Omi And Winant On The Theoretical Status Of Race Summary

In Omi and Winant’s “On the Theoretical Status of Race” (1993), the two scholars racial argue that race is a social construct (i.e. ideological construct). In the section, “Race as an Ideological Construct” (page 4), the authors use arguments from historian Barbara Fields to help supplement their argument. They start with the argument that the concept of race was created out of the need to explain historical events. For them the historical need for race, was not only a means for explanation of slavery to those lived in societies based on radical doctrines and natural rights, but also the how effective the ideology of race was in uniting the ideas of freedom and slavery. To help support their case of race being this social construct, they quote Fields along with Durkheimian notion of “social fact” (page 4).
For race to remain a reality, it must be “defined as innate and natural prejudice of color” (page 4). They further quote Fields, stating that “Since race is not genetically programmed, racial prejudice cannot be genetically programmed either, but must arise historically” (page 4). In other words, they are stating that “race is not natural” (biological) and that it has its roots somewhere in history. Eventually, as previously stated, race started to “take on a life of its own” and went from being consider a historical explanation to being the catalyst of history. In this process of becoming a social construct, race started to become an inherited idea. To further support this conclusion that race became this ideological construct, Omi and Winant use Durkheimian’s social fact to state that race must be an “illusion that does ideological work” since race can’t be an objective biological