Racial Formations: Omi and Winant's Sociohistorical Analysis of Race

Understanding Race and Ethnicity: Racial Formations by Michael Omi and Howard Winant

Introduction to Omi and Winant's Framework

• Core Argument: Michael Omi and Howard Winant explore the sociohistorical processes that construct the concept of race in the United States. This perspective highlights race as a social construct, not a biological given.

• Mechanism of Construction: Their explanation of "racial formation" encompasses actions by groups and individuals, as well as changes in social structures and and institutions.

• Dual Outcome: This process simultaneously constructs racial differences and establishes racial inequalities.

The Susie Guillory Phipps Case (1982-83)

• Legal Challenge: Susie Guillory Phipps sued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records to change her racial classification from black to white.

• Background: As a descendant of an eighteenth-century white planter and a black slave, Phipps was designated "black" on her birth certificate.

• Legal Basis: This classification adhered to a 1970 state law that declared anyone with at least 1/32^{nd} "Negro blood" as black.

• Arguments Presented:

  • Defense (Assistant Attorney General Ron Davis): Argued that racial classification was necessary for federal record-keeping and genetic disease prevention programs.

  • Plaintiff (Brian Begue): Contended that assigning racial categories on birth certificates was unconstitutional and the 1/32^{nd} designation was inaccurate. He cited research suggesting most whites have 1/20^{th} "Negro" ancestry.

• Outcome: Phipps lost; the court upheld the state law, affirming the legality of quantifying racial identity and assigning individuals to specific racial groupings.

• Significance: This case exemplifies the ongoing challenge of defining race and integrating its meaning into institutional life.

What Is Race?

• Modern Phenomenon: Race consciousness and theories of race are largely modern developments.

• European Exploration and Shifting Paradigms:

  • European explorers encountering diverse peoples in the New World challenged existing Western conceptions of humanity and species origins.

  • Religious debates ensued over reconciling biblical accounts with the existence of "racially distinct" people, leading to questions of polygenesis (multiple origins for humanity) versus monogenesis (single origin) and whether "natives" possessed redeemable souls.

  • This worldview explained and legitimized the expropriation of property, denial of political rights, slavery (indentured servitude not based on racial logic preceded racial slavery), coercive labor, and extermination of "others" by distinguishing Europeans as "human beings" or "children of God." Race was central to this justification for differing treatments and rights.

• Scientific Controversies:

  • Early Classification: Influenced by Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, 18^{th} and 19^{th} century scholars attempted to identify and rank human variations, viewing race as a biological concept.

  • Dr. Samuel Morton's Studies: Collected 800 crania and correlated cranial capacity with intelligence. His 1849 study found:

    • English skulls: average cranial capacity of 96 cubic inches.

    • Americans and Germans: 90 cubic inches.

    • Negroes: 83 cubic inches.

    • Chinese: 82 cubic inches.

    • Indians: 79 cubic inches.

  • Persistence of Biological Claims: Despite efforts of physical anthropologists and biologists largely abandoning the quest for a scientific basis for race (differences within populations often exceed those between populations), controversies persist today in genetics and educational psychology (e.g., Arthur Jensen's arguments on hereditary factors shaping intelligence).

  • Implication of Biological Arguments: Attempts to establish a biological basis for race seek to de-link it from fundamental social, political, or economic determinations, suggesting race's truth lies in innate characteristics.

Race as a Social Concept

• Social Science Paradigm Shift: Gradually, social sciences rejected biological notions of race, adopting an approach that views race as a social concept.

  • Max Weber (19^{th} Century): Discounted biological explanations for racial conflict, emphasizing social and political factors.

  • Franz Boas (early 20^{th} Century): Refuted scientific racism by rejecting the assumed connection between race and culture and the continuum of 'higher' and 'lower' cultural groups.

• Sociohistorical Nature: Race is a pre-eminently sociohistorical concept, where racial categories and their meanings are shaped by specific social relations and historical contexts.

  • Variability: Racial meanings vary significantly across time and societies.

  • U.S. Context: The Black/White color line has been rigidly defined and enforced; whiteness is seen as a pure category, where any racial intermixture renders one nonwhite (e.g., Elizabeth Taylor's character in Raintree County).

• Hypo-Descent:

  • Definition (Marvin Harris): "Hypo-descent" means affiliation with the subordinate rather than the superordinate group to avoid ambiguous intermediate identity.

  • U.S. Application: The rule in the U.S. dictates that anyone with a known "Negro" ancestor is considered "Negro," invented to prevent biological facts from intruding into "collective racist fantasies." The Phipps case embodies this logic.

  • Contrast with Latin America (e.g., Brazil): Historically, less rigid conceptions of race and numerous "intermediate" racial categories exist. Parents and children, or even siblings, can be accepted as different racial types, a concept incomprehensible within U.S. racial logic.

• "Passing": The concept of "passing" (e.g., a "black" individual attempting to pass as white to overcome discrimination in the U.S.) highlights the cultural specificity of racial identity. Historically, some individuals like Harry S. Murphy, who identified as black, successfully passed as white at institutions like the University of Mississippi.

• Diversity of Racial Meanings (e.g., "Black" in Britain): In contemporary British politics, "black" is used as a self-identity term by all nonwhites (Asian and Afro-Caribbean youth), demonstrating how racial categories are politically shaped.

Racial Formation

• Definition: The term racial formation refers to "the process by which social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings."

• Core Principle: Race is a central axis of social relations, not reducible to or subsumed under other categories (e.g., class, gender).

• Dynamic Nature: Racial categories are continuously formed, transformed, destroyed, and re-formed through societal contestation (collective action and personal practice).

Racial Ideology and Racial Identity

• "Common Sense" Race: The existing racial order appears "natural" and "common sense," testifying to the effectiveness of the racial formation process in constructing meanings and identities.

• Social Navigation: Race (along with sex) is one of the first things noticed about people; it provides clues about identity and guides social interactions.

  • Disorientation: Encounters with individuals who are racially "mixed" or from unfamiliar ethnic/racial groups can cause discomfort and a "crisis of racial meaning," as a lack of racial identity can feel like a lack of identity itself.

  • Stereotypes: Preconceived notions about racial groups lead to comments like "Funny, you don't look black" or discomfort when people don't act according to racial stereotypes.

• Racial Etiquette: U.S. society possesses a "racial etiquette" – a system of interpretive codes and racial meanings that govern daily interactions.

  • Function: These rules shape "presentation of self," status distinctions, and appropriate conduct.

  • Learning: This racial subjection is ideological, learned implicitly without overt teaching, making race "common sense."

• "Amateur Biology": Racial beliefs function as an "amateur biology," explaining variations in "human nature" by linking visible physical characteristics (like skin color) to presumed underlying differences in temperament, sexuality, intelligence, athletic ability, and aesthetic preferences.

  • Pervasive Influence: Race shapes confidence, trust, sexual preferences, romantic images, tastes (music, films, dance, sports), and even basic behaviors (talking, walking, eating, dreaming).

  • Justification: Supposed differences in intellectual, physical, and artistic temperaments, derived from skin color, are used to justify distinct treatment of racially identified individuals and groups.

• Persistence of Racial Ideology: Racial myths and stereotypes are deeply integrated into the U.S. social order, making them resistant to exposure as mere falsehoods. While specific meanings and stereotypes can change, the presence of a system of racial ideology appears to be a permanent feature.

• Media's Role: Film and television play a crucial role in disseminating racial images that define how racial minorities look, behave, and "who they are."

  • Reflection & Shaping: Media both reflects and actively shapes dominant racial ideology.

  • Examples: D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (sympathetic to the KKK), television's use of racial caricatures as shorthand for quick character definition, and instances of actors needing to alter their appearance (e.g., Latina actors darkening faces, white actors playing Asian roles like Charlie Chan).

• Concealment: Viewing race as fixed and immutable (rooted in "nature") masks its historical construction, shifting meanings, and the crucial role of politics and ideology.

Racialization: The Historical Development of Race

• Racialization Defined: Racialization signifies "the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group" – an ideological and historically specific process.

• Evolution of "Black" in the U.S.:

  • Developed with the consolidation of racial slavery by the late 17^{th} century.

  • Africans with specific ethnic identities (Ibo, Yoruba, Fulani) were rendered "black" by an exploitative ideology based on a racial logic to establish and maintain a color line.

  • This led to a racially-based understanding of society, shaping identities for both slaves and European settlers.

• Evolution of "White" in the U.S.:

  • Winthrop Jordan observed a shift from the term "Christian" at mid-century to "English and free," and then around 1680 (taking colonies as a whole), the emergence of "white" as a self-identification term.

  • 19^{th} Century Challenges: The category of "white" faced challenges from diverse non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups (Southern Europeans, Irish, Jews).

  • Curbing Nativism: Nativism was ultimately curbed by institutionalizing a racial order that drew the color line around Europe (i.e., these groups eventually became "white").

  • Post-Civil War Reconsolidation: By not racializing European immigrants and allowing their assimilation after the Civil War, the American racial order was reconsolidated after the challenge of slavery's abolition.

• Race and the Working Class:

  • After Reconstruction (1877), an effective program to limit emergent class struggles was the definition of the working class in racial terms—as "white."

  • This was achieved not by legislative decree or capitalist manipulation alone, but by white workers themselves, many of whom were recent immigrants, organizing on racial as well as class lines.

  • Example: Anti-Chinese Agitation: Irish workers on the West Coast engaged in violent anti-Chinese race-baiting and pogrom-type assaults during the consolidation of the trade union movement in California.

  • Racial Project: The political organization of the working class was significantly a racial project, leading to institutional patterns perpetuating the color line within the working class (segregated unions, dual labor markets, exclusionary legislation).

  • Selig Perlman's View: Stated that the anti-Chinese agitation in California, culminating in the Exclusion Law passed by Congress in 1882, was "the most important single factor in the history of American labor," preventing a conflict of races rather than classes.

• **Economic Transformations and New Racial Attributions: **

  • Black Americans (1940s-1980s$): Automation of Southern agriculture and post-war labor demand transformed blacks into a largely urban, working-class group by 1970$$. Subsequent economic downturns and welfare state shifts led to blacks being increasingly labelled as the "underclass" or state "dependents," with economic challenges attributed to "defective black cultural norms" or "familial disorganization."

  • Asian and Latino Americans: Similar economic forces (Third World impoverishment, high interest rates, Japanese competition, job flight to Asia) currently fuel new racial attributions and resentments against these groups.

Conclusion: Race as Unstable and Decentered

• Beyond Surface-Level Understanding: Race transcends skin color, exploitation, social stratification, discrimination, prejudice, cultural domination, resistance, and state policy.

• Pervasive Dimension: A racial dimension exists to some degree in every identity, institution, and social practice in the United States.

• Breaking Habits: It is crucial to overcome the temptation to view race as a fixed, objective essence or as a mere illusion that an ideal society would eliminate.

• Dynamic Nature of Race: Race must be understood as an unstable and "decentered" complex of social meanings that is constantly being transformed by political struggle.