solved 100 words Reply The role of race in efforts to

100 words Reply
The role of race in efforts to control and distribute economic, political, and cultural resources is being the “master category”. Michael Omi is a professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkley whose works include Comparative Racialization, Racial Theory and Politics, Racial/Ethnic Classification, and Identity. Omi is an Associate Director of Hass Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society (HIFIS). Omi and Howard Winant, Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara, developed the Theory of Racial Formation. In “The Theory of Racial Formation”, Omi and Winant explain that through enslavement in the United States, “race has become the template of both difference and inequality” (pg 106). Through Discursive formation, social class structure was established based on race in the United States where the white male had the most power. Stuart Hall is a British-Jamaican Sociologist who emphasized that all cultures and societies were shaped by political, economic, and social forces. He is also the author of “The West and the Rest: Discourse of Power”. According to Stuart Hall, “Discourse is about the production of knowledge through language. But it is itself produced by a practice: ‘discursive practice’- the practice of producing meaning” (pg 201). As a result, through slavery, Americans assume that whites are higher in the social class structure than African Americans. In the documentary “13th:” From Slave to Criminal with One Amendment by Ava DuVernay, it can be seen that this difference in power led to discrimination and Segregation such as the Jim Crow laws. Due to the lack of influence that African Americans had on the United States government, schools were able to refuse students of a different race other than white. This created more gaps between the racial groups because less education meant less available jobs and power in society. As a result, a race created a social structure where African Americans did not have much power when it came to economic, political, and cultural resources because they didn’t get good jobs, they had little power to influence the government, and they were criminalized.
While whites had wealth, higher income, and power over decision-making through voting and have government positions, African Americans did not and could not have representation when it came to laws and elections. Similar to the “West and the Rest”, the Whites were the dominant and “desired” race while other races were the “rest” who were in the lower class and had little power. In the documentary “13th:” From Slave to Criminal with One Amendment by Ava DuVernay, when slavery came to an end, whites used their power to their advantage. Whites started categorizing African Americans as criminals in order to enslave them again, and later in the early 20th century, movies were made to stereotype African Americans as rapists and a threat to the white community. Through the Regime of Truth, whites started believing that these false stereotypes were true and made this a reason for oppressing the Black community. Michael Foucault and Stuart Hall describe a “regime of truth” as a “way of thinking that defines what is true and limits options of thought about a particular topic or debate” (Week 1 lecture slides).
The meaning of race changed from being a category based on the ethnicity of people to “social construction” and a “master category” because race “has become the template of both difference and inequality” (The Theory of Racial Formation, pg 106). Race is currently defined as ” a concept that signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies”. Treating people differently because of their race is racist which is the state of having racism. For example, in the documentary “13th:” From Slave to Criminal with One Amendment by Ava DuVernay, racism can be seen through the stereotyping of Black people as criminals and police violence that was targeted towards Black people. In “The Theory of Racial Formation”, Omi and Winant explain that “A racial project can be defined as racist if it creates or reproduces structures of domination based on racial significations and identities” (pg 128). As a result, through discursive strategy, which is to assign value and meaning to representation, the term race has a negative connotation. In a way, the term “race” has remained the same in the fact it categorizes people into certain groups.