Race And Society's Misconceptions Of Race By Omi And Winant

Race is a socially constructed myth that people of society perpetuate and enforce through their behavior. Despite society’s view that race is meaningful, we lack a thorough understanding of what exactly race is. Both Omi and Winant used the topics of ethnicity, nation, and class to illustrate society’s misconceptions of race. According to Omi and Winant, race is believed to be an unstable decentered complex of social meanings that are constantly being transformed through political struggle.
The first misconception stated by Omi and Winant is Ethnicity. Ethnicity can be described as an individual’s culture. People often confuse race and ethnicity, and classify them as a similar idea, however that is an improper way of viewing race. Race is used to describe an individuals skin color, however, there is no biological significance between people of the same skin color. Instead, learning about an individual’s ethnicity can

Especially in the working world, it is always competition instead of cooperation. This is somewhat contradictory to the idea of liberalism. Liberalism is modernity definitive of self and society. Liberalism is the belief that everyone should have access to both freedom and equality. However, there is a difference between believing in liberalism existing and believing that it ought to exist. Neo-liberalism is the belief that it is the individual’s fault that he or she is not successful in life. It is a particular individual’s fault that he or she did not use their equality or freedom to obtain a better life. For example, someone with this view would blame the individual for not getting ahead by graduating from college. We enjoy taking the easy way out and blaming the individual instead of blaming the larger picture such as problems within the structure of our society and our