Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

My mother was Martha Bell Smith, the daughter of Luanda Smith. Grandma Cindy, a fair-skinned slave, was the daughter of a slave by that slave’s master. As a teenager, she was purchased from a white family in Memphis, Tennessee. Her purchaser—a man known to my family as “Cap’n Anderson”—turned out to be my grandfather.

Ada Lois’s Mother, Martha Bell Smith Sipuel

Cap’n Anderson carried Grandma Cindy to his plantation near Belarie, Arkansas, in Chicot County. There he raised two separate families “in the same yard.” One family was by his wife, a white woman who bore him seven children, the other by my grandmother, who also bore seven. The two sets of children, each child born within two months of its counterpart, were delivered by the same black midwife. One set lived in a large white house in the middle of the plantation. The other, the group that included my mother, lived about a mile away in a small but tidy cabin.

The children of both families played together. In fact, I have heard my mother often speak of her white “brothers” and “sisters.” According to family legend, one of the white brothers became a prominent Arkansas politician, who went on to serve the state’s (all-white) voters for several years in the capitol at Little Rock. My mother told me that she once had called him when she passed through Little Rock.

According to her, his voice joyfully greeted her on the telephone. In fact, he invited her to come by the capitol for a friendly brother-sister visit; but, he added, she would have to keep her “little pickaninnies” away. Mother slammed down the phone. As far as I know, she never spoke to her brother again. His white wife sent her the newspaper clipping that announced the esteemed gentleman’s death.

Grandma Cindy’s seven children all kept the name Smith, perhaps in ironic tribute to an earlier master. The oldest was Frank, who was born a slave on his own father’s plantation in 1862, during the Civil War. The others were Kitty, Lucinda, Nan, Scott, and Gertrude. My mother, Martha Bell Smith, was the youngest, born in 1892.

My mother’s memory was that Cap’n Anderson’s black children had little use for their white father. When he would call on my grandmother, he often brought them little gifts of candy and the like, but the children all feared him. It was not that he ever beat or otherwise abused them. Instead, it seemed that they all instinctively distrusted the man and rejected what they took to be his immoral ways with their own mother. That attitude always troubled Grandma Cindy, who overlooked the circumstances of their relationship to proclaim that Cap’n Anderson was the only man that she had ever loved and the only man who ever had touched her.

When Frank was a very young man, he built a modest house and moved his mother and younger siblings off the plantation. Mother grew up in Dermott, Arkansas. The family baby, she had the best of what little was available, and she was the only one to receive any substantial education. After finishing Dermott’s public schools, she graduated from the little two-year teachers’ academy in the town and became a schoolteacher herself.

Ada Lois’s Father, Bishop Travis B. Sipuel

Stunningly beautiful, with light skin, hazel eyes, and hair that bore the slightest curl, she was teaching when she met my father, a handsome, very dark-skinned railroad man nearly fifteen years older than she. He was smitten hard and immediately. All of Grandma Cindy’s fair-skinned children married extremely dark spouses. His greatest drawback seemed to be his age. I remember her telling me that when he came courting she would tell her mother, “Mama, here comes your beau. He must be coming for you; he’s too old for me.”

Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, A Matter of Black and White, The Autobiography of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). 7-10. http://www.oupress.com/ECommerce/Book/Detail/690/a%20matter%20of%20black%20and%20white.

Health in Black and White: Debates on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Brazil

Posted in Anthropology, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Dissertations, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2012-01-10 22:56Z by Steven

Health in Black and White: Debates on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Brazil

University of California, San Diego
2011
320 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3458492
ISBN: 9781124703657

Anna Pagano

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology

In 2006, the Brazilian Health Council approved a National Health Policy for the Black Population. The Policy is striking because it promotes the image of a biologically and culturally discrete black population in a nation where racial classification has historically been relatively fluid and ambiguous. It transforms established patterns of racialization by collapsing “brown” (pardo) and “black” (preto) Brazilian Census categories into a single “black population” (população negra) to be considered a special-needs group by the public health apparatus. This construction resembles the United States’ dominant mode of racialization based on hypodescent and represents a significant departure from hegemonic portrayals of Brazil as a racially mixed nation. Furthermore, the Policy challenges national ideologies of racial and cultural unity by affirming the existence of an essential black body with specific health concerns, as well as an essential Afro-Brazilian culture that materializes in recommendations for culturally competent health care. As such, the Policy constitutes an important site for new negotiations of racial and cultural identity in Brazil.

In this dissertation, I explore the political and social implications of treating racial and ethnic groups differently within Brazilian health care. I examine how the re-definition and medicalization of racial and cultural identities unfolds in public clinics, temples of Afro-Brazilian religion, and social movements based in São Luís and São Paulo, Brazil. Through an analysis of ethnographic data that I collected over twenty-four months, I assess the impact of recent developments in race-conscious health policy on Brazilians’ lived experiences of race, ethnicity, and health disparities.

I argue that the new Policy, and its associated health programs, signals the emergence of a new biopolitical paradigm in which the Brazilian state formalizes citizens’ racial and ethnic differences in order to address inequalities among them. I also show that many aspects of these programs, which incorporate global discourses and concepts related to health equity, fail to resonate with Brazilian citizens’ notions about race and health. Consequently, patients and healthcare providers often resist the new measures. The result is a disjuncture between policy and practice that ultimately hinders Brazil’s efforts to reduce health inequalities among its citizens.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Signature Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Vita
Abstract of the Dissertation
PART I: RACE, MEDICINE, AND BIOPOLITICS IN BRAZIL
- Chapter 1: Introduction
  - Race and Ethnicity
  - Biologization and the Re-Biologization of Race
  - Medicalization
  - Medicalization of Race
  - Biopower and Biopolitics
  - Applying a Biopolitical Framework to the Medicalization of Race
  - Race and National Identity in Brazil
  - Black Movement Activism
  - Public Health in Brazil
  - Ethnographic Field Sites
- Chapter 2: Everyday Narratives on Race, Racism, and Health
  - Patients’ Narratives on Race and Health
  - Health Care Professionals’ Narratives on Race and Health
  - Patients and Providers: A Counter-Biopolitics
PART II: THE BLACK HEALTH AGENDA
- Chapter 3: The Birth of the Black Health Agenda in Brazil
  - Black Health Activism in Brazil
  - The Black Health Agenda in São Paulo
  - The Black Health Agenda in São Luís
- Chapter 4: The Black Health Epistemic Community in Brazil
  - The Politics of Categorization
  - The Imperative of Self-Declaration
  - Etiological Claims
  - Medicalizing Racism
  - Discourses of Difference
  - Implications for Citizenship
  - Conclusion
Part III: AFRO-BRAZILIAN RELIGIONS AND HEALTH
- Chapter 5: Health and Healing in Afro-Brazilian Religions
  - Afro-Brazilian Religions: A Brief Background
  - Mãe Letícia
  - Pai Cesar
  - Healing in Afro-Brazilian Religions
- Chapter 6: Afro-Brazilian Religions and the State
  - Partnerships between Terreiros and SUS: Rehabilitating History
  - Razor Blades and Comic Strips
  - Other Sources of Conflict
  - Cultural Competence and the Terreiro
  - De-Sacralizing the Terreiro
  - Conclusion
- Chapter 7: Afro-Brazilian Religions and Ethnic Identity Politics in the Brazilian
  - Public Health Arena
  - Terreiro Health Activists’ Identity Politics
  - Conclusion
- Chapter 8: Health in Black and White
Bibliography

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Household Income, 2000
Figure 2. Distribution of Race/Color (Pretos and Pardos), 2000
Figure 3. Public Health Facilities and Distribution of Population by Color in São Paulo, 2000
Figure 4. Population Density of São Paulo, 2000

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Characteristics of Sample Population
Table 2. Self-Identified Race or Color
Table 3. Beliefs Regarding Health Outcomes between Blacks and Whites

Purchase the dissertation here.

Tags: Anna Pagano, São Luís, São Paulo, University of California at San Diego

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