Racial Formation In The Twenty First Century

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States remains one of the most influential books and widely read books about race. Racial Formation in the 21st Century, arriving twenty-five years after the publication of Omi and Winant’s influential work, brings together fourteen essays by leading scholars in law, history, sociology, ethnic studies, literature, anthropology and gender studies to consider the past, present and future of racial formation. The contributors explore far-reaching concerns: slavery and land ownership; labor and social movements; torture and war; sexuality and gender formation; indigineity and colonialism; genetics and the body. From the ecclesiastical courts of seventeenth century Lima to the cell blocks of Abu Grahib, the essays draw from Omi and Winant’s influential theory of racial formation and adapt it to the various criticisms, challenges, and changes of life in the twenty-first century.

Twenty years since the publication of the Second Edition and more than thirty years since the publication of the original book, Racial Formation in the United States now arrives with each chapter radically revised and rewritten by authors Michael Omi and Howard Winant, but the overall purpose and vision of this classic remains the same: Omi and Winant provide an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they come to shape and permeate both identities and institutions. The steady journey of the U.S. toward a majority nonwhite population, the ongoing evisceration of the political legacy of the early post-World War II civil rights movement, the initiation of the ‘war on terror’ with its attendant Islamophobia, the rise of a mass immigrants rights movement, the formulation of race/class/gender ‘intersectionality’ theories, and the election and reelection of a black President of the United States are some of the many new racial conditions Racial Formation now covers.

This book presents a metacritique of racial formation theory. The essays within this volume explore the fault lines of the racial formation concept, identify the power relations to which it inheres, and resolve the ethical coordinates for alternative ways of conceiving of racism and its correlations with sexism, homophobia, heteronormativity, gender politics, empire, economic exploitation, and other valences of bodily construction, performance, and control in the twenty-first century. Collectively, the contributors advance the argument that contemporary racial theorizing remains mired in antiblackness. Across a diversity of approaches and objects of analysis, the contributors assess what we describe as the conceptual aphasia gripping racial theorizing in our multicultural moment: analyses of racism struck dumb when confronted with the insatiable specter of black historical struggle.

This book is intended for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses on race and ethnicity and on diversity in America. It was first con- ceived as a collective project of the Research and Resident Scholar Program in Comparative Race Relations at Washington State University, which was established in 1994 with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. A number of the participating authors are established scholars in racial/ethnic studies, and several have published award-winning bestsellers. Others are relative newcomers to the field who were invited to join the project because they were doing important work on less well covered topics, such as relations between African Americans and Chicano/Latino Americans.

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, and his words have proven sadly prophetic. As we enter the twenty-first century, the problem remains--and yet it, and the line that defines it, have shifted in subtle but significant ways. This brief book speaks powerfully to the question of how the circumstances of race and racism have changed in our time--and how these changes will affect our future. Foremost among the book's concerns are the contradictions and incoherence of a system that idealizes black celebrities in politics, popular culture, and sports even as it diminishes the average African-American citizen. The world of the assembly line, boxer Jack Johnson's career, and The Birth of a Nation come under Holt's scrutiny as he relates the malign progress of race and racism to the loss of industrial jobs and the rise of our modern consumer society. Understanding race as ideology, he describes the processes of consumerism and commodification that have transformed, but not necessarily improved, the place of black citizens in our society. As disturbing as it is enlightening, this timely work reveals the radical nature of change as it relates to race and its cultural phenomena. It offers conceptual tools and a new way to think and talk about racism as social reality.

"With narrative fluency and deftness, constructed on a bedrock of prodigious archival research, HoSang's book provides a sorely needed genealogy of the 'color-blind consensus' that has come to define race and recode racism within US politics, law and public policy. This will be a book that lasts."_Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy "An important analysis of both the exact contours of white supremacy and the failures of electoral anti-racism."_George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness "Racial Propositions brilliantly documents the history of race in California's post-World War II ballot initiatives to show that nothing is what it seems when it comes to race and politics in America's ethnoracial frontier. Daniel HoSang provides readers with a sharply focused interdisciplinary lens though which to see how the language and politics of political liberalism veil what are ultimately racialized ballot initiatives. If California is a harbinger for the rest of the country, then HoSang's tour de force is required reading for anyone interested how the United States will negotiate diversity in the 21st century."_Tomás R. Jiménez, author of Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity

Choice Top Book of 2017 Confronting and combating Islamophobia in America. Islamophobia has long been a part of the problem of racism in the United States, and it has only gotten worse in the wake of shocking terror attacks, the ongoing refugee crisis, and calls from public figures like Donald Trump for drastic action. As a result, the number of hate crimes committed against Middle Eastern Americans of all origins and religions have increased, and civil rights advocates struggle to confront this striking reality. In Islamophobia and Racism in America, Erik Love draws on in-depth interviews with Middle Eastern American advocates. He shows that, rather than using a well-worn civil rights strategy to advance reforms to protect a community affected by racism, many advocates are choosing to bolster universal civil liberties in the United States more generally, believing that these universal protections are reliable and strong enough to deal with social prejudice. In reality, Love reveals, civil rights protections are surprisingly weak, and do not offer enough avenues for justice, change, and community reassurance in the wake of hate crimes, discrimination, and social exclusion. A unique and timely study, Islamophobia and Racism in America wrestles with the disturbing implications of these findings for the persistence of racism—including Islamophobia—in the twenty-first century. As America becomes a “majority-minority” nation, this strategic shift in American civil rights advocacy signifies challenges in the decades ahead, making Love’s findings essential for anyone interested in the future of universal civil rights in the United States.

'The New Politics of Race' brings together Winant's new and previously published essays to form a comprehensive picture of the origins and nature of the complex racial politics that engulf us today.