On the first day of this class, I thought that I knew a lot on this particular subject; Race, Justice and Freedom in America. Racism, segregation, bigotry, prejudice these were all of the catch phrases that essentially in my circle of people that I associate with on a daily basis were and are the proverbial white elephant in the room. Everyone knows that they are there but the opinions on to what degree they exist are quite drastically varying. This notion is quite alarming to me, because I have wrongly assumed that because most of the people with whom I grew up with and associate with at this time all resemble me and come from similar backgrounds, but their reactions to these terms and how they are perceived in the media are vastly different from my experience. As I noted in class, I have two beautiful daughters who are bi-racial. If you ask me, they are Kayla and Kaitlyn. But, to make my point clear, if you ask society, they are considered "Black". Why is that? Is that how they would define themselves? Does it really matter? Unfortunately, in the United States of America it always has and always will. Because of ideologies such as white privilege and racial formation these thought processes continue to exist within our alleged modern society. Racial formation is made possible through science, academics, public policy, culture, law and institutionalization. White privilege itself piggy-backs on the ideas of racial formation. Because of these tenets, it is much more prudent in my opinion that if one were to analyze these ideas it would be far more beneficial to study the groups that are in the dominant position as opposed to the subjugated group, because the dominant group is the group that is responsible for defining and structuring these roles in the first place.
On our first meeting back in January you brought up the term racial formation and explained how it differed from racism and race.