Racial formation theory is a framework that seeks to deconstruct race as it exists today in the United States.
[3] They refer to it as "racial order" that is able to have meaning and a varying system due to a result of the way that people choose to interact with one another in "micro-level and macro- level of social relations.
Omi and Winant also believe that "race [is] an unstable and 'de-centered' complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle".
The dominant culture assigns identity to minority groups as a means of separating them, diminishing their status, and maintaining control over them.
The expropriation of property, the denial of political rights, the introduction of slavery and other forms of coercive labor, as well as outright extermination, all presupposed a worldview which distinguished European – children of God, human beings, etc.
"[6] In their book Racial Formation, Omi and Winant present race as a relatively recent phenomenon in the United States.
Becoming a citizen of this society is the process of learning to see race – that is, to ascribe social meanings and qualities to otherwise meaningless biological features.
That describes the associations we make between individual characteristics, preferences, behaviors, and attitudes and a particular physical appearance or perceived group membership.
Omi and Winant provide several illustrative examples of this disruption of expectations: The black banker harassed by police while walking in casual clothes through his own well-off neighborhood, the Latino or white kid rapping in perfect Afro patois, the unending faux pas committed by whites who assume that the non-whites they encounter are servants or tradespeople, the belief that non-white colleagues are less qualified persons hired to fulfill affirmative action guidelines...[12]When our racial expectations are violated, our reactions can betray our "preconceived notions of a racialized social structure".
[12] There are many racial projects dispersed throughout society that "mediate between discursive or representational means in which race is identified and signified on the one hand, and the institutional and organizational forms in which is it routinized and standardized on the other".