2013
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145639
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Racial Formation in Perspective: Connecting Individuals, Institutions, and Power Relations

Abstract: Over the past 25 years, since the publication of Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, the statement that race is socially constructed has become a truism in sociological circles. Yet many struggle to describe exactly what the claim means. This review brings together empirical literature on the social construction of race from different levels of analysis to highlight the variety of approaches to studying racial formation processes. For example, macro-level scholarship often focuses on the crea… Show more

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Cited by 112 publications
(74 citation statements)
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References 142 publications
(115 reference statements)
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“…For example, cross-group differences in levels and types of response change may reflect important differences in the social construction of race/ethnicity across groups. The results also have consequential implications for social scientists who take into account race and/or ethnicity yet rely on the implicit assumption that these are life-long, immutable characteristics (see Saperstein, Penner, and Light 2013). Our work highlights the extent to which this assumption is untenable, as well as areas where the assumption holds.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 66%
“…For example, cross-group differences in levels and types of response change may reflect important differences in the social construction of race/ethnicity across groups. The results also have consequential implications for social scientists who take into account race and/or ethnicity yet rely on the implicit assumption that these are life-long, immutable characteristics (see Saperstein, Penner, and Light 2013). Our work highlights the extent to which this assumption is untenable, as well as areas where the assumption holds.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 66%
“…First, the origins of White privilege as we see it manifest in everyday life, are in fact born of White supremacy. Individuals who are constructed as White (Painter, 2010;Saperstein, Penner, & Light, 2013) would not enjoy the benefits of that label and status were it not for the ideological foundation propping up the assertion that Whiteness is superior and justifies an unearned merit that individuals constructed as other races are not owed (McIntosh, 2015). Second, to entertain a discussion about colorblindness absent an examination of how normalizing and standardizing notions of White supremacy insidiously permeate our social institutionseven the darkest among them, including the carceral state-undermines our aspirational efforts towards social justice.…”
Section: A Note On White Privilege and White Supremacymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This paper assumes a social constructionist view of ethnicity, race, and nationality (Brubaker 2009(Brubaker , 2012Omi and Winant 1986;Saperstein, Penner and Light 2013;Winant 2000) which, in turn, is tied to a broader literature on the social construction of groups and group boundaries (Bernstein 2005;Lamont and Molnár 2002). Race/ethnicity is always socially constructed and, in the United States and in many other countries, is also a structure of domination and a basis for social closure.…”
Section: Race/ethnicity As a Socially Constructed Structure Of Dominamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…3 The literature on the social construction of race and ethnicity contains many nuances and debates about boundary-formation and the history of ethnic categories that cannot be addressed in this paper including the historical development of ethnic identities out of smaller placeoriented identities in the process of nation-formation, the differences between group's accounts of their origins and more objective histories, the ways racial classification schemes vary among the nations of the Americans and over time, and the active processes of group-making and boundary construction. See (Marx 1996), (Alonso 1994), (Olzak 2004) and (Saperstein et al 2013) for reviews of these issues. Like age or income, ethnic or racial boundaries can be fluid and continuously variable and still have importance in a structure of domination.…”
Section: Network Externalmentioning
confidence: 99%