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Caribbean Race Relations: A Study of Two Variants.
... This correlation between phenotype and class is not a categorical form of hierarchy. Although the oligarchy is white in phenotype, for example, not all phenotypically white individuals are in the middle and upper classes, let alone the oligarchy (Gonzalez 1975), and leading military and political figures have historically ranged across a spectrum of phenotypes (Hoetink 1985). In the 1996 presidential election, the winning candidate was of a phenotype associated with both European and African ancestry, and the runner-up was of a phenotype associated with overwhelmingly African ancestry. ...
... Such terminology differs across Hispanic Caribbean societies (e.g. Stevens 1989;Hoetink 1967Hoetink , 1975Oostindie 1996), and even within the Dominican Republic individuals vary in their conceptions of the particular phenotypes to which particular terms refer. The three categories used to describe skin color (color, as opposed to raza) in the cedula, the national identification card, are blanco ['white'], the broad indio ['indian-colored'], and negro ['black']. ...
... Contemporary junior high school textbooks describe the Dominican people and culture as a mix of Spanish, Taíno, and African influences, thus privileging the role of the Taíno, whose contributions to Dominican society were relatively few and minor (Del Castillo and Murphy 1987). It was only in the last twenty years that a statue representing an African joined the two representing a Spaniard and a Taíno in front of the Dominican Museo del Hombre Dominicano ['Museum of the Dominican People'] in the capital city (Hoetink 1985) 42. In Providence, Rhode Island, Dominican Americans generally consider themselves to be part Native American, or Taíno, and one consultant described one of her grandmothers as "full-blooded" Taíno. ...
... Instead, "white" can encompass people with a wide mixture of racial heritages and phenotypic features, including people who would not be identified as "white" in the US [47]. Caribbean historian Hoetink [48] argued that even during the nineteenth century, the ideal of phenotypic whiteness was much darker in the Hispanic Caribbean than in the English or French Caribbean. People who belonged to the upper class and were identified as "colored" in the French or English Colonies, could be identified as white in the Spanish colonies (Puerto Rico, Cuba, or the Dominican Republic) [48]. ...
... Caribbean historian Hoetink [48] argued that even during the nineteenth century, the ideal of phenotypic whiteness was much darker in the Hispanic Caribbean than in the English or French Caribbean. People who belonged to the upper class and were identified as "colored" in the French or English Colonies, could be identified as white in the Spanish colonies (Puerto Rico, Cuba, or the Dominican Republic) [48]. Even with such considerations in mind, the fact that people in Puerto Rico define whiteness more broadly, does not mean that colorism is suspended. ...
This study reveals the association of skin color with health disparities in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is home to the second largest Latino population in the US. Aware of the inadequacy of standard OMB ethno-racial categories in capturing racial differences among Latinos, we incorporated skin color scales into the Puerto Rico BRFSS. We apply both logistic regressions and propensity score matching techniques. We found that colorism plays a significant role in health outcomes of dark-skinned Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and that skin color is a better health predictor than the OMB ethno-racial categories. Our results indicate that Puerto Ricans of the lightest skin tone have better general health than Puerto Ricans who self-described as being of the darkest skin tones. Findings underscore the importance of considering how racial discrimination manifested through colorism affects the health of Latino populations in the US and its territories.
... Esclavo y ciudadano, tiene como objetivo principal contrastar las relaciones interétnicas de Estados Unidos y las Indias Occidentales británicas con las de las Américas española y portuguesa, en algunos momentos del mismo (al hablar de la preeminencia de los negros y la valoración de los mulatos por parte de los "blancos") afirma que los Caribes francés y neerlandés son semejantes al británico y distintos del español (1968: 17-18, 114). Por su parte, Hoetink distingue en el Caribe dos formas de relaciones raciales 5 coloniales: la de la Europa noroccidental (que incluye Gran Bretaña, Francia y Países Bajos y que dio lugar a una estructura racial que dividía rígidamente a blancos, mulatos y negros) y la ibérica, que dio lugar a un continuum racial entre el blanco y el negro (Hoetink, 1971). ...
... Tannenbaum reitera en su clásico y polémico trabajo que la integración de los afrodescendientes a las sociedades americanas dominadas por los eurodescendientes fue mayor en Iberoamérica que en la América inglesa, tanto antes como después de la abolición de la esclavitud (Tannenbaum, 1968: 48-49, 88-90, 98-101) 20 . Por su parte, Hoetink (1971), como se vio, defiende que la principal diferencia entre el Caribe colonizado por la Europa noroccidental y el Caribe ibérico se refiere al tipo de relaciones interétnicas: rígidas en el primer caso y fluidas en el segundo. ...
La conclusión principal de este trabajo es que el Caribe, integrado por 29
entidades políticas, se debe dividir en dos regiones: la española y la germano‐francesa
(integrada por tres subregiones: los Caribes inglés, francés y neerlandés). La primera
(compuesta de Cuba, Puerto Rico y República Dominicana) pertenece a un área
cultural más extensa, Iberoamérica. La segunda (integrada por el resto de las islas
situadas entre Norteamérica y Sudamérica, así como por Bermudas y las tres
Guayanas) constituye por sí sola un área cultural plenamente diferenciada de América,
continente que se considera integrado por tres áreas culturales: Iberoamérica, Caribe
germano‐francés y Norteamérica germano‐francesa. Por su parte, Belice, de acuerdo
con los criterios lingüísticos y étnicos empleados, es un país “híbrido”, en el sentido de
que conjuga características de Iberoamérica y del Caribe germano‐francés. Todo lo
anterior pone en entredicho la validez de las divisiones más usuales actualmente del
continente americano, entre ellas la que lo divide en dos grandes regiones: la América
latina y la América anglosajona.
... Desde a época colonial, as relações raciais, como também as outras relações de poder, parecem ter sido caracterizadas pela relativa ineficácia de regras universais com respeito aos direitos de cidadania (Viotti da Costa, 1985) e, do ponto de vista dos negros e mestiços, pela preferência de soluções individuais para fazer frente à opressão racial, combinada com momentos de resistência silenciosa e, por vezes, de rebelião. Esta situação produziu no Brasil, de forma semelhante aos outros países da variante ibérica do colonialismo (Hoetink, 1967), um sistema racial não polar, caracterizado por um alto grau de miscigenação; uma tradição sincrética no campo da religião e cultura popular; um continuum de cor e uma norma somática hegemônica que têm historicamente colocado os fenótipos negros na escala inferior da noção de "boa aparência". Em torno deste sistema, como produto das tradição das relações raciais, tem-se constituído um conjunto de regras sobre as quais existe um certo e problemático consenso ao qual podemos chamar de habitus racial. ...
... É necessário salientar que alguns aspectos das relações raciais no Brasil, em particular os que dizem respeito à posição do negro na sociedade, sempre foram relativamente internacionais, no sentido de sei'em parecidos com a situação do negro em outros países do Novo Mundo. A sobre-representação dos negros entre os pobres e os "marginais" (the underservingpoor) e as práticas de auto-exclusão de certo tipo de trabalho ou espaço na cidade (seja porque percebidos como negrófobos pelos próprios negros), são impressionantemente parecidos, mesmo quando comparando países com sistemas raciais bem diferentes, como aqueles que pertencem à variante Ibérica ou protestante das relações raciais (Hoetink, 1967). Somente um olhar cego influenciado pela retórica luso-tropicalista pode deixar de notar estas similitudes transnacionais. ...
... More specifically, this stage relates to the contact between colonists and the colonized beginning in the fifteenth century, in which early forms of social hierarchy articulated the positionality of living and deceased Afrodescendants. In the race-based hierarchy that ultimately predominated colonial systems, what Charles Mills refers to as the "somatic norm" occurred, where Europeans' conflation of aesthetics and worth created a spectrum of distance from the constructed Eurocentric cultural and aesthetic norm (Hoetink 1967;Mills 1997, 61). The more distant a group was from this norm, the less agency they were correspondingly afforded. ...
... Anthropologist Harry Hoetink constructed the notion of somatic norm image to further his research. 4 Succinctly put Hoetink 23 somatic norm image refers to any number of somatic traits and the macro acceptance of light skin as the ideal. The associated somatic characteristics including hair texture, eye color etc. is accepted as the standard ideal by the community at-large. ...
... In his formulation, what emerged in Brazil's relatively relaxed racial climate was the so-called "new man (sic) of the tropics." Racial democracy, thus, constituted a form of assimilation predicated on the creolization of the population-in effect a racial melting pot (Degler 1986;Hoetink 1971;Pierson 1942). ...
The simplest answer to the question of what a racial democracy would look like is that it would be a society in which racial differences at the level of identity carried with them no race-specific inequalities. The value of the idea of racial democracy is that, by serving as an ideal type, it simultaneously provides a tool of analysis to assess whether or not the racial barriers to equal citizenship have been overcome and a political goal. More specifically, the idea of racial democracy is intended as a concrete concept that can be used to assess the state of democracy in the nation. Those who have been historically disenfranchised and more recently ignored by policy makers and the public alike function as miner’s canaries. They test the atmosphere of the civil sphere to see if democracy can survive. One of its virtues is that it can provide a comparative frame of reference, allowing us to assess the extent to which identity politics remain tied to redistributive politics, and thus measuring the distance we still have to travel to achieve a just, multicultural, and egalitarian social order.
... Its aim was to create an areaspecific library that would collect and make available books and documentation, becoming a focal point for a strong field of Latin American studies in the country. Its first director was Harry Hoetink, an anthropologist who had taught in Puerto Rico and would establish his reputation as a scholar of race relations in the Caribbean and Latin America in the late 1960s with the publication of The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations (Hoetink, 1967). His intimate knowledge of Latin American reality and his firsthand experience with U.S. academia provided him with great authority. ...
Dutch Latin American studies as a field of academic teaching and research emerged in the late 1960s and became consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s. It began as a purely academic endeavor, but in a changing Dutch and global society in the 1970s it rapidly became connected to and influenced by social and political processes in Latin America. The strong Christian and social-democratic traditions in the Netherlands allowed for strong links between academic researchers and civil society organizations. This resulted in the productive coexistence of academic and more political objectives and activities and allowed Dutch Latin American studies to grow into a dynamic field. A review of this experience calls attention to the importance of local conditions for understanding the consequences of the Cold War for academic research.
Los estudios holandeses sobre Latinoamérica emergieron como un campo de investigación y enseñanza académica a finales de la década de 1960, consolidándose durante los setenta y ochenta. Comenzaron como una actividad puramente académica, pero en la cambiante sociedad holandesa y global de los años setenta, rápidamente se vincularon a y fueron influenciados por los procesos políticos y sociales de América Latina. La fuerte tradición cristiana y social-democrática de Holanda dio lugar a poderosos vínculos entre investigadores académicos y organizaciones civiles. Esto llevó a la coexistencia de metas y actividades académicas al igual que aquellas de índole más política, transformando a los estudios holandeses sobre Latinoamérica en un campo dinámico. Un vistazo a esta experiencia resalta la importancia de las condiciones locales para una debida comprensión de las consecuencias de la Guerra Fría en la investigación académica.
... In their everyday lives individuals tend to deploy perceptive categories without much thought. In other words, normative categories can be so naturalized within culture that individuals might use them completely outside of conscious awareness (Hoetink 1967;Mintz 2005). Yet even when the agreed upon racial categories are naturalized, it is worth noting that they nevertheless offer insight into "socially relevant distinctions" (Mintz 2005, 39). ...
This study engaged the relatively new method of on-line survey methodology to address a few key questions about perceptions of racism in Puerto Rico. The questions addressed whether Puerto Ricans perceive anti-black racism to exist; whether they have experienced it personally, or observed racist behaviors and practices; and in what realms of social life they perceive racism to exist. The article correlates these findings with the way respondents described themselves racially. Thus, this article reports on three distinct areas: (1) the use of on-line survey methodology to address questions of race and racism; (2) quantitative response patterns about racism in PR and among Puerto Ricans and their relationship to how people selfdescribed racially; and (3) to how, when, and where racism is manifested according to respondents. © 2017, Hunter College Center for Puerto Rican Studies. All rights reserved.
... Критики подхода Фрейре возложили на него ответственность за создание мифа о национальных истоках, делающего непроблематичными господство белых и прин ципы расовой иерархии, отбрасывая их в прошлое и заменяя своего рода новым расовым национализмом, оправдывающим и прославляющим смешение рас и гибридизацию [Winant, 2001: 226-228]. С этой точки зрения, расовая демократия -не что иное, как разновидность «плавильного котла» ассимиляции, основанная на креолизации населения [Degler, 1986;Hoetink, 1971;Pierson, 1942]. Несмотря на критику, идея расовой демократии укоренилась не только в Бразилии, но и в других странах Латинской Америки и Карибского бассейна со сходными колониальными историями, причем как в научной, так и в популярной форме. ...
The article considers the racial democracy concept in relation to social inequality. The notion of racial democracy initially described the Latin American racial dynamics which distinguished from the U.S.A. Racial democracy can be defined as racial diversity without racial inequality. The article aims at interpreting the racial democracy as an analytic tool that can be helpful in studying historical configurations and its implications in immigration policies. The first part of the article is devoted to the genesis of the notion of racial democracy and discusses the relationship between the racial exclusion and the institution of citizenship. The second part is a historical overview of the racial exclusion policy illustrated by the example of the evolution of the American immigration laws and precedes a discussion of multiculturalism as a social inclusion tool. In the final part, the paper explores the potential of racial democracy as an analytic tool and as an indicator of the levels of social justice.
... On the other hand, they were terrified by racial-cultural variances that they constantly objectified for the sake of their power and relative status. What followed the birth of Haiti in the Caribbean illustrates how this "terrified [racial] consciousness," in the phrase of Harry Hoetink (1971), has had a lasting impact on state formation and nationalism in this region. ...
Under European colonial domination in the Caribbean, plantation-based exploitation caused the mass migration of agricultural laborers from diverse parts of the world. This led to a mélange of races and cultures and a social stratification system that closely correlated racial and ethnic identities with socioeconomic status. These characteristics of the colonial social structure and their postcolonial repercussions have constantly challenged the political and intellectual elites to address the issues of state formation and nation building. The Caribbean has been, and is likely to remain, a strategic field for inquiry into nationalism in racially and ethnically diverse societies. This is because of its pioneering and continued experiences in transnational migration and the subsequent interracial and intercultural communications, conflicts, and connections.
... Although AAVE serves as a form of resistance to white denigration of nonwhites, it makes many Dominican Americans increasingly subject to another U.S. form of symbolic domination: the black-white racial dichotomy. 5 In the Dominican Republic, Dominicans consider their nationality, ethnicity, and race (raza) to be Dominican, and they do not generally think of themselves as "black" or of significant African descent (Davis 1994:119;Del Castillo and Murphy 1987;Hoetink 1967;Moya Pons 1996). Dominican American teenagers in Providence, Rhode Island, also self-ascribe racial identities that are outside the historical U.S. black-white dichotomy. ...
IntroductionMethods
Multiple Dominican Identities and Heteroglossic LanguageSpanish as Resistance to Phenotype—based Racialization: “We all Speak Spanish, so we're Spanish”Intra—Group Boundaries: “He's Like a Hick, he Talks so much Spanish”Conclusions
... It is manifested in their use of bleaching creams, despite potential health risks (Hall, 2001). The objective of this paper is to address the pathology of such an alien norm-which historian and teacher Harry Hoetink (1971) refers to as the somatic norm imageidentified in the scholarly literature and verified by way of qualitative analysis. ...
The imposition of Western somatic light skin ideals upon social environments is a universal precedent of the Bleaching Syndrome. This study's objective is to determine the impact upon women of color. Study participants were women of color, ages 18 to 24, enrolled as full-time college students. A qualitative method was utilized: two ninety-minute focus group sessions. Following the review of verbal data by the principle investigator, results indicate that women of color are indeed impacted by light skin, a Western somatic ideal. Therefore, women of color must aspire to somatic norms more conducive to escaping the Bleaching Syndrome's pathological influences.
... Until the 2000s, most censuses did not even count by race or ethnicity (Loveman, 2014). In these respects, the region differs from the United States, India, and South Africa, where ethnic and racial categories, membership in those categories, and criteria for classifi cation were codifi ed by the state over decades (Degler, 1971 ;Harris, 1964 ;Hoetink & Hooykaas, 1971 ;Marx, 1998 ;Tannenbaum, 1946). Since Latin American states did not " make race " in a consistent way, contemporary efforts to promote inclusion and representation through group-based policies face hurdles. ...
This book analyzes why and how fifteen Latin American countries modified their political institutions to promote the inclusion of women, Afrodescendants, and indigenous peoples. Through analysis and comparison of experiences in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, the book accounts for the origins of quotas and reserved seats in international norms and civic mobilization. It shows how the configuration of political institutions and the structure of excluded groups set the terms and processes of inclusion. Arguing that the new mechanisms have delivered inclusion but not representation, the book demonstrates that quotas and reserved seats increased the presence in power of excluded groups but did not create constituencies or generate civic movements able to authorize or hold accountable their representatives. Develops a theory of political inclusion and representation Explains the origins and consequences of quotas for women and reserved seats for ethnic minorities Explores the importance, and limitations, of the political inclusion of disadvantaged social groups for democratic politics.
... 2 Pour une interprétation différente de la variante ibérique des relations raciales voir Hoetink (1967). Šansone (1993 : 3) synthétise ainsi le modèle latin ou ibérique : « Les relations raciales en Amérique latine peuvent être caractérisées par un haut degré de métissage, une tradition syncrétique dans le domaine de la religion et de la culture populaire, un continuum de couleur et une norme somatique hégémonique qui a mis historiquement les phénotypes noirs et indien à l'échelon inférieur de la notion de « bonne apparence ». ...
Peut-on parler d'un modele racial propre a l'Amerique Latine ? L'auteur s'efforce tout d'abord de montrer la pertinence de cette question en examinant deux themes communs a l'experience historique des rapports entre Blancs et Noirs dans les pays qui composent cette region : l'ideal du « blanchiment » (projet national fonde sur un metissage selectif ainsi que sur des politiques de peuplement et d'immigration d'origine europeenne) et les notions de la democratie raciale qui, par la diffusion d'une certaine idee de l'homogeneite nationale et par l'occultation de l'existence de divisions sociales ou raciales, ont servi de vehicule au controle social. Dans un second temps, l'auteur examine le processus par lequel ces theories ont perdu de leur legitimite et souligne en premier lieu la production academique bresilienne la plus recente ayant pour theme principal les pratiques racistes et discriminatoires observees dans les secteurs de la sante, de l'education, du marche du travail, de la disposition de l'espace et de la mobilite sociale. Il en conclut que, meme si elles representent un grand progres theorique et une base importante pour la formulation de politiques publiques ayant pour but de diminuer les inegalites raciales, ces recherches ont besoin d'incorporer des approches moins quantitatives et plus anthropologiques, capables de reveler comment le racisme est vecu aussi bien au quotidien que dans certains contextes institutionnels et organisationnels.
... Os anos 1920 foram decisivos em termos de formação da modernidade negra na Europa e nas Américas. Três padrões são invariavelmente apontados pelos pesquisadores (Hoetink 1967 ;Harris 1964) (Stovall 1996;Fabre 1999). Mas, a segregação social do negro significou também a busca de uma estética "propriamente negra", ou seja, uma forma de integração superior, nem subordinada, nem imitativa, como se pode ver por uma carta-manifesto do pintor Aaron Douglas, endereçada ao poeta Langston Hughes, datada provavelmente de 1921 (Quadro 3). ...
No one with even a passing acquaintance with the literature on Mexican society, not to mention the rest of Spanish America, can fail to be impressed by the frequent use of the term mestizo. Despite its ubiquity in the writings of social scientists, however, the concept of the mestizo is customarily employed in a vague fashion and usually left undefined. This is especially evident in the work of anthropologists, who for many years have been preoccupied with defining the Mexican Indian but have rarely focused their analytical powers on the mestizo. The term itself has been used rather loosely to refer to a certain group of people who presumably comprise a majority of the Mexican population, a cultural pattern shared by these people and other Latin Americans, and even a personality type.
Ideally, the study of the political economy of Afro-Latin America should be part and parcel of that of the political economy of Latin America as a whole. Unfortunately, true to the tendency toward fragmentation and specialization in the human as well as in the physical sciences, that has not generally been the case. The problem has been made worse by the low salience of the nonwhite races in the Americas, due to their low socioeconomic and political status. It is further compounded by the ambiguity and evasiveness of the Latin American racial ideology, especially in its Brazilian form, which leads both local and foreign observers and social scientists to conclude first that there is no racial problem (though such a position is no longer seriously held by scholars) and then that race is irrelevant to the study of the region's political economy.
Gonzalo Fernós Maldonado (1887-1966) fue uno de los arquitectos más destacados en Puerto Rico durante las primeras dïcadas del siglo XX, cuyos logros y habilidades lamentablemente han quedado en el olvido colectivo. Este libro, escrito por su nieto, trata de resucitar la historia de su vida en un momento histórico muy diferente al contemporáneo. Captura los vaivenes de una vida mas 'lenta', cuando el automóvil apenas empezaba a ser usado en la isla y la pintura 'a mano' era uno de los mejores mïtodos de capturer el actual sentir y modo de ser. El libro elucida los factores de su éxito artístico, entre estos el papel de Luz López (1889-1969), querida y entrañable esposa de Fernós Maldonado y quien también fue una importante artista (pianista) en su propio derecho.
The overt racism existent during the DuBoisian era superseded the urgency of colorism, which rendered colorism an unspeakable taboo in the Black community. The crux of colorism is an intra-racial byproduct of inter-racial racism. It characterized the implications of skin color for the social interactions between Duboisian era Black Americans. While it was well-known among Blacks, Whites were unaware of its existence. Exemplified by DuBois’ notion of the Talented Tenth of Black Americans who would rescue the race colorism was a pseudo version of White racism. It facilitated rigid class divisions among and between Black Americans. The subsequent idealization of light skin and the denigration of dark skin as pertains to colorism was rationalized by reference to the mulatto hypothesis. Said hypothesis suggested that light-skinned Black Americans were morally, physiologically and intellectually superior to the dark-skinned masses. Eugenicists devised the mulatto hypothesis as an explanation for the existence of exceptional Blacks. Evidence of the mulatto hypothesis persists in the post-DuBoisian era.
A growing body of literature posits that a population’s denial of the salience of racial discrimination acts as a mechanism of its perpetuation. Moreover, scholars locate a population’s propensity to deny racial discrimination in contemporary ideologies of racial mixing or ethnic fusion. Most quantitative studies of public opinion on these issues are limited to Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. This study examines the case of Jamaica. We first (1) examine the extent of Jamaica’s contemporary racial inequality using national census data. We then (2) use nationally representative data from the AmericasBarometer social survey to determine the extent to which a recognition of racial discrimination characterizes Jamaican public opinion. Finally, we (3) explore the salience of an ideology of racial mixing in Jamaica and (4) test whether that ideology affects the likelihood that Jamaicans acknowledge contemporary racial discrimination. Our findings document dramatic social inequality by skin colour in Jamaica and suggest that a majority embrace an ideology that racial mixing is negatively associated with Jamaicans’ recognition of racial discrimination. We discuss our findings and their implications for understanding ideologies of racial mixing and racial inequality in the Americas.
Race relations in Bahia, Brazil, confront ethnic studies with a paradox. On the one hand, there is a very large non-white population, amounting to almost 80 per cent of the total population in the metropolitan area. Moreover, as a result of a history of overt and subtle racial discrimination, in particular in the labour market, poverty is concentrated among black and dark Bahians. On the other hand, historically, Afro-Brazilians hardly act like a political group at all. That is, black identity crystallizes only episodically (mainly during leisure and religious activities) and does not play a major role in party politics and voting habits. Yet this is just part of the paradox: the counterpole of such political weakness is the prestige and vivacity of Afro-Bahian culture. This is a culture that at times enjoys plenty of official recognition — mostly as regards the religious dimension (the Afro-Catholic candomblé religious system), cuisine and music — and which has a major role in the public image of Brazil and Brazilianness at home and abroad, but participation in it cannot be associated with strong identification with blackness. The context of this paradox is characterized, furthermore, by a high degree of intermarriage, a trans-racial cordiality during leisure among the lower classes, and the existence of official and popular discourses about race relations that stress Brazil as a country where class, not colour, matters — the land of ‘racial democracy’.
Prompted by the observations of a European scholar in African-American studies living in South-East Asia, this article addresses the ideological value of whiteness with a view to understanding its apparently global aesthetic fascination and societal power. To this purpose, the article traces the European, American and Asian conceptualization and employment of the signs of whiteness. The first section investigates the correlated philosophical and scientific construction of whiteness as a racial signifier in Europe. The second section focuses on social and cultural practices of white vs. black identification and the critique thereof in the United States. The third section highlights the appeal of whiteness as a status signifier in Asia. Whiteness is commonly employed as a sign of superiority, assumed by the self or assigned to the other (within): the article suggests that such power derives from a common mystical symbolism, upheld by philosophy, sanctioned by science, implemented by social policy and marketed by corporations.
How is racial identity represented in an Afro-Hispanic Caribbean nation like Puerto Rico? And how do racial and ethnic categories shift in the diaspora? In 1990 I directed an ethnographic study of the sociocultural causes of the census undercount in Barrio Gandul, a poor urban community in Santurce (Duany et al., 1995). At the beginning of our fieldwork, my colleagues and I asked our informants: “What race do you consider yourself to belong to?” Responses to this seemingly innocuous question ranged from embarrassment and amazement to ambivalence and silence: many informants simply shrugged their shoulders and pointed to their arms, as if their skin color were so obvious that it did not need to be verbalized. When people referred to others’ race, they often used ambiguous euphemisms (such as “he’s a little darker than me”), without making a definite commitment to a specific racial label. Sometimes they would employ diminutive folk terms like morenito or trigueñita (referring to dark-skinned persons), which are difficult to translate into U.S. categories. For the purposes of this research, it seemed culturally appropriate to collect our impressions of people’s phenotypes as coded in Hispanic Caribbean societies such as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. However, this procedure left open the question of the extent to which the researchers’ racial categories coincided with the subjects’ own perceptions.
In trying to determine whether culture makes a difference, researchers usually compare different ethnic groups in the same society. In that way they try to keep external conditions constant by choosing groups that have similar class backgrounds and that entered the society at roughly the same time. This approach has been taken by several contributors to this volume. In my contribution, however, I look at the ‘same’ group — or rather, two groups that can be considered similar in many respects — in two different countries and try to understand their similarities and differences. A key question is how similarities should be explained and to what degree culture is a viable indicator for interpreting them. The two groups I have chosen to compare are the ‘black’ populations of two countries, Brazil and the Netherlands. Obviously what is ‘black’ in one context or country may be ’brown’ or even ‘white’ in another. By ‘black’ I understand here the people who, in some specific context, see themselves and are seen by outsiders as being of African or partly African descent. Hence, I am not exactly comparing the same ethnic group in two situations. I am comparing people that either identify themselves as ‘black’ or have been constructed as such in two societies.
Examining the variability of enslaved life across the Atlantic World during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries is increasingly possible with the availability of comparable data. This project explores the complex networks that slaves developed between the fields of the plantation and spaces beyond its borders. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, enslaved people living and working on sugar estates across the Caribbean cultivated their own subsistence food crops. In Jamaica, planters implemented this cost-cutting system of self-provisioning in areas unsuitable for sugar cane agriculture. A comparative, quantitative approach elucidates the conditions that facilitated enslaved people's cultivation of surplus in these areas and their access to markets that fostered Jamaica's internal market economy. To systematically examine surplus and access, this project integrates documentary and archaeological sources germane to provision ground suitability and the acquisition of costly market goods. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) analysis of cartographic data drawn from historic survey maps of sugar estates defines the areas available for provision cultivation. Assemblages recovered from slave village contexts on four estates provide a broad sample of goods that enslaved people acquired in the market. The results suggest that the hypothesis that enslaved people with access to a larger amount of provision grounds with favorable conditions had greater access to the markets holds for this dataset. While the areas for surplus production were poor relative to the cane fields, variation between estates in conditions and observable artifact attributes indicate the investment in ceramic vessels based on cost. More broadly, the evidence demonstrates the connections that enslaved people established to turn an exploitative system to their advantage.
Skin whitening has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon and assumed to be related to historical, cultural, and socioeconomic factors. In the following study, the national context of Suriname is linked with the global system of power. Information was obtained about the reasons for using bleaching cosmetics. Differences were found between ethnic groups in Suriname in the frequencies of using bleaching cosmetics and their perceptions of skin color. This is considered to be the key to understanding the perceptions of color and related identities in the intraethnic as well as the interethnic relations at the levels of both the national and global society © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights reserved.
Diseases of the pigment system are common worldwide. They may cause a decrease in quality of life, especially in people of color. Moreover, in some people of color, a normal skin itself can cause problems because these individuals do not accept their natural dark color and strive for a lighter complexion to hopefully increase their quality of life. Skin bleaching is an effort among some people of color to acquire a lighter skin and is common in practically all parts of the world where people of color live. It is generally accepted that skin bleaching is essentially based on racism. Furthermore, there are indications that diseases of the pigment system are racialized. It is important to note that this idea of pigmentary diseases being racialized is a hypothesis, one that is worthwhile to investigate further because it might increase our understanding of the psychosocial structure and context of people with these diseases, thereby helping to improve our (professional) approach toward them. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights reserved.
"AMERICANOS", BRASILEIROS E A COR DA ESPÉCIE HUMANA: UMA RESPOSTA A PETER FRY.
This paper is a case analysis of resource competition, population fluctuations, and ethnicity change resulting from Euroamerican intrusion into Kaibab Paiute territory. The various adaptive strategies employed by the Paiute to cope with resource depletion, pressures to relinquish traditional ethnicity patterns, and depopulation are examined. Since the Kaibab Paiute were one of the last Native American peoples to resist Euroamerican expansion, a study of their case permits an assessment of the process and implications of the "Invasion of America" (Jennings 1975) from a perspective of more than 300 years.
Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir o caráter transitório do tipo de dominação carismática proposta por Max Weber como um modelo de dominação que faria a articulação entre o tipo de dominação tradicional e a racional-legal. Embora levando em consideração que Weber trabalha com tipos ideais que não guardam correlação imediata com a realidade, cumpre neste artigo discutir a elasticidade política da dominação carismática no contexto haitiano que, ao longo de 200 anos tem apresentado esta dominação como o único tipo ideal disponível para acessar o poder no Haiti. O objetivo de reflexão teórica deste ensaio é aprofundar os estudos sobre a dominação carismática como estruturante de cenários políticos considerados frágeis. Existiria nexo causal entre “falência do Estado” e predominância do tipo de dominação carismática? Se assim for, como quantificar o caráter transitório deste tipo de dominação?
Este artigo explora os limites do nacionalismo dominicano que, ao se opor binariamente ao nacionalismo haitiano, se constitui em uma alteridade perfeita que, mesmo assim, não consegue ocultar o princípio de transitabilidade existente na constituição de identidades opostas. Dessa forma, é a partir do trânsito contínuo pela identidade haitiana que o nacionalismo dominicano irá construir seus principais pilares, parecendo perder o seu significado caso esta oposição não seja continuamente reproduzida pelo pensamento social e pela historiografia dominicana.
Introduction In this chapter I argue that there are four modes of ethno-somatic stratification in Europe and the Americas: the North American mode of binary mobilization, the Afro-Caribbean mode of pluralistic underdevelopment, the North European mode of proletarian incorporation, and the Latin mode of hegemonic blanqueamiento or whitening. Each mode refers to a unique configuration of ethno-racial ideology, ethno-demographic mix, ethno-class stratification, and level of societal racialization. Each is the product of distinctive socio-historical trajectories, as well as modern economic, political, and migratory processes. All four modes will be briefly outlined, but because of space constraints and the special interests of this volume, the paper will concentrate on the first three modes mentioned above. The paper begins with a demographic portrait of the black diaspora populations circa 2000. We then move to an analysis of the broad patterns of adjustment by the post-diasporic populations of African-ancestry people in the Americas. Part three discusses the origins and formation of the three modes of the Americas. The fourth, and major, part of the chapter discusses the North European ethno-somatic mode then focuses on the nature and interactions between the three modes of special interest: the North Caribbean, Afro-American, and the British version of the North Atlantic. We end with some concluding observations. A demographic overview Somewhere around 2000-3 some 164,208,800 persons of whole or part-African ancestry lived in Europe and the Americas. In comparative global terms, the African-ancestry diaspora population is not especially large.
In recent years creolization has been employed by anthropologists and sociologists to describe the effects of globalization.' This was particularly stimulated by the work of the Swedish anthropologist Ulf Hannerz.In a much-quoted article in the late 1980s, he described the worldwide cultural interaction resulting from globalization as a'world in creolization'.' He, and a growing number of researchers in his wake, have employed this concept to describe contemporary cultural innovations resulting from global interactive processes. It is also increasingly used as a term in the post-modern preference for hybridity. The renowned sociologist Stuart Hall has referred to the 'aesthetics of creolization' and the anthropologist Vertovec has noted that contemporary cultural phenomena'are more globalized, cosmopolitan and creolized or hybrid than ever'. , Creolization, in their vision, is a kind of hybrid mixture that increasingly binds the world together. This has been accompanied by the abandonment of what social scientists once referred to as cultural essentialism and the desire for authenticitv ' See, for example, f. Fabian, 'Popular culture in Africa: findings and conjectures'; Africa 48:4 (1978), or H.G. Siebers, Creolization and Modernization at the Peiphery: The Case of the Q'echi'es of Guatemala (phD diss. Nijmegen 1996). 'Hannerz (1987). I Stuart Hall (1991:39); Vertovec quoted in Cohen (7997:128). In his analysis of the Black AtlanticPaul Gilroy (1993:46) eloquently rejects 'ethnic absolutism' and pleads for the creativity of'creolization, métissage, mestizaje and hybridity'. This is taken to impassioned heights in Salman Rushdie's defence of SatanicVerses,in which óe term creolization does not in fact occur: 'lf the Sannic Verses is an hing, it's a migrantt-eye view of the world. It is written from the very experience of uprooting, disjuncture and metamorphosis (slow or rapid, painfirl or pleasurable) that is the migrant condition, and from which, I believe, can be derived a metaphor for all humanity [...] The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, óe transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, polidcs, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolution of the Pure. Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migràtion gives to the world, and I have tried to embrace it. The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is alove song to our mongrel selves'(Rushdie 1991:394), In descriptions like this ofpost-colonial, póst-modern identity, creolization represents'a syncretic process oftransverse dynamics that endlessly reworks and transforms the cultural patterns of varied social and historical experiences and identities. The cultural patterns that result from this "crossbreeding" (or cross weaving) undermine any academic or political aspiration for unitary origins or authenticity' (Balutansky & Sourieau 1998:3).
This article follows a research project that collects oral histories of bilingual education teachers from Puerto Rico who migrated to the US Virgin Islands in the late twentieth century. The teachers’ oral histories are used as a case study that provides in-depth analysis of competing discourses related to education and globalization in these two US Caribbean territories. The paper begins by examining intersections between migration and globalization in the Caribbean. Analysis of oral teachers’ accounts of events experienced in both islands is provided, with a focus on how they dealt with tensions tied to floating migration, constructions of “otherness,” language use, and racial formations in their articulation of transnational identities and cultural differences.
This article examines the thesis that a reduction in occupational and educational differentials across cross-cutting lines of differentiation, and a more representative government, will have a redistributive effect on ethnic income distribution. This thesis emerges out of the liberal theory of development which implicitly assumes that equalizing opportunity structures across cultural divisions, and increasing political participation, will eventually affect income disparities between groups. The extent to which ethnic income redistribution is a function of educational reform and a broader political participation is a question that has not been systematically examined cross-culturally. In fact, we know very little about the relative progress of ethnic groups in different parts of the world.
The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1820, edited by R. Elphick and H. Giliomee. Cape Town: Longman 1979.
Increased reliance on alcohol and problem drinking is frequently reported for immigrants of minority group status who move to urban areas. However, for recent migrants from the Dominican Republic, alcohol consumption is lower and drinking problems are fewer due to increased economic opportunity and an emerging morality that disparages heavy drinking and reinforces economic incentives.
In this article I respond to the criticisms and comments of the authors in this symposium on my Latin Americanization of race relations thesis. After I respond to each participant, I attempt to refine and clarify four central aspects of my thesis, namely, the idea of a tri-racial system, the notion of pigmentocracy, the concept of honorary white, and the fractures of this new racial order. I conclude by acknowledging that my ideas are bold and the data for some of my claims somewhat thin, but I also point out that because the racial terrain in the United States is shifting rapidly, new frameworks and ideas are needed to comprehend its new racial reality. Thus, despite the limitations of my thesis, I suggest that it may help analysis to begin thinking anew how race and racism will operate in the 21st century.
This article presents a systematic ethnographic study of emic ethnic classification in Puerto Rico, including a replication and extension of Marvin Harris's (1970) seminal study in Brazil. I address three questions: (1) what are the core emic categories of color? (2) what dimensions of semantic structure organize this cultural domain? and (3) is the assumption of a shared cultural model justified? Data are from two sets of ethnographic interviews in southeastern Puerto Rico, including 23 free listing interviews and 42 structured interviews using Harris's standardized facial portraits. Results indicate a small core of salient emic categories with well-defined semantic structure and high interinformant agreement, reflecting shared cultural understandings of color. I discuss how systematic ethnographic methods can contribute to comparative research on ethnic classification.
After reviewing recent writing on the process of racialization, this essay examines the causes and consequences of the long-standing anti-Haitian prejudice in the Dominican Republic and the more recent anti-Dominican attitudes in Puerto Rico. Identifying the basic similarities and differences between the two cases of inter-group conflict, this article analyzes the social structures and cultural practices that marginalize ethnic minorities in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The author's thesis is that the precarious status of Haitians in the Dominican Republic and Dominicans in Puerto Rico is primarily due to their racialization. The public perception of both groups as black, hampers their full socioeconomic incorporation and externalizes racial prejudice and discrimination against foreign Others that are largely excluded from dominant discourses of national identity.
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