Race functions as an organizing glue binding national unity to racial division

Evidence

There have continually been two contradictory principles at work: national unity and racial division. To fuel and justify first the colonial impulse and later the nationbuilding process, race has served as what Antonio Gramsci called an ideological “glue” (Gramsci 1971, 328). Race operated as a multileveled organizing principle that established who was “civilized” and who was “savage,” who was “free” (and hence human), and who was a slave (chattel, not a person). Race linked the corporeal/ visible characteristics of different social groups to different sociopolitical statuses, and provided various religious and political principles always reflected restrictive norms. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 85

Categorization

• DEFINE: Grounds race as a multileveled organizing principle that links visible bodily traits to sociopolitical status — a foundational articulation of racial formation’s core argument.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing racial-formation/CRT vault claims; this passage states the mechanism by which race is assigned and naturalized. — connects to: Racecraft has material dimensions because segregation itself enacts race. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 328