Omi's work includes race theory, Asian American studies, and antiracist scholarship.
[4][5] Omi's most influential work has been his 1986 collaboration with University of California, Santa Barbara professor Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States.
Omi and Winant argue that race emerged as an organizing factor in society due to political actions they call racial projects.
Still, as Gramsci would predict, the reforms secured during crisis moments like the Civil Rights era serve merely to incorporate resistance.
Thus, the fundamental dynamics of race including institutional racism and continued inequality along racialized lines remain in place today, according to Omi and Winant.