Racial formation is the process by which humans classify other human beings based on what they look like and where they come from. To racialize someone is to categorize someone; however, race is not natural, and is in actuality a product of sociohistorical processes. Because racial classifications are manmade, it is pivotal to consider the context and time period of racial systems because they change with history. They are a social construction rather than a biological reality, meaning they can be created, destroyed, and transformed. These processes can be observed when we look at how the Irish, who were initially subject to intense racial discrimination, adopted “whiteness,” or how the Chinese, who were also limited to strenuous physical labor, became the model minority. …show more content…
Society creates racial formations because despite the concept of race being problematic and contradictory, it plays an important role in representing social structure. We “utilize race to provide clues about who a person is” (Omi & Winant 24), and without this ability to quickly judge someone, we become discomforted. This is one of the ways racial formations are perpetuated: by stereotypes. We expect people to act a certain way based on their racial identities and are perplexed when they don’t. Religion, science, and government also sustain racial categories. When Europeans first landed on the shores of America, they immediately segregated themselves from the natives because of their different faiths, believing that Christianity was the right path. Skin color, or “variations in human physiognomy” (Omi & Winant 20), is also a popular way to racialize