Racial reform requires state response to movements that arise amid institutional decay

Evidence

Change in the racial order, in the social meaning and political role played by race, is achieved only when the state has initiated reforms, when it has generated new programs and agencies in response to movement demands. Movements capable of achieving such reforms only arise when there is significant “decay” in the capacities of preexisting state programs and institutions to organize and enforce racial ideology. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 150

Categorization

• DEFINE: This states the book’s core model of racial change as interplay between state and movements.