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Racial Formation Summary

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“Racial formation” is an ideology made for the construction of social structure of different races. Omi and Winant convey excellent cases of how “racial formation” affects our everyday lives. They examine how it has caused “America’s unsolved racial dilemma” (Omi and Winant,19). Throughout history, men have created “race” not only to separate one group from another but also as a means of control. The dominant ideological group determines the identity and characteristics of other minority groups in order to diminish their status and to gain control over them. Omi and Winant explain to the readers that “one of the first things we notice about people ... is their race” (24). Many people use the race of people they first meet as a means to find clues about what type of personality and characteristics the person has. For example, “the black banker harassed by police while walking in casual clothes through his own well-off neighborhood...testif[ies] to the way a racialized social structure shapes racial experience and conditions meaning” (24). …show more content…

In order to get sanctuary from the British Opium War, Chinese people started leaving for the United States. The gold, riches, and stories of success pulled the Chinese men even more to get work and send money back to their families still in China. Unfortunately, a stereotype was created that stated that Chinese men were docile, hardworking, efficient, and were paid lesser wages. They were known for being paid significantly less for labor than the white people. When the railroad company hired 50 Chinese workers to help lay tracks, many white people demanded the company stop hiring Chinese workers. However, “the company paid the Chinese workers $31 a month; had management used white workers, they would have had to pay the same wages plus board and lodging, which would have increased labor costs by one-third” (Takaki,

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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.

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A helpful resource for anybody looking to educate themselves and others about the important topics of race and racial identity, the book's simple and short writing style makes it accessible and interesting for a wide range of

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Reading Response 4: “Introduction: The Fabrication of Race” by Matthew Frye Jacobson Manvir Kaur July 10, 2017 History 17A: U.S History The term “race” is one of the major aspects of one’s identity which tends to completely change over time. The primary source, “Introduction: The Fabrication of Race,” is part of a book called “Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race” which was written by Matthew Frye Jacobson in the twentieth century. In this source, he expands on the topic of “whiteness” with its relation to European immigrants in the United States and also, on the different perspectives of how other races are seen.

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This was a really interesting and informative chapter to read because I had no idea how big of a role the Chinese played in American History. I wasn’t surprised when I was reading about how “white” laborers demanded that certain companies to not hire any Chinese people. I though to myself “here we go again”, but I was happily surprised when I read about what the President of the Central Pacific Railroad had to say about these demands. The President of the company Leland Stanford had nothing but positive things to say about his Chinese workers. He often referred to them as quiet, peaceful, reliable, and willing to learn all the different kinds of work.

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The political status of Chinese immigrants were also heavily impacted as they could not serve as witnesses for one another and required a white man to vouch for their innocence or naturalization. The rising structure of capitalism brought more anti-Chinese sentiment from the white working class basis as they feared that the Chinese would monopolize their privilege of white free labor. The class nature of the anti-Chinese sentiment also generated hostility from white farmers as they also assumed that Chinese immigrants were out to take over their agricultural sector. These racialized class relations during the era of urban manufacturing reflected the racial segregation of labor that fostered white supremacy in California. The status of Chinese women also became affected as many were forced into prostitution to serve their patriarchal family.

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While working at the mines, Chinese were routinely robbed and were only paid $27 a month while Irish immigrants earned $35 for the same work (Wandrei, n.d.). Many whites likewise started to see the Chinese as crooks, mostly on account of an ascent in the number of Chinese prostitutes. This brought about a progression of laws limiting migration. (Wandrei,

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In this paper, I will be critiquing these articles and films in order to evaluate the purpose of these readings and how they have helped further develop race in America. But most importantly, whether the author has achieved its purpose to inform readers about CRT, whiteness, and racial inequality. First article, I will be analyzing is Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Both authors explore Critical Race Theory in detail. As I previously mentioned, CRT is one of the most important developments mainly in the legal studies department.

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This resurgence highlights the continued importance of discussing race in the context of social inequality, discrimination, and violence. As social scientists have argued, race must be retained and utilized in our explanations of these phenomena. The reemergence of race as a key concept in contemporary popular culture suggests that there is still much work to be done in terms of creating a more just and equitable society. Only by acknowledging and addressing the ways in which race impacts our society can we hope to move towards a more equitable future. It is crucial, then, that we continue to explore and engage with the concept of race in order to better understand and challenge the systems of power that perpetuate social inequality.

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Introduction Racial tension, degradation, and segregation has been a staple in the United States since it’s parturition. The idea of separation based on race was a way to control, humiliate and dehumanize people of color. When the Europeans came by ship to America they bullied, murdered, and raped their way into ownership of this country. They separated the Natives into different corners of the U.S, took their land, destroyed their culture and desecrated their holy ground. When the Europeans brought Africans over as slaves they separated them as well.

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Chinese people encountered considerable prejudice especially by those who did the same thing in white society, because Chinese “coolies” were used as a scapegoat for lower wages by politicians and labor leaders. The emerging trade unions, under such leaders as Samuel Gompers,also took an anti-Chinese position, regarding them only as competitors to white laborers who would “steal” the white people’s jobs. Only with the emergence of the international Workers of the World did trade unionists start to accept them as part of the American working class. The racism the Chinese Americans faced varied greatly, and could be anything from name- calling to, full out frontal assault.

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Stereotypes about minorities can spark from their presence’s perceived invasiveness to the stability that society values in this theory, and lead to racial profiling. Omi and Winant believe a system of racial meanings and stereotypes is prominent in the culture of the United States, and these racial meanings are formed from ideologies that establish and maintain a color line (Omi and Winant 5). This color line is a key concept the dominant white culture values that systemizes inequality and encourages stability in the Functionalist Perspective. Therefore, when the social order of society is challenged by new cultures and assimilation is unsuccessful, prejudice is formed. A large contributor to this prejudice is the media, which has been infamous in spreading images of racial minorities which establish their general appearances and behaviors (Omi and Winant 5).

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Race is a mold that demands the ossification of our individualism into conformity. The monolithic views of society create social expectations in which the marginalized body is expected to perform under. Those who exceed beyond the demands of normative society, are examples of the prevarication and failure of social constructs, and thus are targets of far more insidious and indiscreet forms of racism. 16th century Venice describes a society in which the black body is ontologically dead. Cities were built on the backs of slaves, the products of colonialism were the primary revenue of the State, and those of color existed on the outskirts of society.

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Therefore, as with most immigrant communities, many Chinese settled in their own neighborhoods, and rumors or tales spread of Chinatowns as places where large numbers of Chinese men congregated to visit prostitutes, smoke opium, or gamble. Some advocates of anti-Chinese legislation argued that admitting Chinese into the United States lowered the cultural and moral standards of American society. Others used a more overtly racist argument for limiting immigration from East Asia, and expressed concern about the integrity of American racial composition. This made the Chinese mad as the Non-Chinese were being racist to them when the Chinese barely did anything wrong, they just want to work and give the money to

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