Racial Formation in the United States

Abstract

This chapter outlines a theory of race and racism. It explores racial formation as the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed. The authors elaborate a theory of racial formation in two steps. First, they argue that racial formation is a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized. Next, they link racial formation to the evolution of hegemony, the way in which society is organized and ruled. To summarize the argument: the theory of racial formation suggests that society is suffused with racial projects, large and small, to which all are subjected. This racial "subjection" is quintessentially ideological. Everybody learns some combination, some version, of the rules of racial classification, and of her own racial identity, often without obvious teaching or conscious inculcation.