Brodkin Buck Omi And Winant Analysis
For many centuries, race has been a huge topic that people discuss about, whether talking about education, occupation, politics, or human rights. America was settled with Native-Americans, but after Columbus discovered American land, there were many Europeans travelling there. However, it did not end there, many years later upper-class settlers started bringing in slaves from African-American descent. That is when interracial relationships started to happen. Brodkin, Buck, Omi and Winant in their essays illustrate racial formations, interracial relationships, and how white people can be privileged in recent days. First of all, race is defined as a group of people who share similar distinctive appearance. There is not just white and black people. Some people think that whoever is not white is black; however, there are as many as 30 different subgroups of races. Omi and Winant bring up an example how “White is seen as a “pure” group. Any racial intermixture
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35) African-American people never had the ability to express their opinion, nor act, because they were unwanted in society for any other reason than labor. However, many slaves and slave owners or their wives happened to be in sexual relationships, where many interracial children were born. This was the beginning of racial intermixture on American land. In the 17th century white women got seriously punished for having black children or marrying a black man. The whiteness of skin lost its actual meaning, because no matter how many relatives from a non-white descent a person had, he/she was being considered a non-white person, even if the skin was completely white. The elite, white slaveholding fathers, had to “teach Whites the value of whiteness” in order to rule their labor force (Rothenberg, 2004, p.
35) African-American people never had the ability to express their opinion, nor act, because they were unwanted in society for any other reason than labor. However, many slaves and slave owners or their wives happened to be in sexual relationships, where many interracial children were born. This was the beginning of racial intermixture on American land. In the 17th century white women got seriously punished for having black children or marrying a black man. The whiteness of skin lost its actual meaning, because no matter how many relatives from a non-white descent a person had, he/she was being considered a non-white person, even if the skin was completely white. The elite, white slaveholding fathers, had to “teach Whites the value of whiteness” in order to rule their labor force (Rothenberg, 2004, p.