Twenty years since the publication
of the Second Edition and more than thirty years since the
publication of the original book, Racial
Formation in the United States
now arrives with each chapter radically revised and rewritten by
authors Michael Omi and Howard Winant, but the overall purpose and
vision of this classic remains the same: Omi and Winant provide an
account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they
become the focus of political conflict, and how they come to shape
and permeate both identities and institutions. The steady journey of
the U.S. toward a majority nonwhite population, the ongoing
evisceration of the political legacy of the early post-World War II
civil rights movement, the initiation of the ‘war on terror’ with
its attendant Islamophobia, the rise of a mass immigrants rights
movement, the formulation of race/class/gender ‘intersectionality’
theories, and the election and reelection of a black President of the
United States are some of the many new racial conditions Racial
Formation now covers.