Reading Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s insightful take on the preeminent presence/meaning of race as “an unstable, “decentered” complex of social meanings being transformed by political struggle” in past, present and future U.S. society, through the postulation of their own theory of racial formation and racial projects, has challenged my “old world” views on the ethnicity theory as a dominant paradigm of race and racial dynamics. The authors’ theoretical approach to a subject which not only involves but also vividly evokes painful, hurtful, all-to-real experiences for many engages my thoughts on several related levels of understanding/application.
I was wondering about the usefulness of such a theoretically-charged rendition of U.S.-specific sociohistorical processes outside the geographic, political, and social milieu of their origin. What of racial formation theory outside American society? Could it be applied? For example, could contemporary Western European societies (and even Eastern European ones) benefit from the racial formation theory, now that they have (more or less) recognized the racial diversity of their citizens?
The theoretical view that really captivated me comes out of Cheryl I. Harris’s article on the relationship between race and property, i.e., viewing “whiteness” as a definite, concrete, real something. Harris’ establishing of whiteness as a tangible social construct, with its rules and regulations, is something quite new for me, not necessarily something which I had previously regarded as an axiomatic paragon, but rather an assumed category within the ethnicity theory which classifies racial phenomena. Grasping the relevance of situating whiteness as a definite “thing”, so to speak, a property in Harris’s terms, bears its mark on the way I understand the intricacies behind the network of present-day social institutions.
I am beginning to realize more fully why people of different racial status are granted and/or denied certain (internationally) recognized civil liberties (e.g., access to good public education, nurturing and affordable health care system, housing opportunities in once uni-racial neighborhoods, etc.).
However, the idea of examining “whiteness” as an exclusive prevalence of a community is something which I had not considered before. On the one hand, should people choose to relegate the benefits of “whiteness” how would they be able to do it? Whereas, on the other hand, can people really choose not to accept these “fruits”? What are we to make of “whiteness” as property outside the socio-political geography of the U.S.?
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