Week Two: Omi and Winant

Race as a social contract:

1.     A Theory of Race and Racism (p. 54)

2.     Unstable

3.     “decentered”

4.     proposed definition (p. 55)  Please note the following:  “The selection of these particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process.”  P. 55

5.     elemental, not irregular p. 55

NB:  Earlier chapters of Omi and Winant highlight a linear narrative of different paradigms of race:  ethnicity, class, and nation.  Within this there is an idea of biology and the idea that we’ve moved beyond that (to this notion of race as a social contract).

1.     Relate and consider after reading TallBear

2.     Consider this after week one (People and elsewhere)

Racial Formation (note page 56)

1.     “social historical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed”

2.     linkage between social structure and cultural representation

3.     racial projects do this work!

Racial Projects (note page 56, and 58)

1.     “an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources” p. 56

2.     “connect what race means…and the ways both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based on that meaning.”  P. 56

3.     are always concrete, contested and unstable p. 58

4.     always exist in a historical context p.58

5.     descend from previous conflicts p. 58

Note relationship to common sense and expectations p. 59-60

Note relationship to social structures p. 60-61

Note relationship to “the conquest” p. 62  (and relate to the quotes you have from Rabasa and Byrd).

We will look at the question of “racism” in this chapter over the next few weeks.