Mixed Race Studies

The Dougla in Trinidad’s Consciousness

History in Action: Online Journal of The University of the West Indies (St. Augustine. Trinidad and Tobago) Dept. of History
Volume 2, Number 1 (April 2011)
7 pages
ISSN: 2221-7886

Feme Louanne Regis
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad is a complex multi-ethnic society where the two major ethnic groups – Africans and Indians – are in competition for power: economic, political and social. These contestations force the meeting and mixing of these two groups but militate against their merger. This is a reality that impacts significantly on the lives of their offspring the Dougla who are birthed into this complex social, cultural and linguistic situation and whose social position within this divide remain unclear and uncertain. Before 2011, Douglas were not designated in official censuses as a marginal ethnic community or even a biracial minority group leaving them free to declare themselves African, Indian or members of the umbrella categories Mixed and Other. Despite the steady increase in the number of people who define themselves as Douglas, their position in Trinidadian society remains ambivalent and indeterminate. This presentation maps the comparative invisibility of Douglas in Trinidadian society from the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries via an examination of social history and anthropology, creative writing, and popular culture.

Introduction

Douglas, the offspring of Indo-African unions, occupy an ambiguous position in Trinidadian society. Etymologically, the word Dougla is linked to dogla which is of India origin and is defined by Platts (1884, 534) as “a person of impure breed, a hybrid, a mongrel; a two-faced or deceitful person and a hypocrite.” In Bihar, Northern India, from where many Indian indentured labourers migrated to Trinidad, dogla still carries the meaning of a person of impure breed related specifically to the “progeny of inter-varna marriage, acquiring the connotation of ‘bastard’, meaning illegitimate son of a prostitute, only in a secondary sense” (Reddock 1994, 101). We do not know how and when the term Dougla became equated to the offspring of Indian-African unions in Trinidad but we may surmise that it originated in traditional Indian contempt for the darker-skinned (Brereton 1974, 24).

Recognition of Douglas

Wood (1968) does not recognise a Dougla presence in 19th century Trinidad. He trusts the official report of the Protector of the Immigrants that as late as 1871, 26 years after their arrival, “no single instance of co-habitation with a Negro existed among the 9,000 male and female indentured labourers” (1968, 138). He overlooks the 1876 testimony of John Morton, to the effect that “a few children are to be met with, born of Madras and Creole parents and some also of Madras and Chinese parents—the Madrasee being the mother” (Moore 1995, 238).

Ramesar (1994) accepts the reality of inter-racial sexual relations in the early twentieth century, but seems reluctant to acknowledge Africans as sexual partners for Indians and nowhere mentions the word Dougla. The Dougla presence is instead hidden in the generic term “Indian Creoles.” Examining the statistics testifying to Indian inter-racial sexual liaisons, Ramesar argues that such relationships happened more readily in Port of Spain and in Cedros than in central Trinidad, where the majority of Indian communities were located. Yet, the demographic evidence indicates African-Indian unions even in areas dominated by Indians (Harewood 1975).

According to Ramesar, the Indian fathers of mixed-race children were “probably westernized individuals who sought educated spouses.” She concedes, however, that “changed social relationships had also affected the lower levels in society” (146). Yet, the literary works of C.A. Thomasos (1933), C.L.R. James (1929; 1936), and Alfred Mendes (1935) demonstrate that inter-racial mixing was not necessarily inspired by social climbing. In these works, Douglas are presented as deracinated individuals engaged, as part of Black urban lower class, in the amoral struggle for survival.

In the 2005 feature address at the launch of the Indian Arrival Day Heritage Village, Elizabeth Rosabelle Sieusarran, a University of the West Indies lecturer, said:

In our quest for establishing unity among our people, it is imperative for us to note a rapidly increasing phenomenon of westernisation of the Indian community. This has resulted in the prevalence of inter-caste, inter-religious and inter-racial marriages. The Indian community has to decide how to handle the offspring of this significant group locally referred to as douglas. Do we accept them or ostracise them? Whatever course is adopted, the fragmentation of the Indian community must be avoided (Trinidad Express 16th May 2005, 5).

Sieusarran thus reduces the problems caused by westernisation to the fragmentation within the Indian community allegedly created by exogamy. She then ignores the progeny of many such relationships and targets Douglas as the source of that fragmentation. While acknowledging the organic connection of the Douglas to the Indian communities, Sieusarran indicates that Douglas are still perceived as a problem by some Indians even while they advocate co-existence in a multi-cultural society….

Read the entire article here.

Latin America and mixed heritage

The Prisma: The Multicultural Newspaper
Westwood Hill, London, United Kingdom
2012-08-27

Claudio Chipana (Translated by Viv Griffiths)

“…we are neither Indian, nor European, but a species lying somewhere in between the legitimate owners of the land and the Spanish usurpers…” Simon Bolivar (Letter from Jamaica).

People of mixed heritage, mestizos, are a challenge to racial purity and the idea of a monolithic nation. The mixing of race is a cultural as well as racial process that began from the moment the Conquistadors arrived in the Americas in the 16th Century. The historian, Inca Garcilazo de la Vega, is considered to be the first Peruvian of mestizo. But, why Garcilazo and not the Indian historian Guaman Poma?
 
Mestizos are neither Hispanic nor indigenous and have been viewed both negatively and positively depending on their social class and ideology. Over time, being mestizo has developed into a form of identity for those living on the Latin American continent, and a way of staking a claim for themselves and forging ahead in the process of transculturation…

…It is still common for Latin Americans to identify themselves as being mestizo. This raises the question, if a person considers themselves mestizo, does this exclude them from identifying themselves as Latin American? At the same time, it should be acknowledged that there is a significant indigenous population resistant to any kind of homogenisation…

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Roots: Saint Lucia’s Hindu Legacy

Hinduism Today
October/November/December 2012

Gajanan Nataraj
Saint Lucia

I am a Saint Lucian citizen. I was born in the US Virgin Islands and lived briefly on the mainland (USA), but for the better part of 23 years I was raised on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. I am roughly two-quarters Indian and two-quarters Negro–meaning both my parents were themselves of mixed heritage. This is common in Saint Lucia. We are called dougla–which comes from doogala (“two necks”), a demeaning label meaning mixed race or half-caste in Bhojpuri and Hindi. In Saint Lucia, the term is sometimes used affectionately, sometimes not so affectionately.

Though many on the island are of Indian heritage, I am one of the very few Hindus. I have a Hindu name, perform daily puja to Lord Ganesha and consider the cow a sacred creature. I believe in karma, dharma, reincarnation, the divinity of the Vedas and in the need for a satguru to guide my spiritual journey. Of all the Indian families who came to Saint Lucia from Kolkata as indentured workers in the 19th century, mine is one of the few to reclaim our Hindu heritage. In being Hindu, I am almost unique among the fifth generation of Indian immigrants. Even among my close relatives, almost all are Christians.

How did I come to be a Hindu in a land where Christianity reigns supreme, even among Indians? I attribute my discovery of this beautiful religion to the interplay of my soul’s natural calling and God’s blessing of being born to parents who are ardent seekers of spiritual truth. Indeed, my growth from non-religious, Christian-influenced spiritual confusion can only be credited to the marvelous journey of my parents…

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Thrall, Poems

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2012-08-28
96 pages
6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN-13/ EAN:9780547571607; ISBN-10:0547571607
E-Book ISBN-13/ EAN:9780547840420; ISBN-10:054784042X

Natasha Trethewey, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing
Emory University

By unflinchingly charting the intersections of public and personal history, Thrall explores the historical, cultural, and social forces—across time and space—that determine the roles consigned to a mixed-race daughter and her white father. In a vivid series of poems about interracial marriage depicted in the Casta Paintings of Colonial Mexico, Trethewey investigates the philosophical assumptions that underpin Enlightenment notions of taxonomy and classification, exposing the way they encode ideas of race within our collective imagination. While tropes about captivity, bondage, inheritance, and enthrallment permeate the collection, Trethewey, by reflecting on a series of small estrangements from her poet father, comes to an understanding of how, as father and daughter, they are part of the ongoing history of race in America.

Thrall not only confirms that Natasha Trethewey is one of our most gifted and necessary poets but that she is also one of our most brilliant and fearless.

Brazil Enacts Affirmative Action Law for Universities

The New York Times
2012-08-30

Simon Romero, Brazil Bureau Chief

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s government has enacted one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws, requiring public universities to reserve half of their admission spots for the largely poor students in the nation’s public schools and vastly increase the number of university students of African descent across the country.

The law, signed Wednesday by President Dilma Rousseff, seeks to reverse the racial and income inequality that has long characterized Brazil, a country with more people of African heritage than any nation outside of Africa. Despite strides over the last decade in lifting millions out of poverty, Brazil remains one of the world’s most unequal societies.

“Brazil owes a historical debt to a huge part of its own population,” said Jorge Werthein, who directs the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies. “The democratization of higher education, which has always been a dream for the most neglected students in public schools, is one way of paying this debt.”…

…But while affirmative action has come under threat in the United States, it is taking deeper root in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. Though the new legislation, called the Law of Social Quotas, is expected to face legal challenges, it drew broad support among lawmakers.

Of Brazil’s 81 senators, only one voted against the law this month. Other spheres of government here have also supported affirmative action measures. In a closely watched decision in April, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the racial quotas enacted in 2004 by the University of Brasília, which reserved 20 percent of its spots for black and mixed-race students…

…Brazil’s 2010 census showed that a slight majority of this nation’s 196 million people defined themselves as black or mixed-race, a shift from previous decades during which most Brazilians called themselves white…

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Caribbean Fashion Week: Remodeling Beauty in “Out of Many One” Jamaica

Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture
Volume 14, Number 3, September 2010
pages 387-404
DOI: 10.2752/175174110X12712411520377

Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

The elitist Jamaican motto, “Out of Many, One People,“ privileges racial hybridity as the quintessential marker of national identity. Conversely, populist constructions of Jamaican identity acknowledge the primacy of the African majority. The “mixed-race“ ideal inscribed in the national motto becomes the aesthetic standard for judging “beauty“ and “ugliness.“ Beauty contests, for example, become sites of contestation in which competing representations of the face of the nation jostle for recognition. Identifying with marginalized African-Jamaican aspirants who often fail to win these competitions, discontented patrons routinely claim the right to assert alternative models of beauty that challenge the authority of the “out of many one“ aesthetic. The emergence of a modeling industry in Jamaica that valorizes idiosyncratic style has opened up a space in which black images of beauty take center stage. Caribbean Fashion Week is the major platform for displaying internationally acclaimed Jamaican models. Showcasing a high percentage of decidedly black male and female models wearing spectacular designer clothes, Caribbean Fashion Week enables multiple readings of the body as cultural text. The permissive modeling aesthetic engenders capricious images of beauty that contest the very conception of the “model“ as a mold into which a singular figure of beauty is impressed.

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“Our America” That is Not One: Transnational Black Atlantic Disclosures in Nicolás Guillén and Langston Hughes

Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture
Volume 22, Number 3 (Fall 2000)
pages 87-113
DOI: 10.1353/dis.2000.0007

Monika Kaup, Associate Professor of English
University of Washington

In the past two decades, discontent with the exclusions operative in nationalist frameworks of American and Latin American Studies has placed issues of transnationalism, hybridization, and a diasporic view of cultures at the center of attention. As a provisional academic base for this desire to think more globally, scholars have invented a new tradition, so to speak the transnational and burgeoning field of hemispheric American Studies. Thus, the recent collection, José Martí’s “Our America”: From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies, calls for such a change of paradigms. In their introduction, the editors single out Cuba, the birthplace of poet and revolutionary José Martí, as a fertile location for their project:

For Cuba lies at the intersection of Our America’s two principal transnational cultural formations: the geocultural system we have come to know as the Black Atlantic and the complex region of interactions among the Spanish, Native American, and English peoples (extending from the Caribbean to California) that we have come to call the Latino Borderlands. (Belnap and Fernández 11)

Cuba’s nationalism, from José Martí and Cuba’s late-19th century Wars of Independence to post-1959 formations under Castro, has always been a mestizo and mulato nationalism. One reason was that in Cuba abolition was not a consequence, but a condition of independence (Sommer, Foundational Fictions 125): in contrast to the U.S. and most of Latin America with the exception of Puerto Rico, Cuba achieved independence only in 1898, thanks to the full participation of Afro-Cubans in the anti-colonial wars against Spain, whose investment in Cuban independence was motivated by their desire for racial justice. Indeed, Cuba’s population in the modern era, “slightly over half Spanish in origin and slightly under half black or mulatto, with a small number of Chinese” (Bethell 20), suggests an encounter of the two distinct NewWorld diasporas known as the “Black Atlantic” and Martí’s Spanish-speaking “Our America” on equal terms.

While the discourse of mestizaje and racial amalgamation nourishes Cuba’s nationalism, and while the notion of cubanidad is built on the myth of racial synthesis, this symbolic reconciliation has repressed actual and continuing conflicts of race and their memory. Indeed, 20th century Cuban history, culture, and literature bear testimony to the uncanny reassertion of resistant diasporic black voices sublated into the dominant mestizaje nationalism. One major purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between the Black Atlantic and José Martí’s “Our America” cultural formations intersecting in Cuba, as pointed out in the passage quoted above as a troubled and unstable one. Whereas “Our America” stands for the homecoming of Blacks in the interracial nationalism of Martí’s Latin America, the Black Atlantic stands for the continuing homelessness of Blacks in the Americas, and the memory of exile, displacement, and the violence of the Middle Passage…

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Racial Democracy in the Americas: A Latin and U.S. Comparison

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
Volume 35, Number 6 (November 2004)
pages 749-762
DOI: 10.1177/0022022104270118

Yesilernis Peña
University of California, Los Angeles

Jim Sidanius, Professor of Psychology
Harvard University

Mark Sawyer, Professor of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles

The “racial democracy” (Iberian exceptionalism) thesis claims that racial prejudice in Latin America is not only lower than that found in the United States but is essentially absent altogether. We explored the plausibility of this thesis by the use of both explicit and implicit prejudice measures among Blacks and Whites from the United States and three Caribbean nations. In general, the results showed significant racial prejudice against Blacks and in favor of Whites in all four nations. African Americans were the only participants not to show significant implicit prejudice either in favor of or against Blacks. In addition, North Americans (i.e., participants from the United States) displayed lower implicit and explicit racial prejudice than participants in each of the three Latino nations. Overall, the results clearly contradicted the thesis of racial democracy and suggest that Latin America may not be nearly as egalitarian as some have argued.

The thesis known as “Racial democracy theory” (also referred to as Iberian exceptionalisin) argues that, relative to the United States, the nations of Latin America are largely free of the ferocious racial prejudice that has characterized race relations in the US for most of the 19th and 20th centuries (see Degler, 1986: Freyre 1951: Hoetink, 1967: Pierson, 1942: Tannenbaum, 1947). Racial democracy theorists base these conclusions upon the fact that, compared to North America. the nations of Latin America experienced a marked absence of post-manumission institutionalized racism (e.g.. segregation & Jim Crow laws), a general absence of race-based group violence (e.g.. lynching, race-base hate crimes), or racial protest, and a strikingly high rate of miscegenation. It is argued that, the extent to which racial inequality is still discernible in Latin American societies, this inequality is almost exclusively due to the residual effects of past racially contingent resource allocation and not to the effects of ongoing racial prejudice.

Racial democracy theorists attribute Latin American’s racial egalitarianism to three major factors. First, unlike the European colonists of North America, the Iberian conquerors of Latin America had the experience of living under the political and social hegemony of the Moors, a dark-skinned people, for nearly 800 years. Having experienced these dark-skinned conquerors as their political and cultural “superiors.” the Iberian colonists could not then regard the dark-skinned African and Indian slaves as sub-human with the same degree of celerity as the North American colonists found possible. Second, contrary to the Calvinist and Puritan doctrines of North American Protestantism. Catholicism regarded Native Americans, and even African Slaves, as people with souls and equally beloved of God: thus, the Catholic conquerors were less aversive to intermixing with them. Finally, in contrast to the colonists of North America, the early Latin American colonists did not venture into the New World with intact families. As a result, the Iberian colonists established sexual and emotional relationships with the Indian and African slave women rather quickly, creating a more positive attitude toward those of African descent and resulting in the high rates of miscegenation we see today in Latin America (Degler, 1986: Freye, 1946. 1951). As a result, they argue that broad based social movements like the Civil Rights movement in the US were not necessary because of the more egalitarian nature of race relations in Latin America…

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Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831

University of Pittsburgh Press
August 2007
216 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper ISBN: 9780822959656

Marixa Lasso, Associate Professor of History
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Myths of Harmony examines a foundational moment for Latin American racial constructs. While most contemporary scholarship has focused the explanation for racial tolerance in the colonial period, Marixa Lasso argues that the origins of modern race relations are to be found later, in the Age of Revolution. Lasso’s work brings much-needed attention to the important role of the anticolonial struggles in shaping the nature of contemporary race relations and racial identities in Latin America.

This book centers on a foundational moment for Latin American racial constructs. While most contemporary scholarship has focused the explanation for racial tolerance-or its lack-in the colonial period, Marixa Lasso argues that the key to understanding the origins of modern race relations are to be found later, in the Age of Revolution. Lasso rejects the common assumption that subalterns were passive and alienated from Creole-led patriot movements, and instead demonstrates that during Colombia’s revolution, free blacks and mulattos (pardos) actively joined and occasionally even led the cause to overthrow the Spanish colonial government. As part of their platform, patriots declared legal racial equality for all citizens, and promulgated an ideology of harmony and fraternity for Colombians of all colors. The fact that blacks were mentioned as equals in the discourse of the revolution and later served in republican government posts was a radical political departure. These factors were instrumental in constructing a powerful myth of racial equality-a myth that would fuel revolutionary activity throughout Latin America. Thus emerged a historical paradox central to Latin American nation-building: the coexistence of the principle of racial equality with actual racism at the very inception of the republic. Ironically, the discourse of equality meant that grievances of racial discrimination were construed as unpatriotic and divisive acts-in its most extreme form, blacks were accused of preparing a race war. Lasso’s work brings much-needed attention to the important role of the anticolonial struggles in shaping the nature of contemporary race relations and racial identities in Latin America.

View the digital edition here.

Group Dominance and the Myth of Racial Democracy: Antiracism Attitudes in Brazil

American Sociological Review
Volume 69, Number 5 (October 2004)
pages 728-747
DOI: 10.1177/000312240406900506

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

Group dominance perspectives contend that ideologies are central to the production and reproduction of racial oppression by their negative affect on attitudes toward antiracism initiatives. The Brazilian myth of racial democracy frequently is framed in this light, evoked as a racist ideology to explain an apparent lack of confrontation of racial inequality. Data from a 2000 probability sample of racial attitudes in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contradict this long-held assertion, showing that most Brazilians in this state recognize racism as playing a role in Brazilian society, support the idea of affirmative action, and express interest in belonging to antiracism organizations. Moreover, opinions on affirmative action appear more strongly correlated with social class, as measured by education level, than race. As compared with results from the United States regarding opinions on similar selected affirmative action policies, the racial gap in Brazilian support for affirmative action is only moderate. Results also show that those who recognize the existence of racial discrimination in Brazil are more likely to support affirmative action. Implications for race theorizing from a group dominance perspective in Brazil as well as for antiracism strategies are addressed.

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