Mixed Race Studies

The Pain Tree

Cormorant Books
June 2015
320 pages
5.5″ x 8.5″
Paperback ISBN 9781770864344

Olive Senior

Olive Senior’s new collection of stories, The Pain Tree, is wide-ranging in scope, time period, theme, locale, and voice. There is — along with her characteristic “gossipy voice” — reverence, wit and wisdom, satire, humour, and even farce. The stories range over at most a hundred years, from around the time of the second world war to the present. Like her earlier stories, Jamaica is the setting but the range of characters presented are universally recognisable as people in crisis or on the cusp of transformation.

While most of the stories operate within a realist mode, Senior also exploits traditional motifs. Collected here are revenge stories (“The Goodness of my Heart”), a bargain with the Devil (“Boxed-in”), a Cinderella story (“The Country Cousin”), a magical realist interpretation of African spiritual beliefs (“Flying”) and a narrator’s belated acceptance of the healing power of traditional beliefs (“The Pain Tree”). “Coal” is a realist story set in the war years and depression that followed as folks try to find a new place in the world. Senior’s trademark children awakening to self-awareness and to the hypocrisy of adults are here too, from the heartbreaking “Moonlight” and “Silent” to the girls in “Lollipop” and “A Father Like That” who learn to confront loneliness and vulnerability with attitude.

I Am the Blood of the Conqueror; I Am the Blood of the Conquered

Christina Torres: Teacher. Runner. Writer.
2015-10-12

Christina Torres, Middle and high school English and Drama Teacher
University Laboratory School, Honolulu, Hawaii

I didn’t know the true extent of Columbus’s reign of horror until a few months ago. Sitting in a Nashville library, I read accounts of the things Columbus and his men did and felt sick to my stomach.

Columbus and his fellow “conquerors” were assholes. There are a number of sources that show this. It’s easy (and correct) to hate it all. The level of prestige bestowed on them is, frankly, disgusting…

…There was also rage. A sickening, black cloud of it stormed in behind my eyes, as it usually does when I read the real history of things. Normally, that rage has a name: white supremacy, slavery, segregation, police brutality, racism, privilege, bias. I can normally pin that rage to something, burn that effigy as things to stay away from and consciously choose to try and rid myself of, to work day and day to scrape out internalized oppression and beliefs.

You can’t scrape bloodlines clean, though…

..I am Mexicana and Filipina. I have been raised to be proud of the centuries of ancestors who came before me. Both cultures place a strong emphasis on not forgetting familial and cultural history…

Read the entire article here.

A resurgence of black identity in Brazil? Evidence from an analysis of recent censuses

Demographic Research
Volume 32
Article 59 (2015-06-18)
pages 1603-1630
DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2015.32.59

Vítor Miranda
Population Studies Center
University of Pennsylvania

Background: The second half of the 20th century brought a sharp increase in the number of people self-identifying as “brown” in the Brazilian Censuses. Previous studies have demonstrated that this was not the result of demographic forces, such as differential birth rates, but of a large number of people changing their response in the censuses from “black” or “white” to “brown”. Despite the increased black political activism of the last two decades, whether this historical pattern of racial reclassification continued after 1990 has not yet been systematically investigated.

Objective: This study investigates if the increase in identity politics by the Brazilian black movement since the 1990s was associated with a number of people changing their answers in the census from non-black to black.

Methods: The residual method is used to estimate a counterfactual scenario: what the distribution of the population by race would look like in the 2000 and 2010 censuses if no racial reclassification had occurred during the 1990s and 2000s.

Results: The “black” category experienced net gains of 2.2 million and 3.1 million newly reclassified members in the 2000 and 2010 censuses, respectively. By 2010 at least one in every three people in the black population was a newly reclassified black. The increase was particularly strong among males and the younger generations.

Conclusions: The historical flight from blackness in Brazil documented by previous studies has reversed in the last two decades. This suggests that the increased black activism might have been successful in valorizing black identity and increasing identification with blackness.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Racial statistics in Brazil
3. Earlier studies and open questions
4. Analytic strategy and data
5. Results
6. Alternative scenarios: Mortality, international migration, and census coverage
7. Conclusions and discussion
8. Acknowledgments
9. Reference

Read the entire article here.

Patterns of Racial and Educational Assortative Mating in Brazil

Demography
June 2014, Volume 51, Issue 3
pages 835-856
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-014-0300-2

Aaron Gullickson, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

Florencia Torche, Professor of Sociology
New York University

Exchange of racial for educational status has been documented for black/white marriages in the United States. Exchange may be an idiosyncratic feature of U.S. society, resulting from unusually strong racial boundaries historically developed there. We examine status exchange across racial lines in Brazil. In contrast to the United States, Brazil features greater fluidity of racial boundaries and a middle tier of “brown” individuals. If exchange is contingent on strong racial boundaries, it should be weak or non-existent in Brazilian society. Contrary to this expectation, we find strong evidence of status exchange. However, this pattern results from a generalized penalty for darkness, which induces a negative association between higher education and marrying darker spouses (“market exchange”) rather than from a direct trading of resources by partners (“dyadic exchange”). The substantive and methodological distinction between market and dyadic exchange helps clarify and integrate prior findings in the status exchange literature.

Read the entire article here.

Race, color, and income inequality across the Americas

Demographic Research
Volume 31
Article 24 (2014-09-19)
pages 735-756
DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2014.31.24

Stanley Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Andrew Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Background: Racial inequality in the U.S. is typically described in terms of stark categorical difference, as compared to the more gradational stratification based on skin color often said to prevail in parts of Latin America. However, nationally representative data with both types of measures have not been available to explicitly test this contrast.

Objective: We use novel, recently released data from the U.S. and 18 Latin American countries to describe household income inequality across the region by perceived skin color and racial self-identification, and examine which measure better captures racial disparities in each national context.

Results: We document color and racial hierarchies across the Americas, revealing some unexpected patterns. White advantage and indigenous disadvantage are fairly consistent features, whereas blacks at times have higher mean incomes than other racial populations. Income inequality can best be understood in some countries using racial categories alone, in others using skin color; in a few countries, including the U.S., a combination of skin color and self-identified race best explains income variation.

Conclusions: These results complicate theoretical debates about U.S. racial exceptionalism and methodological debates about how best to measure race. Rather than supporting one measure over another, our cross-national analysis underscores race‟s multidimensionality. The variation in patterns of inequality also defies common comparisons between the U.S. on the one hand and a singular Latin America on the other.

Read the entire article here.

Mapping Amerindian Captivity in Colonial Mosquitia

Journal of Latin American Geography
Volume 14, Number 3, October 2015
pages 35-65

Karl Offen, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

In 1764, Spanish colonel Luis Diez Navarro mapped the racially diverse British settlement at Black River on what is today the coast of northeastern Honduras. I use the map as a point of departure to ponder the origins of Amerindian and mestizo residents of Black River and other British settlements across the Mosquito Shore in the eighteenth century. I suggest that Diez Navarro’s map can be read to discuss a regional history of violence, the lengthy importance of northern European (and especially British) influence in the region, the significant presence of free people of color, and the social and economic importance of female captivity in general and the Amerindian slave trade in particular. The paper shows how the Afro-Amerindian and Amerindian Mosquito people became deeply entangled with the trade-driven supply of Amerindian captives during times of Anglo-Spanish peace, but also the capture of Amerindians, Africans, mestizos, and mulattos during times of Anglo-Spanish warfare. The paper argues that Amerindian, mestizo, and mulatto captivity made the Mosquito Shore one of the more racially mixed societies anywhere in the British Atlantic and deserves much more attention than it currently receives.

En 1764 el coronel español Luis Diez Navarro mapeó el diverso y mezclado asentamiento británico de Black River, en el lugar que hoy es la costa noreste de Honduras. Utilizo este mapa como punto de partida para examinar el origen de los residentes indígenas y mestizos de Black River y de los demas asentimientos a lo largo de la costa de los Mosquitos en el siglo dieciocho. Sugiero que el mapa de Diez Navarro se puede leer como una pista para entender la historia regional de violencia, la importancia y larga influencia de los nor-europeos y especialmente los británicos, la presencia significativa de gente libre de color y la importancia económica y social de la cautividad femenina en general y el tráfico en esclavos indígenas en particular. El artículo demuestra cómo los Mosquito, tanto los Afro-indígenas como los indígenas, se involucraron con el comercio de las indígenas cautivas durante tiempos de paz entre los Españoles y los Británicos, así como también participaron en la captura de indígenas, afrodescendientes y mulatos durante el tiempo del conflicto Anglo-Hispano. El artículo sostiene que la cautividad indígena, mestiza y mulata convierte a la costa de los Mosquitos en una de las sociedades más diversas de la Atlántica británica y merece un sitio mucho más central que el que tiene actualmente en la academia.

Read or purchase the article here.

Groundbreaking New Series – ‘Mister Brau’ – Gives Afro-Brazilians Representations to Cheer Despite Flaws

Shadow and Act: On Cinema Of The African Diaspora
2015-10-07

Kiratiana Freelon

Lázaro Ramos and Taís Araújo

Brazilian television is very white, but most Brazilians aren’t.

Brazil’s population is more than 50 percent black, but the television news and entertainment shows rarely reflect such diversity. So when a “black” television show debuts, it’s groundbreaking. And when Brazil’s top black female and male actors star in it, it’s a miracle.

Two weeks ago Globo television premiered “Mister Brau,” a weekly comedic show starring Lázaro Ramos and Taís Araújo as a successful pop music couple. They are also married in real life…

…For black Americans, the union between Ramos and Araújo appears to be a perfect match. For Afro-Brazilians, it’s a match that they rarely see. For the most part, rich and successful Afro-Brazilians do not marry black people. Soccer stars marry white women. Black Brazilian models marry white men. Militant black Brazilians always debate the reasons for this. But sociologists have concluded that rich Afro-Brazilians are usually exchanging status when they marry white. They provide the high socioeconomic status in exchange for whiteness, which has a high racial status in Brazil. (See: Race in another America: the significance of skin color in Brazil)…

Read the entire review here.

AfroLatin@s in Action: Making a Difference through Research, Education & the Arts

Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor
New York, New York 10012
Thursday, 2015-10-15, 18:30-20:30 EDT (Local Time)

Join us for a discussion led by AfroCuban author, bibliographer, and activist Tomás Fernandez Robaína on the crucial role of books in the advancement of Black advocacy movements throughout the Americas.

Learn about the Forum’s new projects aimed at increasing AfroLatin@ visibility and representation. These initiatives include raising the AfroLatin@ count in the 2020 census; developing a national network to promote and support AfroLatin@ Studies; and preparing a retrospective exhibition on the work of photographer Tony Gleaton. Find out how you can play a role in making a positive change. Come ready to take action!

Co-Sponsored by the Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, both at NYU.

For more information, click here.

My First Event at the Schomburg – “Resisting Limitations: AfroLatinos and Radical Identity”

the colored boy
2015-10-01

Alexander Hardy

So, I’m doing a thing at the Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture for Hispanic Heritage Month. But unlike the majority of the celebrations, lists of notable Latinos and mainstream media representations of people in and from Latin America, this will be a thoroughly Blackety Black affair.

Shoutout to melanin.

Here’s the what/why/who/when/how:

The history of America cannot be appropriately surveyed without considering the presence, influence, hardships, victories and contributions of people of African descent. Our bodies, our lives and our genius reflect and inspire greatness, yet textbooks, media depictions and cultural celebrations routinely minimize and erase our integral role in both society and art.

To commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month, AfroPanamanian writer and educator Alexander Hardy of TheColoredBoy.com has invited a diverse cast of AfroLatino storytellers to share stories of struggles, tragedies and progress towards/while affirming, celebrating, exploring, representing and growing to love and accept our wonderful Black and Brown selves in a world (and media environment) that studies and exploits our cultures and essence while ignoring and minimizing our presence and influence.

Resisting Limitation: AfroLatin@s and Radical Identities will showcase transformative, hilarious, tragic and insight-filled tales from powerful voices of the diaspora expressed through prose, poetry, song and art. This event aims to center and share Black and Brown narratives in a climate where such stories aren’t prominent or valued. Join us for a night of celebration, affirmation and exploration of the many iterations of AfroLatin@ identity and pride…

For more information, click here. To purchase tickets, click here.

[PODCAST] In Konversation: Unpacking the myth of the “racial democracy” in Brazil – Part 1

briankamanzi
2015-10-04

Brian Kamanzi, Host
Cape Town, South Africa

Marcelo Rosa, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

In Konversation: Unpacking the myth of the “racial democracy” in Brazil – Part 1 by Inkonversation on Mixcloud

Konversation meets with Marcelo Rosa, from the University of Brasilia.

We went on to engage on his perspectives on “race” in Brazilian society.

Listen to the interview (00:34:21) here.