Theorizing the US Racial State: Sociology Since Racial Formation

Abstract

This article reviews theoretical developments in the sociology of the US racial state since the publication of Michael Omi and Howard Winant's groundbreaking Racial Formation in the United States. After briefly outlining their theory, it surveys the still diminutive literature and concludes by pointing to promising future directions, drawing on insights from other disciplines and incipient stirrings from within sociology. Destabilizing the unquestioned assumption that the United States is and has been a nation‐state, the article reconceptualizes it as an empire‐state. This turn establishes a firmer footing for the claim that the United States is intrinsically a racial state and yields a generative framework for reconsidering and stimulating scholarship toward more effective analysis and critique.

The Ethnic Dimensions in Social Movements*

“…Steinman (2012) views the United States as structured by settler colonialism, which operates in multiple institutional spheres, and argues that the multiple institutional spheres theory of social movements (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008) provides a good framework for understanding resistance to settler colonialism by the Indian Sovereignty Movement. Jung and Kwon (2013) summarize Omi and Winant's idea of the racial state along with several critics of Omi and Winant, and argue that many of the problems with these discussions stem from viewing the United States as a nation-state, when it would better view viewed as an empire state that was constructed by conquering and subordinating other groups into inherently hierarchical structures. Bracey (2015) argues for a Critical Race Theory view of the state as an instrument of Whites.…”

American Federalism and Racial Formation in Contemporary Immigration Policy

“…The American federalist system was designed in part to enable states and localities to pursue racially discriminatory and exploitative forms of labor and political control without threatening the stability of the centralized nationstate (Marx 1998). Race relations are managed through local institutions such as schools and neighborhoods using approaches that may conflict with state or federal racial projects (Jung and Kwon 2013;Cazanave 2011). Federalism continues to permit states and localities to pursue racially unequal policies, widening inequalities despite federal commitments to race-neutral governance (Brown 2013b;Bobo and Charles 2009).…”

Race and critical tourism studies: An analytical literature review

“…But where Omi and Winant's perspective is more historical in charting the development of race, Goldberg is more concerned with its geography and the various kinds of regional racializations found in a globalized world. Furthermore, Goldberg is much more concerned with the state's role in dealing with racial difference, or as he puts it “state management of heterogeneity” that formulates a perspective of the racial state that Jung and Kwon () argue has been somewhat lacking in racial formation scholarship. In the growing body of tourism studies literature focusing specifically on race, we can see both of these theorizations at work.…”