Defining Blackness in Colombia

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Social Science on 2014-12-19 15:51Z by Steven

Defining Blackness in Colombia

Journal de la Société des Américanistes
Volume 95, Number 1 (2009)
pages 165-184 (46 paragraphs)

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester, United Kingdom

This paper looks at the complex relationship between concepts employed by social scientists and those used in everyday practice and discourse, arguing that the standard ideas about how ideas travel from one domain (state, academe, social movements, everyday usage) to another, and become essentialised or destabilised in the process, are often too simple. Changing definitions of blackness in Colombia, through the process of multiculturalist reform and after, are examined with a view to exploring which categories of actors were influential in shaping these definitions and which were involved in essentialisations and de-essentialisations.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • The ambiguity of blackness
  • The emergence of black identity and huellas de africanía
  • Constitutional reform and la comunidad negra
  • The hegemony of « afro »
  • Blackness and mestizaje
  • Conclusion

Read the entire article here.

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Whiteness in Latin America: measurement and meaning in national censuses (1850-1950)

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2014-12-19 15:31Z by Steven

Whiteness in Latin America: measurement and meaning in national censuses (1850-1950)

Journal de la Société des Américanistes
Volume 95, Number 2 (2009)
pages 207-234 (63 paragraphs)

Mara Loveman, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Drawing on an analysis of all national censuses conducted in Latin America from 1850 to 1950, this article examines how tacit assumptions about the nature of « whiteness » informed the production of statistical knowledge about Latin American populations. For insight into implicit racial beliefs that shaped census-taking in this period, the article considers how census agents accomplished three basic tasks: 1) identifying the « race » of individuals in the population; 2) preparing statistical tables to publicize census results; and, 3) projecting the racial composition of national populations in the future. The analysis identifies variation in notions of « whiteness » across the region, but also points to a set of broadly shared premises about the nature, value, and boundaries of whiteness that transcended nation-state boundaries in this period. Fundamental similarities in ideas about whiteness found in Latin American censuses appear even more starkly when the scope of analysis expands to include the censuses of the United States.

Table of Contents

  • Racial classification in Latin American censuses
  • The nature of whiteness: who is white?
  • The value of whiteness: describing and inscribing racial hierarchy
  • The boundaries of whiteness: projecting a whiter future
  • Discussion and conclusion

Read the entire article here.

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Beyond poverty: the Negro and the Mulatto in Brazil

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Slavery, Social Science on 2011-09-20 04:12Z by Steven

Beyond poverty: the Negro and the Mulatto in Brazil

Journal de la Société des Américanistes
Volume 58 (1969)
pages 121-137
DOI: 10.3406/jsa.1969.2100

Florestan Fernandes

This paper was first presented, in a condensed version, at the seminars on “Minorities in Latin America and the United States”, (The College of the Finger Lakes, Corning, New York, December 5, 1969).

1. Introduction :

The most impressive aspect of the racial situation in Brazil appears under the trenchant denial of the existence of any “color” or “racial” problem. Racial prejudice and discrimination, as racial segregation, are seen as a sort of sin and as dishonorable behavior. Thus, we have two different levels of reality perception and of action connected with “color” and “race”: first, overt, in which racial equality and racial democracy are supposed and proclaimed; second, covert, in which collateral functions perform through, below and beyond the social stratification.

This overlay is not exclusive to race relations. It appears in other levels of social life. In the case of race relations it emerges as a clear product from the prevailing racial ideology and racial Utopia, both built during slavery by the white-dominant stratum—the rural and urban masters. Slavery was not in conflict with the Portuguese law and cultural tradition. The Roman law offered to the crown ordinances the elements with which it would be possible to classify the “Indians” or the “Africans” as things, as moveable property, and establish the social transmission of social position through the mother (according to the principle partus sequitur ventrem), deny to the slave any human condition (servus personam non habet, etc.) On the other hand, slavery was practiced on a small scale in Lisbon, and was attempted in Acores, Madeira, Cabo Verde and Sâo Tome, pioneering the modern plantation system. But slavery was in conflict with religion and the mores created by the Catholic conception of the world. This conflict, of a moral nature, did not give to the slave, in general, a better condition and more human treatment, as Frank Tannebaum believed. It only brought about a tendency to disguise things, separating the permissive from the real being.

Nevertheless, Brazil has a good intellectual tradition of penetrating, realistic, and unmasking objective knowledge of the racial situation. First of all, the conservative pride had given rise to very clear distinctions (as usually happened with the masters and some aristocratic white families arrogantly self-affirmative on matters of racial inequality and race differences). Second, some outstanding figures, leaders of the ideals of national emancipation or of abolitionism, as Jose Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva, Luiz Gama, Perdigao Malheiros, Joaquim Nabuco, Antonio Bento, etc., tried to point out the nature of the white behavior and value-orientations, connected with the Negroes and the Mulattos. Third, the “negro movements” after the First World War (especially in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro during the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s), as well as intellectual Negro conferences on race relations, have contributed to a new realistic perception and explanation of the complex Brazilian racial situation.

The findings of modern sociological, anthropological, or psychological investigations (Samuel Lowrie; Roger Bastide and Florestan Fernandes; L. A. Costa Pinto; Oracy Megueira; A. Guerreiro Ramos; Octavio Ianni, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Renato Jardim Moreira; Thaïes de Azevedo; Charles Wagley, Marvin Harris, Henry W. Hutchinson and Ben Zimmerman; René Ribeiro; Joao Baptista Borges Pereira; Virginia Leone Bicudo; Aniela Ginsberg; Carolina Martuscelli Bori; Dante Moreira Leite; etc.), have confirmed and deepened the evidence discovered by earlier writers. In the present discussion, I will limit myself to three special topics: the roots of competitive social order in Brazil; some objective evidences of racial ine quality and its sociological meaning; the Brazilian pattern of racial prejudice and discrimination…

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