Mixed Race Studies

UWI lecturer on 2011 census: Mixed-race figures can change voting pattern in T&T

Guardian Media
Trinidad & Tobago Guardian Online
2013-02-22

Raphael John-Lall

The view that there is race-based voting in T&T is a mere “illusion,” says Dr Fuad Khan, Minister of Health and UNC MP for the Barataria/San Juan constituency. “We do not have race-based voting in T&T. We have political party voting. The illusion of race voting comes from the fact that the large ethnic groups historically support either political party. But race is not a huge factor, it is less that five per cent,” Khan told the T&T Guardian on Wednesday.
 
In the 2011 Population and Housing Census Demographic Report results released on Tuesday, the latest statistics show almost a quarter of T&T is racially mixed, giving rise to the phenomenon of T&T as a country of “minority races.” According to the census, 22.8 per cent or approximately 302,788 people in T&T are racially mixed. East Indians comprise 35.4 per cent of the population while people of African descent form 34.2 per cent.
 
Of the “mixed” category, 7.7 per cent refer to themselves as Douglas and 15.1 per cent are mixed but not Indian/African. All other ethnic groups totalled 1.4 per cent while 6.2 per cent of the population did not declare an ethnicity. University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturer and economist Hayden Blades said the census results should now be used as a platform to determine voting patterns in the future…

Read the entire article here.

It may seem out of place for three West Indian children, the offspring of an interracial couple, to be living in a small village at Scotland’s northern tip in 1801. Historians tend to think of an Afro-Caribbean presence in Britain as a phenomenon of the last sixty-plus years, and one localized around major urban centers. At the same time, only recently has the topic of inter-racial unions been addressed in the “new” multicultural Britain. The story of the Hay children in Dornoch, however, was not at all unique at the turn of the nineteenth century. Rather, the Hays were members of a regular migration of mixed-race West Indians who arrived in the home country during the period. Facing intense discrimination, few jobs opportunities, and virtually no educational options in the colonies, West Indians of color fled to Britain with their white fathers’ assistance. Once arrived, they encountered myriad responses. While some white relatives accepted them into their homes, others sued to cut them off from the family fortune. Equally, even though a number of fictional and political tracts welcomed their arrival, others condemned their presence and lobbied to ban them from landing on British soil. Regardless of these variable experiences, mixed-race migrants traveled to Britain consistently during the period. The Hay children may have turned heads on the roads of Dornoch, but they would not have been a wholly unfamiliar sight.

Daniel Alan Livesay, “Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Migration from the West Indies to Britain, 1750-1820” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2010).

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy

Lexington Books
March 2012
136 pages
Size: 6 1/2 x 9 1/2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7391-6964-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-7391-6965-0

Samantha Nogueira Joyce, Assistant Professor in Communication Studies
Indiana University, South Bend

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy, by Samantha Nogueira Joyce, examines what happens when a telenovela directly addresses matters of race and racism in contemporary Brazil. This investigation provides a traditional textual analysis of Duas Caras (2007-2008), a watershed telenovela for two main reasons: It was the first of its kind to present audiences with an Afro-Brazilian as the main hero, openly addressing race matters through plot and dialogue. Additionally, for the first time in the history of Brazilian television, the author of Duas Caras kept a web blog where he discussed the public’s reactions to the storylines, media discussions pertaining to the characters and plot, and directly engaged with fans and critics of the program.

Joyce combines her investigation of Duas Caras with a study of related media in order to demonstrate how the program introduced novel ideas about race and also offered a forum where varying perspectives on race, class, and racial relations in Brazil could be discussed. Brazilian Telenovelas is not a reception study in the traditional sense, it is not a story of entertainment-education in the strict sense, and it is not solely a textual analysis. Instead, Joyce’s text is a study of the social milieu that the telenovela (and especially Duas Caras) navigates, one that is a component of a contemporary progressive social movement in Brazil, and one that views the text as being located in social interactions. As such, this book reveals how telenovelas contribute to social change in a way that has not been fully explored in previous scholarship.

Table of Contents

• Chapter I – Episode 1: And Let There be White
• Chapter II – Black Flows: Duas Caras / The Legacy of Whitening and Racial Democracy
• Chapter III – “My Little Whitey” / “My Big, Delicious Negro:” Telenovelas, Duas Caras, and the Representation of Race
• Chapter IV – Deu no Blogão! (“It was in the Big Blog!”): Writing a Telenovela, a Blog, and a Metadiscourse
• Chapter V – Duas Caras as a New Approach to Social Merchandising
• Chapter VI – Conclusions
• References
• About the Author
• Index

Japanese-Brazilian Music and Ethnic Identity in the Post-Dekasegi Era: A lecture by Shanna Lorenz

Barnard College, Columbia University
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall
3009 Broadway, New York, New York
2013-02-28, 18:00 EST (Local Time)

Shanna Lorenz, Assistant Professor, Music; Advisory Committee, Latino/a and Latin American Studies
Occidental College, Los Angeles

This talk explores how circular migration between Brazil and Japan since 1990 has led Japanese-Brazilians to push back against the stereotypes that have circumscribed their participation in Brazilian society and, in some cases, to assert more forcefully their allegiance with the Brazilian nation. At the forefront of these social changes, musicians are using their art to redefine perceptions of the Nikkei community in Brazil, reshaping the musical resources and national mythologies of Japan and Brazil.

For more information, click here.

Beyond Black and White: When Going Beyond May Take Us Out of Bounds

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 44, Number 2 (March 2013)
pages 158-181
DOI: 10.1177/0021934712471533

Katerina Deliovsky, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario

Tamari Kitossa, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario

This article examines a selection of the North American scholarly research that calls for “moving beyond” a “Black/White binary paradigm.” Some scholars suggest this paradigm limits or obscures a complex understanding of the historical record on race, racism, and racialization for Asian, Latina/o, Mexican, and Native Americans. On the face of it, the notion of a Black/White binary paradigm and the call to move beyond appears persuasive. The discourse of a Black/White binary paradigm, however, confuses, misnames, and simplifies the historical and contemporary experiences structured within what is, in fact, the racially incorporative matrix of a black/white Manicheanism. We assert this call sets up blackness and, by extension, people socially defined as “black” as impediments to multiracial coalition building. As a result, “moving beyond” is epistemologically faulty and politically harmful for African-descended people because it is based on “bad faith” toward blackness.

Read or purchase the article here.

Racialisation in Jamaica

Mapping Global Racisms Project (2012- )
University of Leeds
Working Papers
13 pages

Benjamin Joyce

Introduction

The processes of racialisation in Jamaica reflect a complex and sustained ideological grounding upon colonial logics which actively repress perceived racial otherness. Despite the insistence of governmental institutions and the projected image of a raceless nation, contemporary Jamaica is still subject to overt and entrenched forms of racist discourse. The island’s racial climate must be seen within the context of a potent and active colonial legacy, through which social values of worth and economic racialisation are fundamentally determined by skin colour. The class structure of Jamaica is inexorably tied to racialisation, as such it enduringly pervades and dictates all elements of Jamaican life. Specific studies of Jamaican racialisation have been limited, in conjunction with a government unwilling to explore it’s domestic race problem, the operation of a racial machine is left unchecked and in no small way contributes to Jamaica’s stagnant economy and warring society. It is the purpose of this essay to explore the racialisation of post-colonial Jamaica and to expose how ‘the social regulation of race’1, enduringly limits its Afro-Caribbean population in economy, society and to a certain extent politics. This focus shall not be at the expense of other races, however, black Jamaicans are at a nexus of racial judgement.

The perceived identity of Jamaica

The picture painted by Jamaican governmental institutions is one of harmony in an ideologically raceless society. This post-raciality was not sought through any definitive steps to absolving racial difference, rather, the government conscripted the concealment (not removal) of racial boundaries; this is reflected in Jamaica’s national Motto — “Out of Many, One People.” The desire to strip the nation of a globally perceived race does not reflect the unification of race through assimilation, rather, it serves to strengthen the divide between Jamaican ‘races.’ Despite this, the racial diversity of the island has been seen to reference an environment of equality, multiculturalism and diversity. Wardle describes a ‘globalized image of a racial consciousness which defines a land of free-choice.’ This image of Jamaica, must be seen in the context of a government dependent upon its tourist industry which ‘has become, in recent years, the most vital component of the Jamaican economy.’  The instability of contemporary Jamaica’s economy is attributable to the decaying foundations of a plantation economy which favours white Jamaicans over blacks. As a result of this selective presentation, there is little external recognition of race hate within Jamaica. More alarmingly and certainly symptomatic of the true nature of Jamaican race, there is little internal administrative recognition of domestic racism.

The general assessment of Jamaica is inexorably linked to the globalized identity of (predominantly black) Jamaican citizens. Hence, a prevalent global expectation to be quintessentially Jamaican; and to conform to a black dreddie phenotype exists. Whilst global expectations such as these seem trivial, in a country whose ‘people acquired globalized world views,’ this expectation is imported and takes hold in Jamaica…

…The racial identity of Jamaica

The truth of perceived Jamaican races is far more diverse than the homogenous black perception of the west, rather presents ‘a situation of considerable racial ideological complexity.’ Miller suggests ‘Racial groups intermarried to produce Jamaican society from a varying mixture of Europeans, Jews, Africans, Indians and Chinese races.’ However, these interactions were mediated through a colonial and caste system of judgement. Needless to say, the relationship between the first white and African inhabitants was one of white superiority. The arrival of east Indians and the shadist caste-system under which their society is structured, compounded the degradation of African-Jamaicans; widening the void between blacks and other Jamaican ethnicities. This process of racialisation seems to conform to Goldberg’s relational methodology which suggests; ’colonial outlooks, interests, dispositions and arrangements set the… frameworks for… engaging and distancing, exploiting and governing, admitting and administering those conceived as racially distinct and different- and relatedly for elevating and privileging those deemed racially to belong to the dominant. Certainly, the importation of an Indian caste system had the potential to disrupt such a reading, but their subservience to whites and denigration to blacks, meant that this system correlated neatlywith sustained colonial philosophies.

The colour-based classification of race, which characterizes racial relations throughout the Caribbean has evolved into a number of categories which oversimplify the genesis of racial distinction in the country; White, Brown and Black. These divisions are seen to correlate with ’the socioeconomic categories of upper class, middle class and working class.’ ‘This colour scheme characterizes the social, economic and political institutions in Jamaica today, even though over time the colonial prejudices have been hidden behind education and social class.’ Again, Miller’s lexical choice is a significant one; hidden, the effects of governmental concealment are pervasive. There have been superficial social reforms, but increasing poverty and subsequent criminality; leads to the increase and fortification of a rich-poor divide…

…Jamaican racialisation has established a number of modes of racist interactions. Firstly, racialisation from above; the imposition of racial categories and therefore judgements of worth, by a light skinned minority upon majority populus. Secondly, the notion of associational race, a majoritive judgement whereby a persons social status and resultant associations define their racial identity. And finally, self- racialisation; the individual’s ascription to ‘characteristics’ defining ethnicity and their personal judgements of them.

Racialisation from above, is arguably the basis for the other two modes, in that it is the mode which establishes a racial hierarchy. However, of increasing significance in contemporary Jamaica are the latter two. Associational race in particular factors in the interactions between ‘Brown’ Jamaicans and blacks.

The illegitimate offspring of absentee plantation owners were often left in positions of authority, with benefits of such status; hence, they ‘emerged as the elite class within Jamaican society after emancipation.’ Inheritance for mixed race Jamaicans, and their perceived success through associations with a white world, further enforced the dominance of fairness and perpetuated the racial alienation African-Jamaicans. Protection for the offspring of whites was written into the original colonial charters, showing that de jure and de facto racism, were literally written into the hierarchy of the island.

Alleyne alleges that ‘in Jamaica, “brown”… has become the more active pole of opposition and antithesis to black.’ This rift was reflected in Marcus Garvey’s judgements of ‘mulattoes.’ He stated, ‘they [mixed-race Jamaicans] train themselves to believe that in the slightest shade the coloured man is above the black man and so it runs up to white.’

This view typifies the racially fractured infrastructure of thought which reacts to oppression by supporting the stratification of race. Contrary to Garvey’s assertion, mixed race citizens are not training themselves, rather are subject to a pervasive and prevailing system which favours fair skin. Consequently, Jamaican mixed race citizens (in accordance with global precedent) suffer a state of suspension between poles, denied full integration to either. Considering the breadth of Jamaican mixed-race heritage; this reflects the implosive depreciation of individual race.

However, the same notion of associational race does not factor in the final mode of racist interaction; self-racialisation. Both of the other modes through essentially force blacks to apologise for their racial otherness. Hence, the need for self-affirmation emerges, an identification with and celebration of racial allegiances. That being said, alongside this positive affirmation there lies ‘a pernicious internalized form of racism which involves prejudice, stereotyping and perceptions of beauty among members of the same racial group, whereby light skin is more highly valued that dark skin.’…

Read the entire paper here.

Cultural Imperialism and the Transformation of Race Relations in Brazil

Latin American Perspectives
Issue 178, Volume 38, Number 3 (May 2011)
pages 194-208
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X10390624

Bernadete Ramos Beserra, Professor
Federal University of Ceará

Edward E. Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. 324 pp.

G. Reginald Daniel, Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. 365 pp.

Jeffrey D. Needell, The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831–1871. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. 460 pp.

No work in the field of race and race relations in Brazil has provoked as much controversy as Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1999) “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.” In it the authors argued that cultural imperialism “rests on the power to universalize particularisms linked to a singular historical tradition by causing them to be misrecognized as such” (41). Although they used other examples to clarify their proposition, they focused on the debate on race and, taking the case of Brazil as an example of the “ethnocentric intrusion” of the U.S. tradition on studies of race in sharply different realities, denounced the historical U.S. solutions for the problem of racism that were being proposed and adopted by many Brazilian scholars and politicians at the time.

What made the article so important was, of course, the position of Pierre Bourdieu in the field of sociology. It was not just a Brazilian scholar, belonging to the so-called white elite, who was questioning the direction of recent studies of race and racism in Brazil but the most famous sociologist of the time. As might be expected, Bourdieu and Wacquant’s criticism created some turmoil among U.S. and Brazilian students of race relations, and it has since influenced the academic debate on the theme in both countries as well as in Europe itself, where the article was first published. The responses were diverse. Some scholars, such as French (2000) and Telles (2002), dismissed the critique altogether, arguing that Bourdieu and Wacquant were unfamiliar with recent scholarship in the area and therefore their intervention was authoritarian and inadequate. Others, such as Pinho and Figueiredo (2002), called attention to the fact that the colonized position of Brazil made it vulnerable to external influences in general, not just those coming from the United States. They exemplified their point by sketching the history of the field of social sciences in Brazil and showing that it had always been influenced by “foreign” scholarship. At the same time, they asked why these influences should be considered particularly problematic when they promoted a sort of enfranchisement of minorities. Should not minorities—in Brazil or elsewhere—borrow from the experiences of their counterparts in other parts of the globe? While most scholars agreed that Bourdieu and Wacquant’s critique overlooked important new scholarship in the field, they could not fail to consider the truth of their argument that Brazilian perceptions of race and racism had recently been transformed in the image of those of the United States. Therefore, the article also served to support those scholars who challenged the interpretations of the academic supporters of the black movement and its politics aimed at radically changing Brazilian perceptions of race and racism in order to impose solutions that made sense only in the context of U.S. racism in the 1960s.

Since the publication of this article, there has been an increasing “Americanization” of the solutions proposed for Brazil’s racial problem. The binary U.S. view of race that divides the world between whites and nonwhites has not only been adopted by the black movement and some scholars but also been promoted by the Brazilian government. Moreover, the debate, which used to be restricted to the academic sphere, has now gained the attention of the mass media and the general population.

Therefore, against the population’s general understanding of race, constructed under the hegemony of mestiçagem (mixing) policies, the Brazilian government today claims that we are no longer mestiços, as we used to believe we were, but either blacks or whites (Maggie, 2008; Theodoro, 2009). The new politics differs considerably from our fantasy of racial democracy, and, according to the new wisdom, what we have now is a racism even more insidious than U.S. racism because it is concealed and more difficult to resolve. Therefore, in spite of evident differences between the racism constructed in Brazil and in the United States (Burdick, 1998; Sheriff, 2001; Sansone, 2003; Fry, 2000), it is on a supposed need, far more mistaken than our fantasy of racial democracy, for similarity in the strategies of the black movements in the two countries that the post-Durban affirmative action policies are founded.2 These policies date back to the resurgence of the black movement in Brazil at the end of the 1970s in the context of the rise of the new social movements—political subjects whose demands were no longer connected to labor and class positions but based on other similarities and identifications, permanent or circumstantial, that are currently referred to as “identities,” such as neighborhood, ethnicity, color, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation…

…The studies of Telles and Daniel are important and complementary contributions to the field of race relations in Brazil from a U.S. perspective. They are complementary in that they ask different questions and rely on different sets of data. While Telles articulates a detailed literature review on race relations in Brazil with sophisticated statistics in order to demonstrate that racism produces increasing inequality, Daniel compares sociohistorical phenomena that produce what (following Omi and Winant, 1986) he calls distinct “racial projects”—a ternary one in Brazil and a binary one in the United States. His purpose is to understand what has led such different societies to converging paths. Although studying distinct subjects, both writers feed into the sociological tradition that considers race a determinant factor in the production of social inequality. Thus, although aware of the differences between Brazilian and U.S. societies, they apply to the study of Brazil the same framework developed to explain U.S. race relations and racism. Daniel’s study provides more opportunity to reflect on the specificities of the two cases and their approaches to social injustice based on racial discrimination.

Telles’s main aim is apparently to show that in Brazil as in the United States, race is a determinant factor in the production of social inequality. This is not exactly a new idea (see, e.g., Hasenbalg, 1979; Hasenbalg and Silva, 1988; Guimarães, 2002; Theodoro, 2009), but the particularity of his contribution resides in the fact that his arguments are largely based on statistical data. Comparing tables of income distribution and other socioeconomic markers in Brazil, the United States, and South Africa, he concludes that Brazilian society is racially structured. In Chapter 5, for instance, by way of discussing “racial inequality and development,” he states (107) that “as long as whites, browns, and blacks are unevenly distributed along the income structure, racial inequality exists.” As do other scholars, he conceives race as the irreducible constituent and determinant of social structure and relations. Yet, even if one were to accept the argument that social inequality is a by-product of racism (which is misleading), an essential question would still remain: what similarities between Brazilian and U.S. racism would justify adopting the same policies to deal with the problem?…

…Daniel’s Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? agrees with Telles that race is determinant in shaping Brazilian and U.S. societies. However, his “multiracial” background pushes him to understand this situation through other sources and evidence. Also inspired by Omi and Winant’s theory of racial formation, according to which race is not an “objective reality” but exists as a social construction, Daniel aims to explain the origins and development of Brazilian and U.S. “racial projects.” What clearly broadens his perspective is the connection he establishes between Brazilian and U.S. “racial formations” and the development and worldwide consequences of the Eurocentrism that is the basis of what he calls a “dichotomous racial hierarchy.” By reconstructing the steps by which Europe created the idea of race and provided scientific support for racist ideologies, Daniel shows how different expressions of racism sprang from the same source…

Read or purchase the entire review here.

The New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes That Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South

University of North Carolina Press
September 2011
320 pages
7.625 x 8.375, 20 color illus., bibl., index
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8078-3494-7

Sandra A. Gutierrez

In this splendid cookbook, bicultural cook Sandra Gutierrez blends ingredients, traditions, and culinary techniques, creatively marrying the diverse and delicious cuisines of more than twenty Latin American countries with the beloved food of the American South.

 The New Southern-Latino Table features 150 original and delightfully tasty recipes that combine the best of both culinary cultures. 

Gutierrez, who has taught thousands of people how to cook, highlights the surprising affinities between the foodways of the Latin and Southern regions—including a wide variety of ethnic roots in each tradition and many shared basic ingredients—while embracing their flavorful contrasts and fascinating histories.

These lively dishes—including Jalapeño Deviled Eggs, Cocktail Chiles Rellenos with Latin Pimiento Cheese, Two-Corn Summer Salad, Latin Fried Chicken with Smoky Ketchup, Macaroni con Queso, and Chile Chocolate Brownies—promise to spark the imaginations and the meals of home cooks, seasoned or novice, and of food lovers everywhere. Along with delectable appetizers, salads, entrées, side dishes, and desserts, Gutierrez also provides a handy glossary, a section on how to navigate a Latin tienda, and a guide to ingredient sources. The New Southern-Latino Table brings to your home innovative, vibrant dishes that meld Latin American and Southern palates.

Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico

Oxford University Press
January 2013
256 pages
2 photographs; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Hardback ISBN13: 978-0-19-992548-3; ISBN10: 0-19-992548-8
Paperback ISBN13: 978-0-19-992550-6; ISBN10: 0-19-992550-X

Christina A. Sue, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Colorado, Boulder

Land of the Cosmic Race is a richly-detailed ethnographic account of the powerful role that race and color play in organizing the lives and thoughts of ordinary Mexicans. It presents a previously untold story of how individuals in contemporary urban Mexico construct their identities, attitudes, and practices in the context of a dominant national belief system. The book centers around Mexicans’ engagement with three racialized pillars of Mexican national ideology – the promotion of race mixture, the assertion of an absence of racism in the country, and the marginalization of blackness in Mexico.

The subjects of this book are mestizos—the mixed-race people of Mexico who are of Indigenous, African, and European ancestry and the intended consumers of this national ideology. Land of the Cosmic Race illustrates how Mexican mestizos navigate the sea of contradictions that arise when their everyday lived experiences conflict with the national stance and how they manage these paradoxes in a way that upholds, protects, and reproduces the national ideology. Drawing on a year of participant observation, over 110 interviews, and focus-groups from Veracruz, Mexico, Christina A. Sue offers rich insight into the relationship between race-based national ideology and the attitudes and behaviors of mixed-race Mexicans. Most importantly, she theorizes as to why elite-based ideology not only survives but actually thrives within the popular understandings and discourse of those over whom it is designed to govern.

Features

• The first serious study to address how race functions among Mexican mestizos

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Mapping the Veracruz Race-Color Terminological Terrain
• Chapter 3: Beneath the Surface of Mixed-Race Identities
• Chapter 4: Mestizos’ Attitudes on Race Mixture
• Chapter 5: Inter-Color Couples and Mixed-Color Families in a Mixed-Race Society
• Chapter 6: Situating Blackness in a Mestizo Nation
• Chapter 7: Silencing and Explaining Away Racial Discrimination
• Chapter 8: What’s at Stake? Racial Common Sense and Securing a Mexican National Identity
• Epilogue: The Turn of the Twenty-First Century: An Ideological Shift?
• Appendix
• References
• Index

Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist

Penn State University Press
2012-05-19
336 pages
6 x 9, 1 illustration
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-05246-5

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was Brazil’s foremost novelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a mulatto, Machado experienced the ambiguity of racial identity throughout his life. Literary critics first interpreted Machado as an embittered misanthrope uninterested in the plight of his fellow African Brazilians. By midcentury, however, a new generation of critics asserted that Machado’s writings did reveal his interest in slavery, race, and other contemporary social issues, but their interpretations went too far in the other direction. Reginald Daniel, whose expertise on Brazilian race relations gives him special insights, takes a fresh look at how Machado’s life—especially his experience of his own racial identity—was inflected in his writings. The result is a new interpretation that sees Machado as endeavoring to transcend his racial origins by universalizing the experience of racial ambiguity and duality into a fundamental mode of human existence.