Reality Checks and Racial Formation

Race, according to Omi and Winant, is “a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of bodies” (55). Racial formation, therefore, is “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (55). The authors explain that despite supposed origins in biology, there is very little biological differentiation between people of distinct races, moreover, race is an ideological construct that is used to construct identities.

So far in our class, we have seen various types of identities, many of which are marked by racial formation. For example, in Blasted the antagonist Ian leverages slurs and pejoratives at the employees of the hotel, as a way of emphasizing their racial otherness in order to oppress them and heighten his own social standing. Much like Ian in the play, racial formation happens at the micro-social level when race is used as a tool to glean something about the identity of the other. Additionally, we have discussed the racial formation of the “Muslim figure” as a vague, could be threat in American socio-political discourse, which as a result, augmented racism against individuals from the Middle East at the micro-social level and fortified systemic policy designed to subdue said could be threat at the macro-social level.

Racial formation isn’t inherently a negative process when utilized properly. It can, in fact, be an affirming way for individuals to self-identity and find space within groups that share similar experiences and backgrounds (social, geographical, ethnographical, linguistic, etc.). However, as Foucault pointed out in his genealogy of European racism, race is wielded by the government and institutions (and therefore individuals) as a way to oppress and manage a population (Su Rasmussen 34). A theme that Omi and Winant touch on.

Omi and Winant clarify that racism, despite being a social construct so often controlled and enforced by government (as demonstrated by the case of Susie Guillory Phipps), is not simply erasable, despite what neo-conservative racial projects would want us to think. Neo conservative projects wish to erase the concept of race in favor of “color-blind” social equality and remove government enforcement and recognition of race. Whereas, liberal racial projects aim to maintain racial formation at the state level, as a tool to reckon historical injustices inflicted upon non-white groups in U.S. history. Neither of these projects can be fully realized, as race is so ingrained in our society at both the micro and macro levels, it simply cannot just be erased and liberal racial projects, as Rana pointed out in class, lack the infrastructure and the support to create meaningful equity.

Racial formation often enters hegemonic discourse in events that Harry J. Elam Jr, refers to as “reality checks.” A reality check is:

“A moment that traumatically ruptures the balance between the real and representational. It is a moment that, in the dissonance, generates demands that the relationship between the real and representation be negotiated. Reality checks brusquely rub the real up against the representational in ways that disrupt the spectators and produce new meanings. Most significantly, reality checks, in the unease that they cause audiences, can excite social action…As such reality checks stir the psyche and impel reconsiderations of the intersections of the real and representational, they produce diverse performative responses and expose the complex possibilities of a politics of blackness” (173).

While reality checks are not exclusive to the politics of black identity, Elam Jr. locates the reality check in this discourse due to the performance of reality or realness in black expressive culture and its constant negotiation with the representational (174).

Elam Jr. demonstrates that the funeral of Emmett Till served as a Reality Check, in which the reality of the boys’ disfigured face disrupted the image of a happy 14 year old adolescent. At the macro level, the reality of his murder was made public and questioned how his murder was presented by white discourses.

When reading Elam Jr.’s words, I immediately thought of the murders of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd as reality checks that I had lived through. I also realized the ways their racial identities were formed, like how Omi and Winant describe, following their deaths in a vain attempt to justify their killings.

I was a freshman in high school when 17 year old Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman for simply being black and walking at night. The death of Trayvon Martin exposed a reality that lingered under the surface of the representation of racial politics and relations in the U.S. At the time, the election of Obama, and his consequential second election, marked the “symbolic” end of racism in the U.S. in mainstream socio-political discourse, as Daniel HoSang pointed out in his piece. However, the cruelty of the murder questioned the representation of race as something the U.S. had long overcome. In the wake of Trayvon’s murder, the media took to strategies of racial formation. Through investigating the text messages and school record of an average adolescent, media discourse began to racialize Trayvon into a delinquent. “Delinquency” being part of the racial identity formed and assigned to males of the African American community by white hegemony in the U.S. since slavery, but one that surged especially under the War on Drugs, which, much like how Muslims were racialized in the War on Terror, all black men were racialized as a could be drug dealers and could be perpetrators of crimes connected to the trafficking and distribution of drugs. In reaction to his death and the racist formation of Trayvon as a criminal, social activism erupted and government reaction heightened.

Following the murder of George Floyd, the eight minute long video of his murder documented by a passerby went viral. In said video, Police officer Derek Chauvin asphyxiated Floyd by placing his knee on his neck until he died. Officers Kueng and Lane subdued other parts of his body, meanwhile Officer Thao stood idly by. The video became a reality check clearly demonstrating the way Black Americans are treated (abused and murdered) by Police Offers. This reality aggravates the representation of America as a post-racial exceptional country and the one-sided representation of police offers as exceptional heroes. Outrage across the states and it was not long after the process of racial formation in the media began to ensue. While originally reported for using what was believed to be a counterfeit bill and for exhibiting intoxicated behavior. However, media discourses dug up his criminal history and history of drug abuse in order to mark him, as they did Trayvon, as a delinquent and criminal, despite his history having no relation with his interaction with the police that day and despite the police having no reason or right to kill him. Social unrest and outrage grew, the murder of George Floyd became a catalyst for important social discourse on the reality of race.

The documentation and circulation of these events force us to question and interrogate the representation of reality that is often confused with reality. Since Rodney King, footage has been a way to document reality and challenge representations of race in the United States. The concept of the reality check can be applied outside the context of black identity and positioning in the U.S., but for the purpose of this blog, I wanted to remain in the same context as Elam Jr.

Works Cited

HoSang, Daniel, et al. “‘The ‘War on Terror’ as Racial Crisis, Homeland Security, Obama and Racial (Trans)Formations.’” Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2012.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the New Millennium. Routledge, 2008.

Reinelt, Janelle G., et al. “Reality.” Critical Theory and Performance, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2007, pp. 173–190.

Su Rasmussen, Kim. “Foucault’s Genealogy of Racism.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 28, no. 5, 2011, pp. 34–51., https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411410448.