Mixed Race Studies

It’s all in the mix

NOW
2009-05-22

NOW is the online source for news, features, analysis and much more, covering Lebanon, the Lebanese diaspora and the Middle East.

“I am apartment hunting with Hala who looks like a cheap whore,” read the text message that Hala’s friend accidently sent to her while they were walking together.  Hala, who is 27 and has a Nigerian mother and a Lebanese father, was shocked and ended up giving this “friend,” who is gay, a two-hour lecture. “For someone who is gay, who goes on saying Lebanon is not accommodating gay people, you’re just a typical Lebanese in the end,” she told him.
 
Ever since Hala’s decision to move from Nigeria to Lebanon for her studies at the American University of Science and Technology (AUST), each day has been a battle. The color of her skin is the reason why.
 
Most African women in Lebanon come from Ethiopia. According to Tsega Berhan, who works at the Ethiopian Consulate in Lebanon, an estimated 55,000 Ethiopian domestic workers live in Lebanon, and their brown skin resembles Hala’s. Ethiopians are often seen as either maids or prostitutes – the two occupations most looked down on in Lebanon – and for this reason, Hala faces racism and harassment on a day-to-day basis.

While Hala is constantly hurt by people’s words, she believes that coming to Lebanon at the age of 20 helped her to cope. She did not try to change herself for the sake of others’ perceptions, but instead started to surround herself with circles of trusted friends who accept her as she is. However, Hala’s strategy only goes so far…

…Hala’s skin has colored her love life as well. While she had dated Lebanese men before, it never developed into anything serious. “I have a lot of guy friends, but at the same time, it’s so funny because none of my guy friends would ever date a black girl. They’re not racist, but because they have racist families, they don’t want the headache.”

When she went to a guy friend’s house, his mother looked at her with a suspicious eye and asked her neighbor, who was sitting next to her, her opinion of Hala. The neighbor told Hala to turn her face, scrutinized her from head to toe, and then commented in Arabic, “She would look better if she washes the dirt off her body.” Hala caught the comment and never went to the house again. After this and other similar incidents, Hala learned that her father would have never married her mother had they met in Lebanon.
 
Taking it day by day
 
“I do feel Lebanese but it’s not in a typical way. You’re more aware of your differences. In Lebanon, I have to mention that I’m half-Filipino, but when I’m in the Philippines… I have to tell [relatives] I am half-Lebanese… People pick out the differences before they look at the similarities,” says Gaby, who is 19. He spent most of his life in Lebanon with a loving, stable family composed of a Filipina mother, a Lebanese father and three brothers. His parents met in Saudi Arabia more than 20 years ago, when his mother was working as a nurse there and his father was on a business trip.

For Gaby, growing up in Lebanon and dealing with racism has never been as dramatic as it was for Hala. He says he never really experienced confusion about his identity as a child or adolescent, even when he was made fun of for being different. “As a person, you don’t really analyze your situation so much and say you’re confused. What am I going to do? You just sort of live normally,” he says, adding that having three brothers also helped.

Perhaps because he doesn’t get sexually harassed as women of color do, Gaby views Lebanese as “respectful” of diversity and sees their racist comments as coming “offhand,” rather than intentionally. Nonetheless, he knows how his Filipina mother, who comes from a country that has over 30,000 nationals working as live-in maids in Lebanon, “gets a lot of crap.”

“Sometimes, someone would come over to the house, selling something or whatever, and my mom would answer the door. And then they’d ask to see the Madame.” Gaby has also grown up seeing his father defend his mother when confronted with racist comments. His parents never directly told him, but seeing this, he says, “I realized in a subtle way that you should fight back. But you don’t let it get to you….You can take [being mixed] as a disability, but I don’t think I ever took it as that.”…

Read the entire article 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.

Mixed-Race Studies: Misstep or the next step for Ethnic Studies in a blending nation?

Portland State University McNair Research Journal
Volume 7, 2013
25 pages

Jennifer E. Robe
Portland State University

In January of 2011, The New York Times reported that 2010 U.S. Census data shows that younger generations are self-reporting their racial identity as multiracial or mixed-race in higher numbers than ever before1. Classes in higher education that engage with race and ethnicity, often but not always as part of Ethnic Studies programs in universities, discuss and critique the categorizations of race and ethnicity. However, there is a social, political and economic power and privilege that groups have in being recognized as part of a categorized racial and/or ethnic group that mixed-race or multiracial identified individuals do not have when their identity is underrepresented or unrepresented. There is a very small number (under ten) universities in the U.S. that offer courses or programs that focus their study on a mixed-race identity. The potential problem in this change is a growing mixed-race identified population is the possibility that a growing number of students in classes that will not find a curriculum that centers on their racial experiences. That is the question I will address – are the racial experiences and understandings of mixed-race identified people being addressed in classes that engage with and critique race? I survey a small sample of students currently enrolled in classes which engage with race and ethnicity at Oregon universities about their racial experiences to find out if they see mixed-race studies as having a place in the future of “Ethnic Studies” classes in higher education.

Introduction

Race is not as simple as checking a box or a category on a form. Race is an identity, a lifetime of experiences; it is complex, fluid and a piece of one‘s self that holds many contradictions. I am writing from the standpoint that racism is real, and I will not be constructing an argument which seeks to support nor challenge the existence of institutional racism in the United States and globally. However, in the pursuit of knowledge, which is ideally a fundamental piece of higher education, it is my intention to analyze the examination of race in university classrooms where the curriculum centers upon the discussion and critique of race and ethnicity. In this essay I will first explain how racial categorizations came into use, the history that surrounds those parameters of race, the institutional inequity that has accompanied racial categorizations and the fluctuation of those categories up until the present time. I argue that racial categorizations do not accurately document racial identities and experiences and also that higher education is the platform by which we can effectively critique ongoing racial and ethnic categorization. Ideally it is also a place where space is created for students to learn and explain their own racial experiences and histories.

Despite the ambiguity of racial and ethnic identifications (which I discuss in detail later on) many academic programs have been set up to teach the experiences and histories of groups of people, such as Black and African-American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, Native and Indigenous Nations Studies, Asian Studies etc. Currently there are some (very few) universities that are beginning to include classes on Mixed-Race Studies as well. My field research is a survey with 49 students in Oregon universities currently enrolled in classes that critically engage with the subject of race and ethnicity.

What I explore in my research is if students view these classes (where curriculum centers on a mixed-race or multiracial identity) as having a place in higher education and whether or not the study would be helpful or counterproductive in the debate around the usefulness of racial and ethnic categorizations. Radical political, racially-based movements of the 1950s through the 1970s fought to create visibility of racial groups in efforts to discuss the very real oppression and racial inequality they were experiencing because of their race. One of the things they shared was a demand for the right to an education that taught their own racial histories and experiences. In her book Ethnic Options, Mary Waters argues that ethnic categories do not encompass the experience of ethnicity and ethnic identity for all people. From her own research into census data on self-reported ancestry, she writes:

One thing that became clear from the data was that there was an awful lot of flux going on among these later-generation Americans—intermarriage was high, parents were not giving the same ancestry for their children as for themselves, and re-interview studies indicated that some people were changing their minds about their ancestry from survey to survey.

I agree with Waters assertions although my research examines those who are not necessarily able to categorize their identity and experiences in a nation where we are still required to categorize ourselves. In looking at the experiences of mixed-race and multiracial identified people and the experience of occupying that middle-place between categorizations. I will argue later on that people do experience privilege by having a place in the categorization of race. If we were to agree with Waters‘ argument that categorizations of ancestry do not work, then we are ignoring the experience of gaining privilege and access to communities and resources through “passing” and/or being able to choose a category to fit into. As Margaret Hunter writes in “The Beauty Queue: Advantages of Light Skin” [in Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone], “In the United States, color, more than any other physical characteristic, signifies race. But  “color” is also an attribute of individuals—human skin tone varies within and across ‘race’ categories.” What Hunter is arguing is that beauty, privilege and power are associated with light skin even within communities of color, and color creates a rift within communities based on a narrative which effectively oppresses all people of color. Skin color has the ability to determine if an individual experiences empowerment and/or ostracism within their own community as well as within the narrative of the dominant (in this case White) group. The issue of race difference and color difference are inextricably linked to systemic inequality. Although being able to “pass” as part of a marginalized community may allow for a person to have visibility, “passing” as part of the dominant community associates one with the position of the oppressor. This position of negotiating ones identity in order to gain or lose visibility and access to resources is an experience that some mixed-race people encounter; which are unique experiences that differ from being part of a recognized racial group.

The question I asked in my field research is—do mixed-race students feel that their experiences are being adequately engaged with in their education—I explore their responses for an answer to whether or not mixed-race studies, a study based on a new racial category can and whether or not they should have a place in the future of higher education…

…The criminalization of interracial sex was in place to prevent racial mixing that ultimately, as [Paul] Finkelman describes, “stemmed from the creation of slavery.” But miscegenation laws were not ruled unconstitutional until over one hundred years after legal slavery ended in the United States. A mixed-race person in the context of this history was viewed as a product of sexual transgression rooted in the fear of Black and White interracial sexual relationships. But as Rainier Spencer argues in Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix some view a mixed-race identity as a bridge of multiculturalism to deconstruct the Black/White dichotomy. However, as he writes,

As is the case with so much of multiracial ideology, the claim of racial bridging is merely stated without the least bit of critical backing, while no one inside the movement, and precious few outside it, care to point out the inconsistency. It is no more than an unproven desire, a case of wishful thinking, based on a supposed alterity of multiracial people that harks back to the marginal man.

The “marginal man” that Spencer refers to was a fictional archetype character created by Sociologist Robert Ezra Parks that was meant to embody a person whose occupied two opposing racial or ethnic groups. So Rainier [Spencer] critiques the viability of this ideology of mixed-race people being a “bridge” or a carrier of racial understanding. By adding another category of race, we are unable to break down the current constructions of race as we are still lacking the objectivity or neutrality to do so in our discourse on race.

Read the entire article here.

Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex, and Hair

Anchor an imprint of Random House
1997-02-19
320 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-385-47123-7

Lisa Jones

In Bulletproof Diva, Lisa  Jones brings the wit and candor of her infamous Village Voice column, “Skin Trade,”  to a much larger audience. Chock full of the “fierce black girl humor” that has made her column so popular, this provocative collection of  essays and observations on race, sex, identity, and  the politics of style speaks to a young generation  of blacks who were raised in an integrated society  and are now waiting for America to deliver on its  promises of equality. The thirty-seven short  pieces and six long essays in Bulletproof  Diva cover a wide range of topics, many of them  extremely controversial. Jones moves smoothly from  issues of ethnicity in a changing America,  challenging viewpoints on African-American  and mixed race identity, to “butt theory”  and the roller-coaster politics of black hair. Written in a style that is as appealing as it is  unapologetic, Bulletproof Diva marks the debut of a genuinely gifted young writer  with a distinctive voice and a fresh perspective on  the black cultural scene.

The Last Plantation: Color, Conflict, and Identity: Reflections of a New World Black

Houghton Mifflin
1997-02-10
307 pages
Hardback ISBN-10: 0395771919; ISBN-13: 978-0395771914

Itabari Njeri

In the 1980s, when most Americans considered “black” a racial reference, many multiracial people began to see themselves as part of a heterogeneous ethnic group linked by history, culture, and blood—a distinction that has led to considerable conflict. Prompted by the comment “You look like an ordinary Negro to me,” Itabari Njeri, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Every Good-Bye Ain’t Gone and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, decided to take a look at her own family in order to explore racism within her community. What she discovered is disturbing. Referring to incidents in the news—the Rodney King beating, the black boycott of Korean grocers in Los Angeles, the killing of a black teenager by a Korean immigrant—as well as to her family, Njeri lays out with precision and power how limited racial definitions contribute to the psychological slavery that makes the mind the last plantation. She provides telling evidence that the recognition of a larger, multiracial identity—which would substantially define most Americans—we can challenge marginalizing concepts and the way in which the racial debate is now framed.

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.

More Thoughts on The Magic Mulatto Myth

The Magic Mulatto: Bringing the fine art of Race Talk straight to the people
2013-01-29

Brett Russell Coleman

Elsewhere on this blog I have described the trope or myth of the magic mulatto (see the “about” page, for example, or this post about Frank Schaeffer). To my surprise, some people have asked me to expand on this myth (that is, I’m surprised that anyone reads any of this, but glad you do). Far be it from me to shirk my duty to my loyal readers, so expand I shall.

One of the ways in which this myth gets perpetuated is through research, scholarship, and sometimes everyday talk about mixed-race identity. In these discourses, you will often hear some clap-trap about mixed people being peculiarly skilled at “cultural adaptation” or “boundary spanning”, even “cognitive flexibility” (I’ve been guilty of this myself, I must admit, which is why I feel so free to criticize). It is clap-trap not because it isn’t or couldn’t be true (it may very well be true for some mixed-race people, under some circumstances), but because it could not possibly be true for all mixed-race people, or even some of them all of the time. It is especially ridiculous because it implies (perhaps inadvertently) that there is something magical about the intermingling of gene pools that predisposes one for cultural adaptation, as opposed to opportunities or demands of the sociocultural situation. More importantly, it implies that a “mixed-race” person would have an advantage over a “mono-racial” person in a similar sociocultural situation which demands the ability to “adapt” or “code-switch” or change like a “chameleon.” I suppose one could argue that familiarity with two or more racial or ethnic groups, plus a racially ambiguous appearance, might socialize one for this special ability in a way that is unlikely for a mono-racial person. I would argue that such an argument is absurd, but I suspect that neither you nor I am are temperamentally equipped for the conceptual and methodological nightmare that such a study would entail. So lets leave it at the level of argument for now. My argument is this: there is no good reason to believe that any given mixed-race person would be more adept at cultural adaptation, code switching, etcetera, than any given mono-racial person, given similar socializing conditions for both. That is to say, if the situation demands that the mono-racial person make some sort of psychological or behavioral leap across the racial or cultural boundary, he or she will be just as able to make that leap as the mixed-race person would be. To argue otherwise is to uphold the belief in “race” as something essential to the human “personality” and puts unfair demands on mixed-race people to do the hard work of bridging the racial divide that the majority of humanity are unwilling to do. Put another way, if you’re so interested in bridging the racial divide, do it yourself…

Read the entire article here.

Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama

City Lights Books
2009-01-15
120 pages
Paperback ISBN-10 0872865002; ISBN-13 9780872865006

Tim Wise

Race is, and always has been, an explosive issue in the United States. In this timely new book, Tim Wise explores how Barack Obama’s emergence as a political force is taking the race debate to new levels. According to Wise, for many whites, Obama’s rise signifies the end of racism as a pervasive social force; they point to Obama as a validation of the American ideology that anyone can make it if they work hard, and an example of how institutional barriers against people of color have all but vanished. But is this true? And does a reinforced white belief in color-blind meritocracy potentially make it harder to address ongoing institutional racism? After all, in housing, employment, the justice system and education, the evidence is clear: white privilege and discrimination against people of color are still operative and actively thwarting opportunities, despite the success of individuals like Obama.

Is black success making it harder for whites to see the problem of racism, thereby further straining race relations, or will it challenge anti-black stereotypes to such an extent that racism will diminish and race relations improve? Will blacks in power continue to be seen as an “exception” in white eyes? Is Obama “acceptable” because he seems “different than most blacks,” who are still viewed too often as the dangerous and inferior “other?”

All of these possibilities are explored in Between Barack and a Hard Place, by Tim Wise, one of the nation’s most prominent antiracist activists and educators and author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, White Like Me.

Contents

• Preface
• Barack Obama, White Denial and the Reality of Racism
• The Audacity of Truth: A Call for White Responsibility
• Endnotes
• About the Author

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…

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Vision Turns to Division

American Review
Global Perpectives on US Affairs
Issue 2 (May 2010)
pages 12-15

Kevin Gaines, Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and Professor of History
University of Michgan

The election of Barack Obama has had surprisingly little impact on a nation fixated on race

In 1886, the African American abolitionist and spokesman Frederick Douglass published “The Future of the Coloured Race,” an essay which held that the biological assimilation of black Americans was inevitable. The Negro, in the parlance of the time, would neither be annihilated nor expatriated, nor would he “survive and flourish” as a distinct and separate group. Instead, “he will be absorbed, assimilated” into the white majority, visible “in the features of a blended race.” For Douglass, this amalgamation was a fait accompli, despite white protestations against interracial intimacy.

Writing amid the codification of a new system of racial segregation in the south of the US, and soon after his marriage to a white woman, Helen Pitts, had angered many. Douglass’s vision of racial comity through the biological absorption of blacks and whites was edgy, even transgressive. Still, it proved no match for the white south’s concerted assault on the political and social rights of black people, which persisted until the mid-1960s reforms of the civil rights movement. In a manner reminiscent of Douglass, since the 1990s advocates of the multiracial movement have looked to the growing population of mixed race Americans, neither black nor white, as evidence of racial progress. First Tiger Woods, and now Barack Obama, have embodied for many Americans the solution to the nation’s historical racial conflicts. Our black or, as some prefer, biracial president has become for many a symbol of reconciliation and national unity.

Yet, just as Douglass had done in his own time, the multiracial movement exaggerates the extent to which the post-civil rights increase of interracial marriages and their mixed-race offspring constitutes a solution to the problem of racism. As critics of multiracial ideology have noted, positive perceptions of mixed-race people as less threatening are often rooted in pejorative assumptions about blacks as angry or inferior. In other words, this idealised view of ‘bi-racial’ people reinforces, rather than challenges, prevailing notions of racial difference, of white superiority and black inferiority. The fascination with Obama as a seemingly ‘raceless’ mediator, once praised by a news presenter who gushed after a major presidential speech, “For an hour, I forgot he was black,” is a far cry from the resentful perception in some quarters of his wife, Michelle, as an “angry black woman.” The belief that a mixed race president heralds an era of racial harmony seems not just naïve, but misguided…

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