Racial Formation Brief

In our reading on racial formation, two major questions were addressed: what is racism and what is race. A formal definition of race was proposed: “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Racial Formation 55). It was this continuous idea of categorization of human bodies that made me think deeper about the ways we identify ourselves, especially in reference to the systems of society. In Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body is Not an Apology, it is noted how we acknowledge tragedy by accounting for numbers of human bodies and how we identify harm as it relates to our bodies. Likewise, we choose to identify, divide, and organize ourselves by the categories we place on the bodies we hold. This caused me think more about how we choose to administer this categorization on a societal level.

In my Gender and Work class, we read Dean Spade’s Administering Gender. In this chapter of Normal Life, Spade’s book, we are shown how we are conditioned to place ourselves in the boxes of society (based on our human bodies and the way others view them). As a result, we find ourselves identifying based on our gender and, of course, our race. Dean Spade discusses how this organization is used as a method of control by the government, replacing the pre-Civil Rights Era explicit, discriminatory laws. Throughout the section of our reading on racial formation, it is expressed how race is a matter of social structure and cultural representation (Racial Formation 56). America exemplifies how race can become a matter of more than identity; it can become a matter of prosperity, wealth, and more due to the social structures fixated around race. “According the the New York Times, for every $100 in white family wealth, black families hold just $5.04” (Forbes). Likewise, “African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites” (NAACP). These facts show that race is more than just an outward expression of ancestry; it is a sentence of how we will be viewed and valued in the systems of modern society.

Furthermore, the we are sentence given based on our racial appearances are a result of racism. As explained in Racial Formation, racism is the outcome of the relationships between prejudice, discrimination, and institutional inequality (Racial Formation 69). This is a concept that still struggles to be accepted as “common sense.” It is the disparities in the view of racism between white and non-white persons that limit our advancement as a society. Whites view racism as a “peripheral, nonessential reality,” while non-whites “see the centrality of race in history and everyday experience” (Race Formation 70-71). It is not until these views collide that we will be able to dig deeper into the racial formation theory and distinguish racial awareness from racial essentialism.

“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.

Thompson, Brian. “The Racial Wealth Gap: Addressing America’s Most Pressing Epidemic.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 18 Feb. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/brianthompson1/2018/02/18/the-racial-wealth-gap-addressing-americas-most-pressing-epidemic/#669037d17a48.

8 Responses to "Racial Formation Brief"

Renata Stankowska says:

September 4, 2018 at 10:05 pm

Your comment on “boxes” struck me as to what we discussed in Leadership. Literally the boxes we check off whether it be based on race, gender, citizenship, sexuality etc, it contains us within walls that we seemingly can’t break down and that continue to build up with the stereotypes and identifiers that come with selecting a certain box. As the government and society continues to categorizes and marginalize humans based off of a chosen box, do you think there is an out? As we discussed in class, whether there is an outside to The System, do you think that since racism is so deeply rooted in history and society is there an outside to racism? In other words, are there any sectors of society or of The System where racism has never existed and potentially never will? If racism could be eradicated would The System begin to fall with it as well?
Maiana Russell says:

September 4, 2018 at 10:36 pm

When you said “America exemplifies how race can become a matter of more than identity; it can become a matter of prosperity, wealth, and more due to the social structures fixated around race,” it really made me think. Race is as an identity that everyone possesses based on their ancestry. However, it has been used to divide people, where those who don’t even know their ancestry are the ones on top of the hierarchy, and have been for centuries. My question in response to this fact is what can be done to reverse this on an individual and institutional level? Our country was literally built on racism and sexism, so simply “undoing” these faults becomes a task not so simple.
Kevin Villagomez says:

September 4, 2018 at 11:28 pm

While understanding that race and racism is a severe issue in todays society, why would you get rid of race and the idea of an identity? While you call it checking the boxes, many call and identity that is profound on not only how they were brought up but as well where their ancestors came from. Do you think that perhaps instead of disbanding the entire race system, it is possible to mend it to prevent from racism, either through education, or some other way other than getting rid of someone’s ancestry?
Kevin Villagomez says:

September 4, 2018 at 11:29 pm

While understanding that race and racism is a severe issue in todays society, why would you get rid of race and the idea of an identity? While you call it checking the boxes, many call and identity that is profound on not only how they were brought up but as well where their ancestors came from. Do you think that perhaps instead of disbanding the entire race system, it is possible to mend it to prevent from racism, either through education, or some other way other than getting rid of someone’s ancestry?
Rong Bao says:

September 4, 2018 at 11:36 pm

I found the same quotation as you did that Racism is the product of the combined relationships between “prejudice, discrimination, and institutional inequality” (69). It is interesting that according to biological facts, all the humans share at least 99.9% similarities in their DNAs, which justifies the statement that the concept of Race is simply a social construction and a flawed system. So my question is: what does racial justice mean to you?
Iklim Isyar says:

September 4, 2018 at 11:52 pm

As a non-American, and coming from relatively homogeneous society, I was struck by the American reality of different races. Struggling to understand why everyone was so obsessed with diversity in groups, I wondered about why grouping people with their races sounded always wrong to people who came across “others” everyday. The race, the ethnicity, the religion, whatever you define as others, are just notions of what is left from our families. They are things to embrace and cultivate by generations after generations. Yet, social structure does not allow many people to be themselves either because of social identity or because of common virtues within the society. So, why would we redefine what is meant to be part of community and a group, and bend the perception of “others”?
Phillip Daniel says:

September 5, 2018 at 5:38 am

Your comments on how you were able to connect the reading to your WGSS class really sparked my interest. Do you believe that our societal conditioning to place ourselves in boxes says more about human nature or do you believe it says more about the strength and lasting effects of colonialism? Do you believe humans will ever reach a point in the next few decades or centuries in which race won’t become a major highlight of ones experience? Is there a fine line between being divided by race and it simply being a means of collecting data?
Casey Friedman says:

September 5, 2018 at 10:19 am

Omi and Winant agree with Spade that we are conditioned to place ourselves in the boxes of society based on our human bodies. I wonder what the difference between gender and race is then, and if it is possible to apply racial formation theory to gender? Omi and Winant also said that race is neither an illusion or an essence. Can the same be said of gender? Are there any problems with comparing gender and race given the NAACP controversy?

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