Genre
Non-fiction, Race
Setting and Context
America
Narrator and Point of View
Michael Omi and Howard Winant are the narrators.
Tone and Mood
Objective and intellectual
Protagonist and Antagonist
Americans are both the protagonists and the antagonists.
Major Conflict
Tenacious, systemic bigotry and colorism
Climax
No climax yet because America is still grappling with pervasive bigotry.
Foreshadowing
Omi and Winant foreshadow that having a color-blind society would be impracticable because skin colors have been utilized to create the hierarchy of races in America for a long time. They also foreshadow that individuals and communities can alter the implication of race.
Understatement
Naysayers understated the degree of Obama’s blackness because they held that he was not "sufficiently black."
Allusions
There are allusions to history, Darwinism, Civil rights acts, legal allusions, Weberian theories, Biology, the Bible, and scholarly works.
Imagery
Race (which intersects with skin colors) is the central imagery of the book that delineates American identity.
Paradox
Rationalization of slavery and bigotry, in religion, is paradoxical considering that the Bible teaches about the equality of God's children.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
'Negro' is used to refer to the dark-hued Americans. 'De facto' refers to something being practiced despite not being sanctioned by law'De Jure' denotes something lawful.
Personification
N/A
