Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994) proposed a definition of race which posits that it is a concept signifying and symbolizing social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies. They offered both an essentialist and an instrumentalist articulation of race suggesting that there is a temptation to conceptualize race as an essence or something that is fixed, concrete, and objective. There is also an opposite temptation to conceptualize race as an illusion or an ideological construct which is instrumentalized or operationalized through social and institutional processes.
These two opposing paradigms of what constitutes ôraceö speak to the question of how racial formation occurs. Omi and Winant (1994, p. 55) defined racial formation ôas the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.ö They argued that racial formation is a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structure are both represented and organized. Hegemony comes into play when a particular group achieves dominance within a culture or society and then posits race as consisting of essential physiological characteristics. Next, these mainstream elites or hegemons instrumentally make race a vital (even primary) element in determining privilege, prestige, power relationships, and stereotypes.
Consider, for example, the case of Thomas JeffersonÆs descendants, the children he had with Sally Hemings, an African slave owned by Jefferson. In the film, JeffersonÆs Blood, director Thomas Lennon (1999) demonstrates that JeffersonÆs ôfamilyö officially consisted of his Caucasian children with his black children, a marginalized group with no power, status, or position within this family. What defined the difference between JeffersonÆs two sets of children was an essentialist construction of race: HemingsÆ offspring were dark-skinned and began ...