ABSTRACT
Michael Omi and Howard Winant's Racial Formation in the United States, first published in 1986, proposed a new theoretical paradigm for race analysis, racial formation theory. In contrast to Omi and Winant's understanding of the US state as the pre-eminent site of mediating racial conflict and promoting racial democracy, the state as constantly a major perpetrator of white racial oppression, as a substantially white-racist state that mediates racial group conflict in a strategically progressive direction only when necessary. Instead, the state remains one whose foundation was created by all-white-male elite at an undemocratic constitutional convention and one that has been maintained and reinforced at the top by mostly white elite officials in its still substantially undemocratic legislative, judicial, and executive branches. Having vast socioeconomic resources and economic domination, and with control of most state politics and the dominant sociocultural narratives, whites continue to exert great influence and power in systemically racist societies such as the United States.
