Mixed Race Studies

The Free People of Color In Louisiana and St. Domingue: A Comparative Portrait of Two Three-Caste Slave Societies

Journal of Social History
Volume 3, Number 4 (1970)
pages 406-430
DOI: 10.1353/jsh/3.4.406

Laura Foner

Recently historians of slavery in the Americas have been engaged in a heated debate over the widely differing racial patterns that emerged in the slave societies of this hemisphere. Despite their often bitter disagreements over the origins of these patterns, most agree that it was the treatment and position of the ex-slave in these societies which distinguished one racial pattern from another.

In Portuguese and Spanish America the racial and social pattern allowed the ex-slave to gain acceptance in free society and even to move from a lower to a higher social level through economic advancement. Such a change in social status was possible even in a system of racial ranking that placed whites on top and blacks on the bottom, because of the absence of a strict color line. Not only did these slave societies have many racial categories between black and white, but also a man’s status in society was not as much defined by membership in one of these racial groups as by his economic success.

In the British and French West Indies the racial lines were more sharply defined, and the same kind of racial mobility did not exist. Yet there the ex-slave could fit into a three-caste pattern which allowed a substantial group of free mixed bloods with many privileges to exist as an intermediate caste between whites and blacks.

Although in all these societies the enslavement of an easily distinguishable racial grouping produced certain racial distinctions between white and colored free men, in the United States these distinctions took on a form unique in the hemisphere. There all Negroes—free and slave—were cut off from the rest of society and confined to a distinctly separate and lower caste. This was accomplished both by increasing restrictions on manumission, which confined the Negro as much as possible to a slave status, and by a whole series of legal and social restrictions which rigidly excluded the free Negro from white society. Almost everywhere in the United States even the smallest amount of Negro blood was enough to make a man a Negro and therefore a member of a subordinate caste.

Unsuspecting travelers in the antebellum South were therefore startled to find that the deep South state of Louisiana had a large and privileged free colored community, not unlike the free colored communities of many West Indian islands. Louisiana’s free colored community was not only the biggest in the deep South. but its members had a social, economic, and legal position far superior to that of free Negroes in most other areas of the South, even whose in which the free Negro population was substantial. Travelers were struck by the unusual degree of wealth, education, and social standing of the Louisiana free Negro. They noted “Negroes in purple and fine linen,” “pretty and accomplished young women,” and ‘”opulent, intelligent colored planters.” It was not only this elegant elite which distinguished the free colored population, as only a minority belonged to it, for although they did not live in luxury the typical members of the free colored community nevertheless generally found employment at some skilled occupation. In 1860 only one tenth of the free colored population of New Orleans were classified as common laborers” In fact the free Negroes had a near monopoly of certain trades, including those of mechanic, carpenter, shoemaker, barber, and tailor…

…In 1850 the mulattoes and others of mixed blood formed about eighty percent of Louisiana’s total free Negro population.” Some of them came from stable families which had been free for generations,” But almost all had their origins in some extramarital union (by this time perhaps quite far removed) between a white man and a black woman. The beginnings of this long-established practice dated back to the early eighteenth century when Louisiana was first being settled by the French. The small group of early settlers consisted mostly of those “in the pay of … the King” and especially garrison soldiers. Among the hardships faced by these men in their pioneering work of founding a colony was a scarcity of women. They solved the problem, according to the French Governor Bienville, by running “in the woods after Indian girls.”…

Read the entire article here.

Call at Rio fashion show for more black models

Agence France-Presse
2012-01-14

Only a handful of black models sashayed down the catwalk at this week’s Rio fashion show, sparking fresh calls for quotas to ensure greater diversity in a country where more than half of the population is of African ancestry.

Some 24 labels displayed their latest designs at the Rio de Janeiro winter 2012 fashion week, that ran from Wednesday to Saturday, and as in previous years the models were overwhelmingly white.

Yet Brazil, home to 190 million people, has the world’s second largest black population after Nigeria.

Organizers refused to address this perennial lack of racial diversity, although in the past they claimed that “there is no racial discrimination” in an industry known for its preference for eurocentric standards of beauty.

For the first time in June 2009, the Sao Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW)—Latin America’s premier fashion event—imposed quotas requiring at least 10 percent of the models to be black or indigenous…

…Luana Genot, one of the eight black models out of more 200 employed by the main Rio modeling agency, 40° Models, gave details of the hurdles blacks face.

“They call us only when the the theme of the show is linked to black culture,” said the 23-year-old who is also an advertising student at Rio Catholic University (PUC).

“I am often told: What am I going to do with your hair? And for make-up, I am always the last so as not to dirty the brush with overly dark tones,” she added.

Last June, during Black Consciousness Week, Genot organized a debate on “ethnic diversity in fashion” at PUC.

“We are told that the winter collection is for whites in Europe or that black women’s butts are too big, their hips too wide. I am shocked to see that in Brazil, where more than half of the people are descendants of black slaves, there is so little space for us,” she added.

“Brazil’s population is very mixed and this must be reflected in fashion,” Genot said…

Read the entire article here.

What Does the Brazilian Census Tell Us About Race?

Psychology Today
2011-12-06

Jefferson Fish, Ph.D.

Problems with Brazilian and U.S. census data on race.

In 2010 I posted a six-part series on the U. S. census and race (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). In it I pointed out numerous changes in race categories and sub-categories over the 23 censuses, and multiple contradictions between scientific knowledge about human variation and the census race categories. I also offered a simple solution that would allow the government to collect the information it needs without contradicting science and offending or perplexing many citizens.

Because race is a cultural concept, beliefs about race vary dramatically from one culture to another. In this regard, America and Brazil are amazingly different in the categories they use. The United States has a small number of racial categories, based overwhelmingly on ancestry. Thus, it is possible for an American who “looks white” to “really be black” because he or she has “black blood.”

In contrast, Brazilians classify people according to what they look like, using a large number of different terms. For example, one study in the Brazilian northeast conducted by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE)—the entity responsible for the census—asked people what color (cor) they were, and received 134 different answers! (Other studies have found even larger numbers; and the results vary regionally, with much fewer categories used in the south of the country.) In many Brazilian families different racial terms are used to refer to different children, while such distinctions are not possible in the United States because all the children—no matter what they look like—have the same ancestry.

Thus, I was fascinated to read that “For the first time, non-white people make up the majority of Brazil’s population, according to preliminary results of the 2010 census.”…

Read the entire article here.

Health in Black and White: Debates on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Brazil

University of California, San Diego
2011
320 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3458492
ISBN: 9781124703657

Anna Pagano

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology

In 2006, the Brazilian Health Council approved a National Health Policy for the Black Population. The Policy is striking because it promotes the image of a biologically and culturally discrete black population in a nation where racial classification has historically been relatively fluid and ambiguous. It transforms established patterns of racialization by collapsing “brown” (pardo) and “black” (preto) Brazilian Census categories into a single “black population” (população negra) to be considered a special-needs group by the public health apparatus. This construction resembles the United States’ dominant mode of racialization based on hypodescent and represents a significant departure from hegemonic portrayals of Brazil as a racially mixed nation. Furthermore, the Policy challenges national ideologies of racial and cultural unity by affirming the existence of an essential black body with specific health concerns, as well as an essential Afro-Brazilian culture that materializes in recommendations for culturally competent health care. As such, the Policy constitutes an important site for new negotiations of racial and cultural identity in Brazil.

In this dissertation, I explore the political and social implications of treating racial and ethnic groups differently within Brazilian health care. I examine how the re-definition and medicalization of racial and cultural identities unfolds in public clinics, temples of Afro-Brazilian religion, and social movements based in São Luís and São Paulo, Brazil. Through an analysis of ethnographic data that I collected over twenty-four months, I assess the impact of recent developments in race-conscious health policy on Brazilians’ lived experiences of race, ethnicity, and health disparities.

I argue that the new Policy, and its associated health programs, signals the emergence of a new biopolitical paradigm in which the Brazilian state formalizes citizens’ racial and ethnic differences in order to address inequalities among them. I also show that many aspects of these programs, which incorporate global discourses and concepts related to health equity, fail to resonate with Brazilian citizens’ notions about race and health. Consequently, patients and healthcare providers often resist the new measures. The result is a disjuncture between policy and practice that ultimately hinders Brazil’s efforts to reduce health inequalities among its citizens.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Signature Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Vita
• Abstract of the Dissertation
• PART I: RACE, MEDICINE, AND BIOPOLITICS IN BRAZIL
  • Chapter 1: Introduction
    • Race and Ethnicity
    • Biologization and the Re-Biologization of Race
    • Medicalization
    • Medicalization of Race
    • Biopower and Biopolitics
    • Applying a Biopolitical Framework to the Medicalization of Race
    • Race and National Identity in Brazil
    • Black Movement Activism
    • Public Health in Brazil
    • Ethnographic Field Sites
  • Chapter 2: Everyday Narratives on Race, Racism, and Health
    • Patients’ Narratives on Race and Health
    • Health Care Professionals’ Narratives on Race and Health
    • Patients and Providers: A Counter-Biopolitics
• PART II: THE BLACK HEALTH AGENDA
  • Chapter 3: The Birth of the Black Health Agenda in Brazil
    • Black Health Activism in Brazil
    • The Black Health Agenda in São Paulo
    • The Black Health Agenda in São Luís
  • Chapter 4: The Black Health Epistemic Community in Brazil
    • The Politics of Categorization
    • The Imperative of Self-Declaration
    • Etiological Claims
    • Medicalizing Racism
    • Discourses of Difference
    • Implications for Citizenship
    • Conclusion
• Part III: AFRO-BRAZILIAN RELIGIONS AND HEALTH
  • Chapter 5: Health and Healing in Afro-Brazilian Religions
    • Afro-Brazilian Religions: A Brief Background
    • Mãe Letícia
    • Pai Cesar
    • Healing in Afro-Brazilian Religions
  • Chapter 6: Afro-Brazilian Religions and the State
    • Partnerships between Terreiros and SUS: Rehabilitating History
    • Razor Blades and Comic Strips
    • Other Sources of Conflict
    • Cultural Competence and the Terreiro
    • De-Sacralizing the Terreiro
    • Conclusion
  • Chapter 7: Afro-Brazilian Religions and Ethnic Identity Politics in the Brazilian
    • Public Health Arena
    • Terreiro Health Activists’ Identity Politics
    • Conclusion
  • Chapter 8: Health in Black and White
• Bibliography

LIST OF FIGURES

• Figure 1. Household Income, 2000
• Figure 2. Distribution of Race/Color (Pretos and Pardos), 2000
• Figure 3. Public Health Facilities and Distribution of Population by Color in São Paulo, 2000
• Figure 4. Population Density of São Paulo, 2000

LIST OF TABLES

• Table 1. Characteristics of Sample Population
• Table 2. Self-Identified Race or Color
• Table 3. Beliefs Regarding Health Outcomes between Blacks and Whites

Purchase the dissertation here.

Mixed-race People and Emancipation-Era Jamaica

Emancipation: The Caribbean Experience
Bulding Communities
University of Miami
Fall 2001

Kiara Bell

This website was created by the students of History 300: Caribbean History: Emancipation and Freedom, in Fall 2001 at the University of Miami, with the assistance of the staff of Richter Library’s Archives and Special Collections.

Following the emancipation of all enslaved Africans in 1834, the island of Jamaica was left in a stage of rebuilding.  Religion, education, and family structure were all in disarray and were in need of reconstruction.  With their new-found freedom, people also had the task of establishing a new way of life that would allow them prosperity and fulfillment.  However, the group that faced the most complex rebuilding process was the so-called “people of color.”  People of color, who were a result of “miscegenation,” or sexual relationships between people of African and European descent, faced the challenge of readjusting in the midst of distinct color lines on the island.  They faced particular challenges in the areas of politics, marriage and family, and child education. 

During slavery, white slave owners fathered numerous children with black slaves, and generations of children of mixed race heritage were the result.  White observers tried to subdivide these people of color into various categories.  Mulattos were one half-black and one half-white.  Samboes were black and mulatto (three fourths black and one fourth white).  Quadroons were the offspring of whites and mulattos (three fourths white and one fourth black).  Mestees were the offspring of whites and quadroons (one eight black).  After the Mestees few could perceive a color distinction because it is unlikely that one could detect “black” characteristics if an individual had less than one eighth African ancestry.  Observers also believed that one could detect the differences between the various subdivisions of people of color based on particular qualities, in addition to physical appearance.  The Sambo, although three-fourths black and one fourth white, was still seen differently from the “Negro” in various manners and habits.  Generally, people believed that people of color were less subject to disease than whites or “Negro.”  White observers also firmly adhered to the idea that most people of color felt a distinct advantage and pride in being slightly removed from the “Negro race” and attempted to take on manners and customs of whites…

Read the entire essay here.

Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans

University of Texas Press
2001
389 pages
6 x 9 in., 50 b&w illus., 4 maps
Paperback ISBN: ISBN: 978-0-292-75254-2

Martha Menchaca, Professor of Anthropolgy
University of Texas, Austin

The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races—Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from prehispanic times to the present.

Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Racial Foundations
• 2. Racial Formation: Spain’s Racial Order
• 3. The Move North: The Gran Chichimeca and New Mexico
• 4. The Spanish Settlement of Texas and Arizona
• 5. The Settlement of California and the Twilight of the Spanish Period
• 6. Liberal Racial Legislation during the Mexican Period, 1821-1848
• 7. Land, Race, and War, 1821-1848
• 8. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Racialization of the Mexican Population
• 9. Racial Segregation and Liberal Policies Then and Now
• Epilogue: Auto/ethnographic Observations of Race and History
• Notes
• Bibliography

Introduction

In this book it is my intent to write about the Mexican American people’s Indian, White, and Black racial history. In doing so, I offer an interpretive historical analysis of the experiences of the Mexican Americans’ancestors in Mexico and the United States. This analysis begins with the Mexican Americans’prehistoric foundations and continues into the late twentieth century. My focus, however, is on exploring the legacy of racial discrimination that was established in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest and was later intensified by the United States government when, in 1848, it conquered northern Mexico (presently the U.S. Southwest) and annexed it to the United States (Menchaca 1999:3). The central period of study ranges from 1570 to 1898.

Though my interpretive history revisits many well-known events, it differs from previous histories on Mexican Americans and on the American Southwest because the central thread of my analysis is race relations, an area of study that is often accorded only secondary significance and generally subsumed under economic or nation-based interpretations. It also differs because I include Blacks as important historical actors, rather than denying their presence in the history of the Mexican Americans. Finally, as part of this analysis I demonstrate that racial status hierarchies are often structured upon the ability of one racial group to deny those who are racially different access to owning land. This process leads to the low social prestige and impoverishment of the marginalized. I close my analysis with commentaries on contemporary United States race relations and auto/ethnographic observations of Mexican American indigenism. Auto/ethnography is used as a method to illustrate how historical events influence racial identity.

This form of intellectual inquiry emerged from my conversations with archaeologist Fred Valdez. In 1986 Fred and I were both hired as assistant professors in the Anthropology Department at the University of Texas at Austin. It was the first time that I had met a Mexican American archaeologist. We were both fascinated by the ethnohistory of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and shared the unconventional view that Mexican Americans were part of the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest. Following endless conversations on the indigenous heritage of the Mexican Americans, we decided to study the indigenous groups of the Southwest that had been conquered by Spain and Mexico. Our objective was to identify the groups that had become subjects of Spain and, later, citizens of Mexico. This research was used to prepare an undergraduate class on the “Indigenous Heritage of the Mexican Americans.” We were pleasantly surprised that our class became very popular, as evidenced by the large enrollments. In general, students were interested in knowing about their heritage, while many others were interested in seeking specific information about the mission Indians from whom they were descended.

For me, this academic endeavor converged with the publication of Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s classic book Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (1986). Their work influenced me to reassess the significance of studying the racial heritage of the Mexican Americans, given that my interest until that point had been solely to outline their indigenous ancestry. According to Omi and Winant, the significance of studying race is not to analyze the biological aspect of a people’s heritage, but rather to understand the politics and processes of racial categorization. They urgently call upon social scientists to study race as a central source of societal organization, because in multiracial societies race has been used historically by those in power to share social and economic privileges with only those people who are racially similar to themselves. Omi and Winant do not urge scholars to explore the origins or psychology of this inclusive-exclusive behavior, but rather to provide a historical context, showing how those in power use race to rationalize the distribution of wealth…

Read the entire Introduction here.

AMST 349: Race Across the Americas

Emory University

Seminar exploring the social construction of race comparatively and transnationally, especially the status of the descendants of enslaved Africans and mixed-race individuals in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Perspective on Mixed-Blood Natives: The Silence of Indian Country

Native News Network
Native Condition: Analysis and Opinion
2011-09-22

Mike Raccoon Eyes
Eastern Band of the Cherokee
Quallah, North Carolina

SAN FRANCISCO—Cherokee culture was steeped deeply into the great Meso-American pyramid temple cities as early as 800 AD. When the Olmecs, Toltecs, Mayans and Aztecs were moving from north to south deep into Mexico and Central America. They quickly absorbed and embraced building their own great pyramid temple spiritual cities they had observed and seen in the great Cherokee cities of the Southeast.

Cherokee intermarriage to both the Mexican and Central Americans would become the norm for the next 300 years. The mixed-blood Cherokees would hold a high place of honor within the Meso-American world of Mexico and Central America. For the mixed-blood Cherokee of the time were the priests, prophets, engineers and administrators, who were the elite of running the new spiritual pyramid temple cities of both Mexico and Central America. Without the mixed-blood Cherokees, the great pyramid temple cities in Mexico and Central America would cease to run, much less function.

The Cherokee started having intergenerational marriage with the Europeans in the early 1700s. Many Cherokee bands and families were quick to see the economic benefits of having trade, land and business dealings with Europeans. In a sense this could be viewed as a classic Cherokee version of the ‘hang around the fort Indians’. However this story was not true for the majority of mixed-blood Cherokee people of that time.

The preference of mixed-blood Cherokee men of the time was to marry European or other mixed-blood Cherokee women. Their children and grandchildren would follow suit. The new generation of light-skinned mixed-blood bourgeoisie Cherokee would wash their hands of and renounce the traditional ways of Cherokee culture and Spirituality.

However, there was another side to the mixed-blood Cherokee people that has been neglected and treated with silence. The story is that of the traditional mixed-blood Cherokee that retained their cultural and Spiritual identities…

Read the entire essay here.

44. Afro-Latin America

Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
Spring 2010

(Offered as History 56 [LA] and Black Studies 44 [D, CLA].) This course explores the historical experiences of Afro-Latin populations since Independence within and outside the nation-state. The course asks how and why one might study those whose governments define them not as peoples of African descent but as part of a mixed-race majority of Hispanic cultural heritage, who themselves may often have supported this policy, and who may have had compelling reasons to avoid official scrutiny. Materials include early 20th-century racialist theorizing in Latin America; historical works using census, economic, criminal, and marriage records; analysis of race in the textual and musical representations of peoples, regions and nations; as well as autobiographical works. Two class meetings per week.

LLS-4910-850: Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

University of Nebraska, Ohama
Fall 2011

Olga Celle, Visiting Professor of Sociology

This course is a semester long discussion on Mestizaje or racial/ethnic mixing in Latin America. The premise informing the discussion is that race and ethnicity are social constructions—There are no actual races or ethnicities in the world. And yet, people and institutions function as they were real, which make them powerful weapons for oppression, social injury and rebellion. Most Latin Americans define themselves or are defined as Mestizo or mixed blood people. At times, they mean culturally mixed, meaning not totally Western or Indigenous. Other times, they are referring to their attributed racial make up. For this reason, national statistics should be taken with caution because the labeling of citizens is usually done by a census taker who might impose his views unto the individual in order to classify her/him. But the point remains, why does the state needs to classify its citizens according to race and ethnicity? Why do we need to define ourselves and others (sometimes beloved ones) according to race and ethnicity?

Race and ethnicity are powerful coordinates in the network of domination, for both the oppressors and the victims’ contestation in the circuits through which power flows. Race and ethnicity are experienced in a different fashion depending on the individual’s gender and sexuality. Hence this course incorporates gender and sexuality into the discussion.

The questions informing our journey through these complex issues are: How did Latin Americans construct and interpret racial, ethnic and gender identities and ideologies? And how these interpretations and ideologies have been used to formulate an idea of nation? In other words, we will learn about the different ways ethnicity and race have been defined in the Latin America studies (historiography) and the ideologies and practices associated with these categories. Our readings will be drawn mostly from all Latin American countries…

For more information, click here.