[2] Winant's most influential work has been his ongoing collaboration with UC Berkeley Professor Michael Omi, Racial Formation in the United States (1986-2015).
Noting the concept's origins in European settler colonialism and in the enslavement of Africans (see Slavery in the United States), Omi and Winant also follow Du Bois (see W. E. B.
Taking the form of White Supremacy and shaped as well by ongoing resistance to it, race has been so foundational in the United States that it serves as a "template" for all social conflict.
Still, as both Gramsci and Du Bois would predict, the reforms secured during crisis periods like the Civil Rights era have contradictory effects: for democratic and egalitarian movements, they simultaneously represent both victory and defeat.
In their view race remains a fundamental dimension of social structure and signification, while simultaneously retaining its instability, contrariety, and openness, because it is always engulfed in the turmoil of political conflict.