As noted by and in their influential book Racial Formation in the United States (1994), the formation of race is social and historical in nature. and use the term “racialization to specify the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group. Racialization is an ideological process, an historically specific one.”
According to and (1994), race has been and will always be at the center of American experience. Challenging both mainstream which is ethnicity-oriented and radical which class-oriented analysis, and argue that race has been systematically overlooked as an important factor in understanding American politics and society.
The racial theory is shaped by actually existing race relations in any given historical period. The racial theory provides society with common sense about race, and the categories of identification of individuals and groups in racial terms.
Ethnicity theory, on the other hand, shape academic thinking about race, guided public policy issues and influenced popular racial ideology.
Racial formation theory is explicated in and ‘s (1986 and 1994) two editions of Racial Formation in the United States. and (1994) define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.” They attempt to chart a middle course between two extremes. The first extreme is an “essentialist” formulation that views race as “a matter of innate characteristics, of which skin color and other physical attributes provide only the most obvious, and in some respects most superficial, indicators” ( and 1994). The other extreme is a view that trivializes the category of race, arguing that since it is a social construction, race will disappear if we simply ignore it. This latter view ignores the ways in which race has deeply structured Western civilization for the last 500 years.
Key to their perspective on the construction of race is the concept of the “racial project,” which they define as “simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines” ( and 1994). Racial projects connect “what race means in a particular discursive practice and the ways in which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning” ( and 1994). They give the example of the neoconservative racial project that links what race means (it is not a morally valid basis for treating individuals differently from one another) with a specific conception of the role of race in the social structure (it can play no part in setting government policy). Competing racial projects are developed by elites, popular movements, state agencies, cultural and religious organizations, and intellectuals. Racial projects also operate at a micro-social level “not so much as efforts to shape policy or define large-scale meaning, but as the applications of ‘common sense’” ( and 1994).
Central to racial formation theory is and ‘s interpretation of the “great transformation” in the American system of race. The authors describe the years stretching from the colonial period until the civil rights movement as a period of “racial dictatorship.” Other than during the brief period of reconstruction following the Civil War, non-whites faced formidable barriers preventing effective participation in the political sphere, including legally sanctioned segregation, the widespread denial of the vote, and the inability to become naturalized citizens. The system of racial dictatorship was finally challenged by the civil rights movement that brought the entry of racial minority group members into the political process. The extension of voting rights, elimination of de jure segregation, and the reform of immigration laws were among the movement’s major accomplishments.
On the other hand, the book of “Race Critical Theories” by and itself points to the expansion of female academics in the field of race and racism, as a tangible measure of such changes. Such comments inevitably raise the question of what the politics of academic work on racism are able to achieve and in what arenas. Race remains a determining factor in both cognitive processing and social action, and racism is still experienced by minority groups, much to the bemusement of the `racist-non-racist’ perpetrators, who may believe that they are neither prejudiced nor racist.
and (2002) viewed general knowledge of racism as the accumulation and contextualisation of familiar, repetitive and routine experiences encountered by individuals in many racial episodes. She argues that a general knowledge of racism acknowledges the continuity of the relationship between the personal and the group experience. It thus provides individuals with the ability to explain their own experiences in terms of group experiences, by interpreting them in terms of the historical and contemporary group experience of racial or ethnic domination.
Race is a complex, multidimensional construct. It consists of personal identity and group identity facets. On the other hand, ethnicity is a complex social variable, with cultural and political dimensions. It is most commonly used as a social–political construct and includes shared origin, shared language, and shared cultural traditions. Ethnicity refers to cultural identification, which is fluid and may change over time.
References
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