Racial Formations: Reflection and Analysis

I am, without a doubt, completely uncomfort adequate to(p) discussing feed. In fact, it is among my least favorite things to do. I for the most part feel as if I do non know how to discuss travel without off annuling some angiotensin converting enzyme, victimization the wrong word, revelation my ignorance well-nigh many youngs within the topic, ever-changing my mind about a accredited mental picture midstream, or just broadly looking like a fool. I avoid these discussions at all be beca utilise they put me in a dedicate I am r bely produce to be. So, naturally, this reading struck a concord with me before it actually even began.I related instantly and wholeheartedly to the promontory raised in the introduction If be given is non real in a scientific sense, why can I look around my classroom or campus and see that someone is black or Asian or white? This predicament has plagued me for years. It seemed to me that race had to be more than than a complaisant construct ion realized centuries ago. It had never really made sense to me, and this apparent motion established a personal connector for me to Omi and Winants subsequent explanation of this obscure notion.The authors explanation of the history of race thought sealedly helped me in my quest for answers and gave me a much clearer understanding of the origins of race cognisance. I could imagine the European settlers surprise upon discovering theirs was not the only existing race, thus repugn essentially every religious belief they held about creation. They could not explain this difference, and, as human beings devout in their religion, that was unacceptable. They requisite explanation, and they needed to find it in the Bible.It is not difficult to relate to the anxiety and indecision they experienced. People of all religions seem to drop off much of their practice justifying what happens in their lives &8212 both(prenominal) good and bad &8212 within their especial(a) religious te xts. We take scripture, verses, lines, chapter, and so on and make it fit into what makes sense for us or, in many cases, make it lick to our advantage so that we can grapple with what we do not understand or agree with. Having established how race consciousness came to be in the first place, Omi nd Winant address how race became a social concept, the issue at the heart of my pilot program conundrum. As I read about hypodescent and beliefs about racial intermixture, I started to understand. The authors use of Marvin Harris work further established this understanding, specially Harris statement, The rule of hypodescent is, therefore, an invention, which we in the United States return made in order to adjudge biological facts from intruding into our collective racist fantasies (11). That was it.This eighteenth-century way of thinking was a prolongation of the European settlers need to justify certain behaviors. They may not have been using the Bible to do so, but the creators of hypodescent were but creating a belief to help them create through the social structure they had established and accepted. Now that I have a much better understanding of race as nothing more than a social construct, I suppose my issue is not entirely with those European settlers and not with inventors of outlandish notions about Negro air but rather with current society.We are now at a prove that we should know better. We should know that no one race is superior. We should know that white is but pure and certainly does not play off better simply because it is white. We have more than enough information to move beyond these ways of thinking and into a untested era in which we are able to, as Omi and Winant state at the end of the writing, break with these habits of thought (15).