Mixed Race Studies

The Myth of Brazil’s Racial Democracy

aperture
2018-04-18

Amelia Rina
Brooklyn, New York

Jonathas de Andrade, Eu, mestiço, 2017–18 Courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York

In a new exhibition, Jonathas de Andrade confronts his country’s complicated past and present.

“Brazil is renowned in the world for its racial democracy,” begins anthropologist Charles Wagley in the 1952 study Race and Class in Rural Brazil. Produced by Columbia University and UNESCO, the text describes ethnographic studies performed by Wagley and his colleagues in four regions of Brazil. In each region, men and women from what they determined to be the four major racial groups—caboclo (indigenous and Afro-Brazilian), preto (Afro-Brazilian), mulato (Afro-Brazilian and white European), and branco (white European)—were shown photographs of other Brazilians from these categories and then asked to assign them different traits, such as most/least attractive, best/worst worker, most/least honest, most/least wealthy, et cetera. This binary restriction was one of the study’s major flaws that first intrigued Brazilian artist Jonathas de Andrade, and inspired his recent project, Eu, mestiço, currently on view at Alexander and Bonin…

Read the entire review here.

‘A dirty deed’: Fort McMurray Métis demand apology after historic eviction of an Indigenous settlement

CBC News
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
2018-04-25

David Thurton, Mobile Journalist
Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada

Moccasin Flats is the unresolved story of how at least 12 Indigenous families were evicted or relocated from a Fort McMurray riverside community in the late 1970s to make way for a city expanding feverishly to accommodate oilsands growth.

That history still pains Fort McMurray Métis president Gail Gallupe.

“It was really a dirty deed,” Gallupe said. “To be ignored and to be treated so shabbily in those days. There was so much discrimination and so much racism.”

On Monday, the Fort McMurray Métis local announced it will commission an academic study that aims to clarify details of the contentious removal of the predominantly Métis settlement for oilsands development…

Read the story here.

I’m Not My Mother’s Cleaning Lady

narratively: Human Stories, Boldy Told
2018-04-30

Lisa W. Rosenberg

Loveis Wise

People see an elderly white woman and her middle-aged black daughter and assume I must be the hired help.

“Who do you work for?” the maintenance man wants to know, eyes narrowed slightly. I register his accent just as he’s appraised my brown skin. English is not his first language. We’re alone in the laundry room of my mother’s condo, where I’ve been folding sheets. He’s just walked in, toolbelt at his hips, and stumbled upon an unfamiliar woman of color. I reason that, to him, brown skin plus housework means Help. Either I work for someone in the building, or else I’m an interloper from the housing project across the street.

As I consider the best response, my gaze takes in the name-tag pinned to his front pocket. “Tony.”

He’s subjugated me with his question, but I know his name. Should I use it and answer directly? With snark?

“I’m self-employed,” I might respond, telling the truth but playing dumb. “I have a private psychotherapy practice in New Jersey.” I could add, “I’m very fortunate. My work schedule allows me to visit my mother and do her laundry from time to time.”

“I’m visiting my mother,” I say benignly. “Just helping her out.” I smile as if it’s a quaint indulgence to do a loved one’s chores, as if I’ve sent the servants back to their families to enjoy a day of rest…

Read the entire article here.