Mixed Race Studies

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Whiteness: A Revolution of Identity Politics in America

Columbia Journal of Race and Law
Volume 2, Issue 1 (2012)
pages 149-166

Andrés Acebo

An enduring motif in American political history reflects the nation’s slow progression towards inclusion of a once disenfranchised populace. In the annals of its jurisprudence, the nation recalls a time when citizenship was linked to race: a time when the racial perquisites for naturalization were not challenged based on its constitutionality, but on who could be professedly “white.” President Obama’s election ushered in a new chapter to this American narrative. His election and the response to it reveal how far we have come and how far we have left to travel on the path towards equality in citizenship.
 
This Article frames a longstanding debate concerning race consciousness in the political sphere and how it consequently influences an ever-changing electorate. It explores the impact that our courts and our policymakers have had on shaping what it means to be white in America, and accordingly to possess a majority voice in society. The Article further seeks to explicate how politicized social institutions are sustained from generation to generation by way of an unabashed preservation of the status quo. Those who come to power do so by protracting nostalgic yearnings, summoning persistent lore and mythos about a way of life that has not always benefited an entire electorate, and not threatening or offending the mainstay of the American political complex. Obama’s election revealed a model, embossed by a romanticized collective national history and a steadfast commitment to the ideals of American Exceptionalism, for transforming a minority candidate’s use of identity politics to garner support, influence and ultimately the ability to govern.

CONTENTS

• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. WHITENESS SOUGHT AND DEFINED IN AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE
  • A. Contemporary Whiteness through Biology and Demographics
• III. 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REVEALS NEW FORM OF RACISM
  • A. The Pursuit of the White Vote159
  • B. A Message of Change and the Opposition that Fears It
• IV. “REAL AMERICANS” INCITE RACISM WITH DIVISIVE RHETORIC
  • A. 2010 Candidates Followed Obama’s Example to Distinguish Themselves From Him
• V. AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM STIFLED BY NOSTALGIA FOR A MORE DIVISIVE ERA

I. INTRODUCTION

April 12, 2011, marked one hundred and fifty years since the Civil War’s first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. The war pinned brother against brother and forced an infant republic to confront its original sin of slavery. The sesquicentennial of that defining struggle provides this generation of Americans with the opportunity to reflect on how far we have come and how much further we must travel on the curving path toward our more perfect union. Despite undeniable progress, the nation’s wounds of bigoted conflict have not completely healed. Racism, albeit publicly renounced, has persisted and remained the scar that fervently reminds people of a much more divided time. In the twenty-first century, racism can no longer be classified as a social ill that plagues the ignorant and indifferent. Racism has transmuted from a “creature of habit” that sought to justify the subordination of some to a more nuanced political calculation for preserving the current racial political establishment. This phenomenon did not occur overnight, but it certainly did find the election of the nation’s first non-white president as the opportune moment to emerge. This new racism has been coupled with centuries-old nativism3 and has disguised itself under the banner of American Exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism finds its roots in the romanticized emergence of the American democracy. Horatio Alger provided this narrative in parables about the American Dream, while John Winthrop’s famous speech painted America as the shining “city upon a hill.” What is so perplexing is that this idea, which helped form the tide that ushered Barack Obama to the presidency, has become the one that seeks to wash him out. The attack on the president has been one in which the racial epithets of yesteryear have been drowned out by the spewing of political rhetoric that claims to try to “take America back” for its rightful keepers. A growing sentiment in our political debate is that those who do not blindly accept America as the greatest civilization in history and those who admonish the present conditions as defiling the egalitarian principles enshrined in the Constitution are not true or real Americans. The emergent consequence is that race consciousness and, more specifically, what it means to be white in America is qualified by more politically conservative circles in terms of whether an individual subscribes to notions of American Exceptionalism. Groups enter the fold if they do not condemn, criticize, complain about, or campaign for any sort of fundamental change to the existing order. Essentially, for those once excluded, to now be white in America, they must not offend the structures that perpetuate white majoritarian influence.

The history of what is determinably white in the United States has been dictated by a fluid metric. It is not at all unusual that this redefinition has appeared at a time where Census projections reveal the rapid decline of the white majority in America. The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that, by 2050, minorities will be the majority in America. Minorities currently constitute one-third of the population in the United States, but according to census figures, they are projected to become the majority population by 2042. By 2050, minorities will constitute fifty-four percent of the population. The implications of what will come when these projections become reality are grave. With no majority white race, what will become of racialized existence in pluralist America? The prosperity and equality once drawn from the well of acculturation will be dried up. What will emerge in its place? Will a new dominant racial majority emerge or will accepted citizenship occur through enculturation? The answer is up for debate. However, history and judicial opinions alike reflect the absolute discriminatory intent behind separating citizens into groups of those deemed to belong and those who do not.

This Article proceeds in four parts. Part II explores and discusses the interplay of race and American jurisprudence. The privileges of American citizenship since the nation’s founding have been inextricably linked to racial classification. What it means to be white and who is white in America is constantly changing. Accordingly, the acquisition of rights has often been forged by racial reclamation. This section examines the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Ozawa v. United States and United States v. Thind, where the nation’s highest court swiftly legitimized the practice of making whiteness more exclusive, harder to attain, and consequently more desirable. The Article postulates what will become of the remnants of the legacy of racial supremacy when the nation is redefined as a majority-minority electorate.

Part III evaluates President Obama’s 2008 election and examines how his pluralistic campaign revealed not just the progress that has been made in America’s journey toward racial equality, but also the new affronts to social harmonization. The 2008 presidential election, a transformative moment in American history, was not the watershed moment of racial reconciliation that it has been portrayed to be. This section offers that the election of the nation’s first non-white president established a new paradigm for identity politics in the United States. President Obama’s successful campaign revealed that America’s racial cacophony had not yet been keyed into melody. At the onset of a new century, with demographic trends envisaging a new racial electoral composition, the pursuit of whiteness has been relegated to romantic notions of American Exceptionalism. An uncertain future has birthed a movement emboldened by nostalgia that threatens that the ushering in of change will threaten the pillars of the republic.

Part IV analyzes the 2010 elections and considers how the Obama model for identity politics was galvanized and successfully used by some of his staunchest detractors. Leading candidates attached their personal narratives to the republic’s chronicles. In doing so, acquiescence to the establishment’s will promulgated a new sentiment, which reaffirmed the racialized social order. By not simply subscribing to the existence of American Exceptionalism, but instead expressing anguish and disdain for those who not only deny its veracity but seek to weaken its condition, minority candidates have found a way to appeal beyond their immediate base of supporters.

In concluding, Part V of this Article observes that America’s demographic shift towards a majority-minority citizenry will make little difference if its politics remain unshaken. In the end, elections will amount to nothing more than isolated victories rather than breakthroughs until the legacy of racial supremacy is eradicated. The law’s memorialization of an ethereal demonstration of racial privilege and a modern electorate’s hope to garner a pluralist society in which all persons are treated equal are once more pitted against each other at the highest levels of our public discourse. Amidst the demagoguery and rhetoric is the often-overlooked axiom that America’s “Exceptionalism” lies in the nation’s ability to confront its inequality and maintain that a government of the people, by the people, shall always be for all the people. Elections that usher in both the face of groups long removed from influence and, more importantly, their voice are only the first step on a long road to redemption.

Read the entire article here.

Glenn Robinson—Dedicated to Erasing Hate & Mixing Cultures

Mixed Race Radio
Wednesday, 2012-10-24, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT, 09:00 PDT, 17:00 BST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Glenn Robinson, Creator/Owner
Community Village Activist

Glenn Robinson is an Irish, German, Dutch, English & Austrian American married to a Spanish & Indigenous Mexican American. They have two children and encourage them to identify however they want. Glenn is interested in progressive immigration reform, universal health care and desegregation within schools and communities. He is a life long learner with interests in sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and politics.

Glenn created Mixed American Life and spends much of his time curating and sharing articles and videos, as well as recruiting bloggers who are seeking a wider reach for their audience.

This site, Mixed American Life has two main focuses:

1. Share experiences and stories around the mixing of cultures and blending of heritages; weather it’s by proximity, by relationships, or by adoption.
2. Promote desegregation in schools and communities.

This interest blends directly with Glenn’s other mission which is to reduce xenophobia and racism. That blog is entitled, Community Village Activist and this is the site where Glenn exposes the hate that is opposing the multicultural movement.

To see all of Glenn’s projects (and promoted sites) visit CommunityVillage.us.

Letter, W. A. Plecker to A. T. Shields. 9 May 1925. Typescript.

Commonwealth of Virginia, Bureau of Vital Statistics
Richmond, Virginia
1925-05-09

Source: Rockbridge County (Va.) Clerk’s Correspondence [Walter A. Plecker to A.T. Shields], 1912-1943. Local Government Records Collection, Rockbridge County Court Records. The Library of Virginia. 10-0477-003.

In a letter to A.T. Shields, Walter Plecker asserted that Judge Holt’s decision to categorize Atha Sorrells as white despite her Indian heritage had “emboldened” the Rockbridge tribe. Nonetheless, he advised against appealing the Sorrells case to the Supreme Court because the court might rule in her favor.

Walter A. Plecker, Registrar

Hon. A. T. Shields,
Rockbridge County Clerk’s Office
Lexington, Virginia

Dear Sir:

In reply to your letter of May 4th, which came during my absence from the, office, I beg to advise that the matter in reference to an appeal in the Atha Sorrells case was left to the Attorney General and the lawyer, Mr. Shewmake, employed by the Anglo Saxon Clubs. After going over carefully the evidence, in view of the fact that nothing new could be introduced,  they decided that it was unwise to appeal the case as the only evidence upon which we absolutely relied,  that of our records was set aside by Judge Holt, and we would not care to take the risk of having the Supreme Court render a similar decision.   Our hope is to drift along until the next legislature, and have them pass a bill prevent ing the marriage of the Indians with the whites.   In my judgement there are no native Indians in Virginia unmixed with negro blood…

Read the entire letter here.

The Choice

The New Yorker
2012-10-22

The Editors

The morning was cold and the sky was bright. Aretha Franklin wore a large and interesting hat. Yo-Yo Ma urged his frozen fingers to play the cello, and the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, a civil-rights comrade of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s, read a benediction that began with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the segregation-era lamentation of American realities and celebration of American ideals. On that day in Washington—Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009—the blustery chill penetrated every coat, yet the discomfort was no impediment to joy. The police estimated that more than a million and a half people had crowded onto the Mall, making this the largest public gathering in the history of the capital. Very few could see the speakers. It didn’t matter. People had come to be with other people, to mark an unusual thing: a historical event that was elective, not befallen.

Just after noon, Barack Hussein Obama, the forty-seven-year-old son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan, an uncommonly talented if modestly credentialled legislator from Illinois, took the oath of office as the forty-fourth President of the United States. That night, after the inaugural balls, President Obama and his wife and their daughters slept at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a white house built by black men, slaves of West African heritage…

….Obama’s most significant legislative achievement was a vast reform of the national health-care system. Five Presidents since the end of the Second World War have tried to pass legislation that would insure universal access to medical care, but all were defeated by deeply entrenched opposition. Obama—bolstered by the political cunning of the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi—succeeded. Some critics urged the President to press for a single-payer system—Medicare for all. Despite its ample merits, such a system had no chance of winning congressional backing. Obama achieved the achievable. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the single greatest expansion of the social safety net since the advent of Medicaid and Medicare, in 1965. Not one Republican voted in favor of it…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity

Virginia Health Bulletin
Virginia Department of Health
Volume XVI, Extra Number 2 (March 1924)
pages 1-4
Source: Pamphlet: Rockbridge County Clerk’s Correspondence, 1912–1943. Local Government Records Collection. The Library of Virginia, (Racial Integrity Act Documents) 12-1245-005

W. A. Plecker, M. D.
State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Richmond, Virginia

Senate Bill 219, To preserve racial integrity, passed the House March 8, 1924, and is now a law of the State.

This bill aims at correcting a condition which only the more thoughtful people of Virginia know the existence of.

It is estimated that there are in the State from 10,000 to 20,000, possibly more, near white people, who are known to possess an intermixture of colored blood, in some cases to a slight extent it is true, but still enough to prevent them from being white.

In the past it has been possible for these people to declare themselves as white, or even to have the Court so declare them. Then they have demanded tho admittance of their children into the white schools, and in not a few cases have intermarried with white people.

In many counties they exist as distinct colonies holding themselves aloof from negroes, but not being admitted by the white people as of their race.

In any large gathering or school of colored people, especially in the cities, many will be observed who are scarcely distinguishable as colored.

These persons, however, are not white in reality, nor by the new definition of this law, that a white person is one with no trace of the blood of another race, except that a person with one-sixteenth of the American Indian, if there is no other race mixture, may be classed as white.

Their children are likely to revert to the distinctly negro type even when all apparent evidence of mixture has disappeared.

The Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics has been called upon within one month for evidence by two lawyers employed to assist people of this type to force their children into the white public schools, and by another employed by the school trustees of a district to prevent this action.

In each case evidence was found to show that either the people themselves or their connect ions were reported to our office to be of mixed blood.

Our Bureau has kept a watchful eye upon the situation, and has guarded the welfare of the State as far as possible with inadequate law and power. The condition has gone on, however, and is rapidly increasing in importance.

Unless radical measures are used to prevent it, Virginia and other parts of the Nation must surely in time go the way of all other countries in which people of two or more races have lived in close contact. With the exception of the Hebrew race, complete intermixture or amalgamation has been the inevitable result.

To succeed, the intermarriage of the white race with mixed stock must be made impossible. But that is not sufficient, public sentiment must be so aroused that intermixture out of wedlock will cease.

The public must be led to look with scorn and contempt upon the man who will degrade himself and do harm to society by such abhorrent deeds.

The Bureau of Vital Statistics, Clerks who issue marriage licenses, and the school authorities are the barriers placed by this law between the danger and the safety of the Commonwealth…

Read the entire article here.

For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics

The New York Times
2012-10-20

Jodi Kantor

When President Obama greets African-Americans who broke barriers, he almost invariably uses the same line.

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” he said to Ruby Bridges Hall, who was the first black child to integrate an elementary school in the South. The president repeated the message to a group of Tuskegee airmen, the first black aviators in the United States military; the Memphis sanitation workers the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed in his final speech; and others who came to pay tribute to Mr. Obama and found him saluting them instead.

The line is gracious, but brief and guarded. Mr. Obama rarely dwells on race with his visitors or nearly anyone else. In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary…

…“Tragically, it seems the president feels boxed in by his blackness,” the radio and television host Tavis Smiley wrote in an e-mail. “It has, at times, been painful to watch this particular president’s calibrated, cautious and sometimes callous treatment of his most loyal constituency,” he continued, adding that “African-Americans will have lost ground in the Obama era.”…

… Her husband is more circumspect, particularly on the question of whether some of his opposition is fueled by race. Aides say the president is well aware that some voters say they will never be comfortable with him, as well as the occasional flashes of racism on the campaign trail, such as the “Put the White Back in the White House” T-shirt spotted at a recent Mitt Romney rally. But they also say he is disciplined about not reacting because doing so could easily backfire.

“The president knows that some people may choose to be divided by differences — race, gender, religion — but his focus is on bringing people together,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, wrote in an e-mail.

Even when Newt Gingrich called him a “food stamp president” during the Republican primaries, the most the president did was shoot confidants a meaningful look — “the way he will cock his head, an exaggerated smile, like ‘I’m not saying but I’m saying,’ ” one campaign adviser said…

…Out to Change Stereotypes

Shortly before his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama took his family to see the Lincoln Memorial. “First African-American president, better be good,” a 10-year-old Malia Obama told her father, who repeated the story later, a rare acknowledgment of the symbolic shadow he casts.

For all of Mr. Obama’s caution, he is on a mission: to change stereotypes of African-Americans, aides and friends say. Six years ago, he told his wife and a roomful of aides that he wanted to run for the White House to change children’s perceptions of what was possible. He had other ambitions for the presidency, of course, but he was also embarking on an experiment in which the Obamas would put themselves and their children on the line to help erase centuries of negative views…

Read the entire article here.

Racializing Obama: The Enigma of Post-Black Politics and Leadership

Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2009
pages 1-15
DOI: 10.1080/10999940902733202

Manning Marable (1950-2011), Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies
Columbia University

In the 1990s, a new race-neutral, “post-black” leadership of African Americans emerged who favored political pragmatism and centrist public policies. Barack Obama, Newark Mayor Corey Booker, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick were representative of this group. During his successful 2008 presidential campaign, Obama minimized the issue of race, presenting a race-neutral politics that reached out to white Republicans and independents. Yet despite his post-racial orientation, critics repeatedly attempted to “racialize Obama,” questioning his racial authenticity, religious affiliations, and Americanism. Despite extremist attacks, Obama successfully won the election by building an unprecedented coalition of blacks, Latinos, Jews, Asian Americans, women, and youth. The question remains whether the pragmatic, centrist Obama will commit his government to oppose all forms of racial inequality and oppression.

The historical significance of the election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama as president of the United States was recognized literally by the entire world. For a nation that had, only a half century earlier, refused to enforce the voting rights and constitutional liberties of people of African descent, to elevate a black American as its chief executive, was a stunning reversal of history. On the night of his electoral victory, spontaneous crowds of joyful celebrants rushed into streets, parks, and public establishments, in thousands of venues across the country. In Harlem, over ten thousand people surrounded the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building, cheering and crying in disbelief. To many, the impressive margin of Obama’s popular vote victory suggested the possibility that the United States had entered at long last an age of post-racial politics, in which leadership and major public policy debates would not be distorted by factors of race and ethnicity…

…Obama undoubtedly took most of these factors into account—the possibility of a “Bradley/Wilder effect” on whites’ support of black candidates, African-American grievances surrounding the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, the recent debacle of the Katrina Crisis, and the rise of the postracial politics of a new generation of black leaders—to construct his own image and political narrative essential for a presidential campaign. Early on in their deliberation process, the Obama pre-campaign group recognized that most white Americans would never vote for a black presidential candidate. However, they were convinced that most whites would embrace, and vote for, a remarkable, qualified presidential candidate who happened to be black. “Race” could be muted into an adjective, a qualifier of minimal consequence. So ethnically, Obama did not deny the reality of his African heritage; it was blended into the multicultural narrative of his uniquely “American story,” which also featured white grandparents from Kansas, a white mother who studied anthropology in Hawaii, and an Indonesian stepfather. Unlike black conservatives, Obama openly acknowledged his personal debt to the sacrifices made by martyrs and activists of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet he also spoke frequently about the need to move beyond the divisions of the sixties, to seek common ground, and a post-partisan politics of hope and reconciliation. As the Obama campaign took shape in late 2006–early 2007, the basic strategic line about “race,” therefore, was to deny its enduring presence or relevance to contemporary politics. Volunteers often chanted, in Hari Krishna–fashion, “Race Doesn’t Matter! Race Doesn’t Matter!,” as if to ward off the evil spirits of America’s troubled past…

Read the entire essay here.

Millionaire to Use Money Against Racial Inetermingling

The Natchez News and Courier
Natchez, Mississippi
1949-11-13

James McLean

NATCHEZ. Miss, Nov. 12. Bald, rugged George W. Armstrong is determined to make his money talk loud and long against “racial mongrelization”.

That’s a term the 84-year-old millionaire uses often in voicing opposition to intermingling of Jews, Gentiles and negroes In the same schools.

Armstrong, who says he isn’t sure how much money he has, splashed into headlines when money-poor Jefferson Military College spurned his $50,000,000 endowment offer (in mineral land rights) to teach “superiority of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin American races”.

Later he dismissed the furore his offer created as a “tempest in a teapot”, said the value of his holdings had been exaggerated, and that although he approves the doctrine of white supremacy, he had not made a formal request that the college teach it…

…Governor J. Strom Thurmond, the states rights candidate, repudiated his support, he explained. “I’m not anti-Semitic,” Armstrong said, in his slow, lip-pursing way of talking. “We’ve got some awfully good Jews here in Natchez and I like them.” But he assails Jews, whites and negroes going to school together because it “mongrelizes the American race.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Politics of Samba

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Volume 2, Number 2 (Summer/Fall 2001)

Bruce Gilman

Samba, which was created in its present form in the 1910s, yet whose roots reach back much farther and tie Brazil to the African continent, has played an integral part in Brazil’s conceptualization as a nation. Originally despised by Brazil’s elite, samba’s message of racial integration was eventually used by both progressive reformers and authoritarian dictators. Despite samba’s image abroad as a catalyst for racial miscegenation, its political message never took hold in Brazilian society. Today, samba continues to be as much a source of social integration as a prism of Brazil’s racial fractures.

Historical Roots.

It is probable that the word “samba” originated in Angola, where the Kimbundu word semba designated a circle dance similar in choreography to the west African batuque that Bantu slaves brought to Brazil. While the exact number of blacks entering Brazil during its period of slavery is unknown, it is commonly estimated that at least eigh- teen million Africans were “imported” between 1538 and 1828. The primary center from which the Portuguese disseminated slaves into the Brazilian interior was Salvador, Bahia. It was the second largest city in the Portuguese Empire after Lisbon, and famous for its sensuality and decadence expressed in its beautiful colonial mansions and gold-filled churches. In Bahia, African culture took root to such an extent that today many African traditions are better preserved there than any-where else in the New World. Sambas rhythm is rooted in the rich musical heritage that Africans took with them in their forced migration to Brazil.

Although sambas rhythm is of African origin, its melody, harmony, form, and instrumentation are influenced by European traditions. The licentious lundu dance, derived from the rhythm of the batuque, became increasingly popular in Brazil in the late eighteenth century. At the same time, the flute, guitar, and cavaquinho, which initially accompanied the modinha the Brazilian way of playing the lyric song style of the Portuguese elite, would come to play an important role in samba. Brazilian poet and priest Domingo Caldas Barbosa (1740-1800), whose mother was a slave from Angola and whose father was a Portuguese businessman, broke with the tradition of the court style by substituting guitar for the harpsichord and introducing risqué lyrics in the most aristocratic salons of Lisbon. While Barbosa was indignantly criticized for his sensuous poetry, erudite Portuguese composers soon began producing their own modinhas. Both the lundu and the modinha crossed the boundaries between popular and elite, yet gained acceptance at the Lisbon royal court in an early instance of the fusion of African and Iberian styles. Brazil’s African-inspired musical traditions also merged with other non-Portuguese, European styles. In the mid-1840s, French traveling musical theater companies introduced the polka to Brazil. As the lundu fused with the polka, it turned into the maxixe, a Brazilianized version of the polka. The maxixe became the first genuinely Brazilian dance and decisively influenced the creation of samba as a specific genre, eventually finding acceptance among the elite of Rio de Janeiro.

…Racial marginalization was also fostered by the growing conviction among nineteenth-century intellectuals that true Brazilian nationhood required ethnic homogeneity. Influential scientists regarded people of mixed race as indolent , undisciplined, and shortsighted. They argued that Brazil’s racial composition did not exemplify cultural richness or vitality, but rather constituted a singular case of extreme miscegenation; consequently, the person of mixed race evolved into a symbol of Brazilian backwardness. Blacks were seen as a major factor contributing to Brazil’s inferiority because they would never be able to absorb, and could only imitate, “Aryan” culture. Racial mixing thus furnished an explanation for the defects and weaknesses of Brazilian society and became a central issue in Brazil’s conceptualization as a nation.

Most Brazilians believed that national homogeneity could be achieved through assimilation and miscegenation, but only if this guaranteed evolutionary superiority through a general “whitening” of the population. Thus, the most welcomed immigrants were southwestern Europeans who mixed readily with the rest of the Brazilian population; Africans were never considered among” possible candidates for immigration…

Read the entire article here.

Black Pride, Democratic Politics: Can They Be Separated in Blacks’ Support of Obama?

The Associated Press
2012-10-13

Jesse Washington, National Writer, Race and Ethnicity

Surviving slavery, segregation and discrimination has forged a special pride in African-Americans. Now some are saying this hard-earned pride has become prejudice in the form of blind loyalty to President Barack Obama.

Are black people supporting Obama mainly because he’s black? If race is just one factor in blacks’ support of Obama, does that make them racist? Can blacks’ support for Obama be compared with white voters who may favor his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, because he’s white?…

Read the entire article here.