Mixed Race Studies

Maroon – On the Trail of Creoles in North America

National Film Board of Canada
2005
Running Time: 01:15:08

André Gladu, Director

Colette Loumède, Producer

Louisiana’s Creole culture helped shape the New World and contributed to the emergence of jazz. But what remains of this unique, mixed-race society, with roots in France, Africa, the Caribbean, Spain and America? Maroon searches for the origins of this little-understood and endangered culture and show how it is doing today. In this second part of his La piste Amérique series, documentary filmmaker André Gladu continues his exploration of the Francophone presence in North America. Maroon is a vibrant travelogue that goes back into history in order to shed light on the present. In French with English subtitles.

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Inclusionary Discrimination: Pigmentocracy and Patriotism in the Dominican Republic

Political Psychology
Volume 22, Issue 4 (December 2001)
pages 827–851
DOI: 10.1111/0162-895X.00264

Jim Sidanius, Professor of Psychology and African and African American Studies
Harvard University

Yesilernis Pena

Mark Sawyer, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles

This study explored the nature of racial hierarchy and the connection between racial identity and Dominican patriotism using a questionnaire given to an in situ sample in the Dominican Republic. The analyses compared the contradictory expectations of the “racial democracy” (or “Iberian exceptionalism”) thesis and social dominance theory. Results showed that despite the very high level of racial intermarriage in the Dominican Republic, there was strong evidence of a “pigmentocracy,” or group-based social hierarchy based largely on skin color. Furthermore, despite a slight tendency for people to give slightly higher status ratings to their own “racial” category than were given to them by members of other “racial” categories, this pigmentocracy was highly consensual across the racial hierarchy. These results were consistent with the expectations of social dominance theory. However, in contrast to similar analyses in the United States and Israel, these Dominican findings showed no evidence that members of different “racial” categories had different levels of patriotic attachment to the nation. Also in contrast to recent American findings, there was no evidence that Dominican patriotism was positively associated with anti-black racism, social dominance orientation, negative affect toward other racial groups, or ethnocentrism, regardless of the “racial” category one belonged to. These latter results were consistent with the racial democracy thesis. The theoretical implications of these somewhat conflicting findings are discussed.

Read the entire article here.

Pigmentocracy

Freedom’s Story: Teaching African American Literature and History
National Humanities Center
April 2010

Trudier Harris, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English, Emerita
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Definition and Background

In the past couple of decades, the word pigmentocracy has come into common usage to refer to the distinctions that people of African descent in America make in their various skin tones, which range from the darkest shades of black to paleness that approximates whiteness. More specifically, the “ocracy” in pigmentocracy carries with it notions of hierarchical value that viewers place on such skin tones. Lighter skin tones are therefore valued more than darker skin tones. Such preferences have social, economic, and political implications, as persons of lighter skin tones historically were frequently—and stereotypically—viewed as being more intelligent, talented, and socially graceful than their darker skinned black counterparts. Blacker blacks were viewed as unattractive, indeed ugly, and generally considered of lesser value. Europeans standards of beauty thus dominated an African people for most of their history in America.

Although the word pigmentocracy may have come into widespread usage fairly recently, the concept extends throughout the history of Africans on American soil. During slavery, black people who were fathered by their white masters often gained privileges based on their lighter coloring. Indeed, one reported pattern is that blacks of lighter skin were reputedly selected to work in the Big Houses of plantation masters while blacks of darker hues were routinely sent to the fields. Moreover, one of the origins of the Dozens, the ritual game of insult in African American culture, is reputed to have developed as a result of slurs darker skinned blacks who worked in the fields hurled at lighter skinned blacks because their mothers had given birth to children sired by white masters. Some masters who recognized their paternity publicly sometimes sent their partially colored offspring to the North to be educated. This practice explains in part the belief that blacks of lighter skin were more intelligent (they simply had more educational opportunities). It was convenient to the mythology of slavery to suggest this pattern as well, for even without formal admission, whites were aware that some blacks looked more like them than others. Since many theories of bestiality and dehumanization were aligned with darker skinned blacks, it was perhaps preferable to be more tolerant of the lighter skinned ones. Even this, however, was not a consistent pattern, for theories also developed about mongrelization, that is, the mixing of black and white blood, leading to extreme anti-social behavior in persons so endowed.

Value based on skin tones led to some interesting historical developments both within and outside African American communities. To prevent blacks fathered by white masters from making claims on their masters, children born to enslaved women were legally designated to take the status of those women. Blond-haired, blue-eyed enslaved persons, therefore, could not change their condition through any legal process. To ensure that this pattern could not be broken, anyone determined to have had black blood in one of their ancestors five generations removed was still designated “Negro.” Mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, sextaroons [hexadecaroon?], and whatever word would define a person who had 1/32 black blood [dotriacontaroon??] were all designated to be fully black by laws of American society. “The mighty drop” of black blood, as some scholars refer to it, was powerful enough to control generations of persons legally classified as black who might otherwise have been classed as white or who might have passed for white…

Read the entire article here.

The myth of racial democracy and national identity in Brazil

The New School, New York, New York
February 2006
195 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3239941
ISBN: 9780542943904

Leone Campos de Sousa

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

In the 1930s and 40s, both government and academics popularized the notion that several centuries of miscegenation had rendered Brazilian society uniquely free from racial prejudice and discrimination, a society in which citizens of all ‘races’ and ethnicities lived in harmony and had equal access to societal advantages. Since the 1950s, however, social scientists and black activists have insistently denounced the Brazilian myth of racial democracy as disingenuous for occluding racial inequalities. Indeed, statistics-oriented studies have largely documented the discrepancy in levels of socioeconomic conditions between whites and nonwhites in Brazil.

More recently, scholars of race have claimed the myth of racial democracy is in truth part of a deliberate ‘racial policy’ designed by white elites and enforced by the State to subjugate blacks and perpetuate white domination. They are committed to demystify the myth of racial democracy and enhance the racial consciousness of the ‘non-white’ population, who could thus politically defeat ‘racial hegemony.’ Even the Brazilian State, which has traditionally cultivated the myth of racial democracy, now rejects the idea that ‘race is not an issue in Brazil.  The last two administrations have implemented racial quotas to increase the access of ‘racial minorities’ to public universities and jobs in the public sector.

These efforts notwithstanding, it is a fact that the large majority of blacks and mixed-race people in Brazil have not been inclined to cultivate a strong racial identity. In fact, evidence shows that most Brazilians, regardless of ‘race,’ remain convinced that their society is blessed with relatively harmonious racial relations and oppose the ‘racialization’ of society explicitly proposed by this solution. Moreover, public opinion has fiercely rejected race-based affirmative action measures.

To make sense of Brazilians’ die-hard belief in the idea of racial democracy, I reconstruct the trajectory of this concept in the light of some theories of nationalism, especially Liah Greenfeld’s. I demonstrate that this myth was crucial to Brazilian national identity, and its long-lasting significance attests to the power of nationalism in Brazil.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction
  • I. Race and Nationality in Brazil
  • II. Theoretical Framework
  • III. The Relevance of The Topic and Further Research
  • IV. Methodology and Sources
  • V. Structure of The Dissertation
• Chapter 2: Constructing An Identity: Nation-Building and Race in Brazil
  • I. Early Nationalism in Brazil
  • II. In Search of A “European” Identity
  • III. Miscegenation As “Whitening”
  • IV. The Rise of “Aggressive” Nationalism
  • V. Getúlio Vargas and The Triumph Of Brazilian Nationalism
  • VI. Gilberto Freyre And The Myth of Racial Democracy
  • VII. Conclusion
• Chapter 3: Deconstructing The Myth of Racial Democracy
  • I. From Fact to Myth
  • II. Challenging The Myth of Racial Democracy
  • III. The Myth Survives
  • IV. Conclusion
• Chapter 4: The Myth of racial Democracy As National Identity: Three Alternative Explanations
  • I. Race And Nationality By Thomas Skidmore
  • II. Anthony Marx’s Making Race And Nation
  • III. Race Vs. Nation: Hanchard’s Orpheus and Power
  • IV. Conclusion
• Chapter 5: The Myth Persists: Brazilians reaction to Affirmative Action Policies
  • I. The Increasing Influence of The Black Movement
  • II. The Controversy About Affirmative Action Policies in Brazil
  • III. Conclusion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
  • I. Theories Of Nationalism And The Myth Of Racial Democracy
  • II. Alternative Explanations: A Critique
  • III. Globalization Then And Now: The Case of Brazil
• Bibliography

Introduction

This dissertation focuses on the role of the myth of racial democracy in the formation of Brazilian national identity. It discusses why the idea that Brazil’s multiethnic population lives in racial harmony has persisted despite centuries of slavery, as well as evidence of deeply ingrained racial prejudice against blacks, Indians, and the mixed-race people. This study argues that the myth of racial democracy, elaborated by Brazilian intellectuals in the first half of the last century, draws its strength from the fact that it was able to offer an answer to society’s apprehensions and misgivings about the large colored population in Brazil. Brazilian intellectuals resented popular European theories about the existence of a link between underdevelopment and racial composition, and responded by interpreting in a positive light what had been traditionally seen as the country’s Achilles’ heel: miscegenation. Racial mixture became the very basis of the concept of racial democracy that has since been crucial in the formation of Brazilian national identity.

Race and National Identity in Brazil

Until recently, both the Brazilian population and intelligentsia conceived of their society as relatively free of racial prejudice and discrimination, a society in which citizens of all “races” and ethnicities lived in harmony with similar access to societal advantages. It was also assumed that this laudable trait of Brazilian society reflected the widespread process of mestiçagem (miscegenation) that has taken place in that country since the colonial era. Although the celebration of mestiçagem as a distinct feature of Brazil can be traced to the mid-nineteenth century, it was in the 1930s that the discourse on Brazil as a “racial democracy” was accepted as a credible depiction of social reality by the cultivated elites and incorporated into popular jargon.

The racism-free image of Brazilian society gained recognition after the publication of Casa-Grande & Senzala in 1934, written by Gilberto Freyre, a young Brazilian social scientist recently graduated from Columbia University. Freyre sought to uncover the fundamental characteristics of Brazil’s society and culture. Although the main thesis of his book refers to the role of the colonial patriarchal family as the foundation of Brazilian society, Casa-Grande & Senzala also celebrates Brazil as a “hybrid civilization”—the product of a blending of Africans, Indians, and Europeans (primarily Portuguese).

The country he describes is not a racial paradise. He recognizes the structural disadvantages that blacks and mestiços (mixed-race) faced both in slavery and in their attempts toward social mobility after freedom, topic he further developed later in Sobrados e Mucambos. Freyre claims that racial miscegenation and cultural amalgamation in Brazil has not only created a new type of society but also founded the basis of a unique variety of ethnic and social democracy. According to him, the relative tolerance and communicability between the races engendered in the casa grandes (the masters’ mansions in the colonial era made modern race relations in Brazil less antagonistic than in any other country. Even though he never used the expression “racial democracy” in his Casa-Grande & Senzala, the author did suggest that:

Perhaps nowhere else is the meeting, intercommunication, and harmonious fusion of diverse or, even antagonistic cultural traditions occurring in so liberal a way as it is in Brazil… the Brazilian regime cannot be accused of rigidity or of a lack of vertical mobility, and in a number of social directions it is one of the most democratic, flexible, and plastic regimes to be found anywhere.

Some empirical facts seemed indeed to corroborate the discourse about the virtues of racial relations in Brazil. As a multiracial country, with a long history of slavery, the country has never witnessed, as in the United States or South Africa, relevant civil rights or racial-based movements. Racial discrimination had been declared illegal since the inauguration of the Republic in 1889. Brazil’s system of racial classification employs a color system—dividing Brazilians into whites, blacks, pardos, and yellows – which is perceived as a mere objective description of reality, as opposed to categories that evoke clear-cut racial or ethnic descent such as “Afro” or “Native” Brazilians…

…By the late 1970’s, the image of Brazil as a racial democracy came under fierce attack by many scholars and black activists who have claimed that it is in reality a veiled form of racism, part of a deliberate policy created by the Brazilian “white elites,” and enforced by the State, to subjugate blacks and mixed-raced peoples. This has been especially suggested by a new generation of scholars of race influenced by American scholarship on racial relations as well as by Abdias Nascimento. As Peter Fry has noted, for these authors. Brazil no longer represents a superior alternative but rather “an archaic and obscurantist system of race relations that must give way to the ‘reality’ of clearly defined races.”…

Purchase the dissertation here.