Racial Formation and Cultural Dimension

Racial Formation and Cultural Dimension
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Racial Formation and Cultural Dimension
Racial formation theory perceives race to be a socially developed identity by which the importance and content of racial categories are usually determined by political, economic, and social forces. In other words, race is constructed by social identities, and it classifies people based on their differences in culture, skin color, and ethnicity. Some of the well-known racial categories in the United States of America (USA) include whites, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and African Americans. “White Veterans Only: From When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America” by Ira Katznelson portrays various concepts of racial formation theory, which are going to be discussed in this paper.
The primary concept of the racial formation theory is the Selective Service Readjustment Act or the GI Bill of Rights of 1944. The main purpose of this act was to reintegrate the 1920s veterans by providing them a broad range of social benefits. From 1944 to 1971, the federal government spent about $95 million on the GI Bill (Katznelson, 2005). In particular, the GI Bill was crucial in the smooth transition of returning veterans to their civilian lives. With the help of this act, millions of former soldiers attended college, bought homes, and started businesses. However, the only downside of the GI Bill was that it neglected Negro soldiers and prioritized the needs of white veterans. In one way or another, the GI Bill broadened the USA’s racial gap since it contributed to the discrimination of black veterans. Truman Gibson Junior, the Pittsburgh Courier’s Veteran Editor, wrote an article entitled “Government Fails Negro Vets” to show how the GI Bill failed to help Negro veterans in the South (Katznelson, 2005). Consequently, it is clear that the implementation of some policies can lead to racial discrimination in society.
Although the GI Bill was meant to help all veterans, its focus on whites-only contrib...