine race as a mere illusion, a purely ideological construct which some ideal non-racist social order would eliminate. . . . The effort must be made to understand race as an unstable and "decentered" complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle. . . . let us propose a definition: race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies. Although the concept of race invokes biologically based human characteristics . . . selection of these particular human features for purposes of racial

. . .
fine race do not correlate in any way with mental ability, emotional maturity, physical stamina, compassion, or any other significant human trait (Hotz, 1995, p. A1). For example, C. Loring Brace, a biological anthropologist at the University of Michigan, stated that, "Race is a social construct derived mainly from perception conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality" (Hotz, 1995, p. A1). This article was followed a few weeks later by an editorial in the Times, pointing out the social importance of this research (Race, 1995, p. B6). Racial categories as such are unnecessary in human society. It is hard for Americans of any background to grasp the fact that there was almost no racial prejudice of the kind Americans know all too well in the ancient world of the Bible. It is said that, whereas in the USA if you are black you are poor, in some Central American countries where virtually everybody is of mixed European, Native American, and African background, the social rule instead is that if you are rich you are white, and if you are poor you are black--it doesn't actually have a thing to do with one's skin color. Again, this fact helps make it clear just how much "race" is a social constr
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Approximate Word count = 2058
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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