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48 pages 1 hour read

Michael Omi, Howard Winant

Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1986

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Background

Philosophical Context: The Idea of Race

The history of race, the idea that people can be separated into distinct groups based on their physical and/or cultural traits, is a complex one. Historians, sociologists, and archaeologists still debate over the meaning of race and its history. In the West, ideas that could be described as race have appeared in different times and contexts. For example, ancient Greek writers promoted the view of Greeks as the most civilized people, versus non-Greek-speaking people, who were deemed “barbarians.” As Ivan Hannaford wrote in his book Race: The History of an Idea in the West, this concept of race was not biological. Instead, racial difference for the Greeks and for later writers in the West up to the 18th century was explained by culture or by the influence of climate.

The modern idea of race, which is still prevalent, is primarily based on skin color and is intertwined with modern scientific concepts of biology. Late-18th- and 19th-century scientists categorized humans into different racial groups, whose traits were considered inherent. Such ideas were used to justify the enslavement and continued mistreatment of people of African descent in the Americas and elsewhere, while also justifying colonial rule over Indigenous and non-white peoples in the ages to come.

Over the course of the 20th century, especially as the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime in Germany became known, ideas of biological race became discredited. However, these ideas still persist in some circles. At the same time, the argument that positive or negative attributes belong to certain races as the result of culture has risen, especially among some politicians and social commentators.

Historical Context: Enslavement and Segregation in the US

Most of the focus of Racial Formation in the United States is on anti-Black racism. The history of this form of racism in the United States is linked to the history of enslavement. Since there was not enough labor from white European settlers and Native Americans were better able to escape and more susceptible to introduced illnesses like smallpox, Africans were forcibly brought over to the colonies in North and South America to work as enslaved people. Colonial law codes like the Black Code of the French colony of Louisiana (1685) and the Slave Code (1705) of Virginia tied lifelong enslavement to skin color, made enslavement hereditary, and restricted the rights of even free Black people.

In the Southern United States, large numbers of enslaved people were brought into the region, even as enslavement died out and was outlawed in the North. While the economy of the Northern United States was based on industry and trade, the South remained mostly agricultural. Furthermore, the South’s economy depended on crops like cotton, tobacco, and sugar, which required intense, difficult labor. This made the South’s economy heavily dependent on enslavement. As the United States expanded westward, the debate over whether the newly created states should or should not allow enslavement increased political tensions that culminated in the US Civil War in 1861.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution (1868) outlawed enslavement. This led to the era of Reconstruction, where the US federal government took direct control of the South. During this period, Black people were elected to state political offices. However, the activities from violent organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the federal government’s growing lack of interest in Reconstruction led to a massive backlash. This anti-Reconstruction backlash led to the establishment of Jim Crow laws across the South, which segregated Black people from white people in schools and public spaces.

Such laws were not challenged until the post-WWII civil rights movement. Pressure from the civil rights movement led to legal victories that ended Jim Crow and legalized segregation. These victories included the US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ended segregation in schools, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, gender, and ethnicity.

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