GalleryDAAS: Photographs by Ed West

Posted in Africa, Arts, Caribbean/Latin America, Live Events, Media Archive, South Africa, United States on 2014-03-11 19:08Z by Steven

GalleryDAAS: Photographs by Ed West

University of Michigan
G648 Haven Hall
505 S State Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
2014-03-13 through 2014-05-02
Opening Reception: 2014-03-14, 17:30-20:00 CDT (Local Time)

Hosted by the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS)

GalleryDAAS presents So Called, a photography series by award-winning artist and U-M professor Edward West. Curated by Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, So Called is a transnational project about multi-ethnic identities in three locations: Honolulu, Hawaii, Havana, Cuba and Cape Town, South Africa. The series includes photographic portraits of individuals drawn from these communities and focuses on the issue of race, specifically the mixing of races and its social complexities. While the mixing of races has long been a consequence of diasporic/nomadic history, we have only recently found a place in our cultural imaginary for a fuller representation of these collective and individual identities and destinies. The introduction of a mixed race category on the U.S. census, literary and filmic treatments of racialized lives, the emergence of postcolonial studies, all suggest an expanded space for the reception of ideas and issues concerning creolization. See GalleryDAAS here.

A practicing artist for more than 30 years, Edward West’s creative work includes photography, collage, and installation. His exhibitions include installations at the Smithsonian Institution, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rose Art Museum in Boston, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of American Art, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

For more information, click here.

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MiC Drop: Let’s talk about race

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Media Archive, United States on 2014-02-21 22:34Z by Steven

MiC Drop: Let’s talk about race

The Michigan Daily
The Campus Newspaper of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
2014-01-20

Rima Fadlallah, Michigan in Color Editor
Jerusaliem Gebreziabher, Michigan in Color Editor
Kayla Upadhyaya, Michigan in Color Editor

MiC check 1, 2. 1, 2. Can you hear us? Because we’re here.

We are Michigan in Color, the Daily’s first opinion section designated as a space for and by students of color at the University of Michigan. Welcome! MiC is a place for people of color to voice their opinions and share experiences that are overshadowed by dominant narratives — or the history, stories and perspectives that privilege conformity and make it into the mainstream, marginalizing all other narratives in the process. We hope MiC will elevate conversations on race, identity, liberation and social justice while engaging specifically with communities of color on campus.

Race is a topic that can elicit several different emotions; from shame, pride, anger, confusion, love, discomfort, or all of the above, this space is here to explore it all. We want to unearth “taboos.” We want the topics that feel a bit too coarse to talk about in a crowded coffee shop to roll right off your tongue in this safe space. We want to challenge the historical whiteness of The Michigan Daily by creating this long-needed space that will hopefully lead to a more inclusive newsroom and a better informed campus.

To kick off this exciting new project, we will start at the roots of MiC: What exactly does “person of color” mean?…

…As the founding editors of Michigan in Color, this project means a lot to us. We’re excited; we’re ready.

I’m Jerusaliem Gebreziabher, and I’m here because as a victim of internalized racism (sometimes self-inflicted) I needed this space four years ago. As a first generation American with parents hailing from Ethiopia and heavy strains of Italian blood in my veins, I struggled to identify with anyone and was afraid of being stigmatized if I did.

Although I know myself to be more than my race (ironically I’m often mistaken for being everything but Black), I found it hard to find my place on this campus for fear of being lumped into another category. Throughout my life, I’ve felt waves of shame and pride for who I am, where I’ve come from, or the undeniable evidence my physical features reveal about my identity. MiC is a space where I hope to reconcile some of this conflict and connect to those with shared experiences.

I’m Kayla Upadhyaya, and I’m here because I can still recall the overwhelming sense of affirmation and safety I felt the first time I found myself in a room of only other people of color here at the University. With a father who immigrated from India and a white mother, racial identity is oftentimes a source of confusion for me. But over time, my mixed racial background has become as important to who I am and my writing as is my identity as a feminist, and MiC is a space where I can not only explore those parts of my identity but also connect with other PoCs and write about the issues that truly matter to me…

Read the entire article here.

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The Duty to Miscegenate

Posted in Dissertations, Media Archive, Philosophy on 2013-10-24 22:21Z by Steven

The Duty to Miscegenate

University of Michigan
152 pages
2013

Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy)

In ‘The duty to miscegenate’, I harness John Stuart Mill’s 19th century theory of social freedom to explain and to dismantle contemporary racialised and gendered injustice. In the first chapter—Social stigmatisation: ‘a social tyranny’—I argue that persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women were, in the past, unjustly stigmatised by legal penalties against ‘miscegenation‘ and are still, today, unjustly stigmatised by white male avoidance of cross-racial marriage and companionship. In the second chapter—Encounters that count: ‘a foundation for solid friendship’—I argue that we can dismantle this stigmatisation, by engaging in regular and frequent cross-racial commensality with persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women. In the third chapter—White right: ‘a right to avoid’—I argue that, although we have a right to avoid commensal encounters with others, we do not have a right to avoid persons we racialise as black. On the contrary, we have a duty to encounter them, on terms of equality and intimacy.

Table of Contents

  • DEDICATION
  • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  • LIST OF TABLES
  • 1. Social stigmatisation: ‘a social tyranny’
    • The chief mischief of the legal penalties
    • They strengthen the social stigma
  • 2. Encounters that count: ‘a foundation for solid friendship’
    • The real remedy for breaking caste is inter-marriage
    • Another plan of action for the abolition of caste is to begin with inter-caste dinners
  • 3. White right: ‘a right to avoid’
    • We have a right to avoid it
    • A right to avoid blacks?
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the entire dissertation here.

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The Cuban Remix: Rethinking Culture and Political Participation in Contemporary Cuba

Posted in Anthropology, Caribbean/Latin America, Dissertations, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-06-17 00:00Z by Steven

The Cuban Remix: Rethinking Culture and Political Participation in Contemporary Cuba

University of Michigan
2008
555 pages

Tanya L. Saunders

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology)

This dissertation examines the post-1959 activism of Cuba’s socially critical artists and intellectuals, and the effects of the Cuban state’s institutionalization of culture. I analyze the Cuban underground hip-hop movement as a case study of the ways in which Black artists and intellectuals in Cuba have employed cultural aesthetics to challenge contemporary inequalities organized around race, class, gender, and sexuality. I address the social context in which the Cuban underground hip-hop movement emerged by linking it to Cuba’s revolutionary project and to other counter-cultural social movements in Cuba’s history and from other post-colonial contexts. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic, historical, and interview-based research, the study engages with existing theories of the state, culture, civil society and the public sphere, but also reveals their limitations, particularly when applied to non-European contexts. As such, the dissertation offers significant insights into the relations between politics and culture, hegemony and resistance, history and the imagination of a better future, both in Cuba and beyond.

Table of Contents

  • DEDICATION
  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • LIST OF FIGURES
  • Chapter I: Introduction
    • 1.1 Cuban Underground Hip-Hop
    • 1.2 The Organization of the Dissertation
    • 1.3 Contextual Considerations: Latin American Politics and the Coloniality of Knowledge
    • 1.4 Contextual Considerations: The Cuban Revolution and the Aesthetic Debates
  • Chapter II: Methodology
    • 2.1 Background
    • 2.2 Developing a Research Agenda
    • 2.3 Phase One
    • 2.4 Phase Two
    • 2.5 Phase Three
    • 2.6 Data Collection
  • Section I
    • Chapter III: Public Spaces, Cultural Spheres: Rethinking Theories of Political Participation, Civil Society and Social Change
      • 3.1: Subaltern Critiques of Cold War Politics
      • 3.2 Post-Socialist? Neocolonial? Republican Socialism? Reflections on Cuba‘s State Project
        • Republican Ideals within a Socialist State
      • 3.3 Citizenship, Democracy and Civil Society in the Anglo-American Metanarrative of Citizenship
        • Citizenship and Civic Participation
      • 3.4 Discussion: ‘Non-Western’ Challenges to Social Change, Political Participation and Civil Society
    • Chapter IV: Civil Society and Art Worlds: Rethinking Politics and Political Participation
      • 4.1 Making the Connections: Art and Social Change
      • 4.2 Rethinking Cultural Logics: Culture, Political Participation and Grassroots Activism
      • 4.3 The Base and Superstructure of Culture: The Institutional Structure of Cuban Culture
      • 4.4 The Ministry of Culture
      • 4.5 Discussion
  • Section II
    • Chapter V: Art and Revolution: Cuba‟s Artistic Social Movements and Social Change
      • 5.1 The alternative music scene: hip-hop and Anti-Modernist Aesthetics
      • 5.2 The Marginal Existence of Cuban Rock within Cuban Culture
      • 5.3 Nueva Trova: The Cuban Protest Music Movement
      • 5.4 Reflections on My First Nueva Trova Show
    • Chapter VI: Race, Place and Colonial Legacies: Underground hip-hop and a Racialized Social Critique
      • 6.1 Race and Cuba: Historical Considerations
      • 6.2 American Occupation and the Creation of the Cuban Republic 1898-1912
      • 6.3 The Revolutionary State Attempts to Solve the Race Problem in Cuba
      • 6.4. Making the Linkages: Discussion and Some Additional Thoughts
      • 6.5. Ethnographic Notes: Racial Identity in Contemporary Cuba
      • 6.6. “Everyone Knows That Whites Exist, But No One‘s Sure About The Blacks” Theoretical Perspectives on Art, hip-hop and Transnational Blackness
    • Chapter VII: Racial Identity and Revolution: The (Re-)Emergence of a Black Identity Among Havana‟s Underground Youth
      • 7.1 Cuban Underground Hip-Hop and Symbols of Blackness
      • 7.1a Raperos, Activistas, Revolutionaries: Underground Hip-Hop and Social Change
      • 7.2 Notes on Language
        • 7.2.1 Underground hip-hop/Comercialización/Institucionalización
      • 7.3 Transmitting Blackness: Graffiti, T-Shirts and the Black Experience
      • Figure 7q. Album cover, Jodido Protagonista, by Randeée Akozta (independently produced, circa 2004).
      • 7.4 Underground Graffiti: NoNo La Grafitera
      • 7.5 Section Summary/Concluding Remarks
  • Section III
    • Chapter VIII: Cuba‟s Sexual Revolution? Women, Homosexuality and Cuban Revolutionary Policy
      • 8.1 All the Women Are Straight and All the Homosexuals are Men: Gender and Female (Homo-) Sexuality
      • 8.2. Silent Women, Invisible Lesbians: Researching the Experiences of Lesbians in Cuba
      • 8.3 Notes on Contemporary Lesbian, Gay Life in Cuba
    • Chapter IX: “Siempre Hay Lucha/There Is Always a Struggle”: Black Women, Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba
      • 9.1 (1). ―No Particular Racial Subjectivity‖
      • 9.2 (2). The Racially Conscious Race Rejecters
      • 9.3 (3). The Racially Awakened
      • 9.4 (4). Racially Conscious Actors
      • 9.5 ¿Y Que Paso Con OREMI?/ And What Happened with OREMI? Black Lesbian Subjectivity in Contemporary Cuba
      • 9.6 Conclusion
    • Chapter X: “No Soy Kruda”: Las Krudas, Cuban Black Feminism and the Queer of Color Critique
      • 10.1 Who Are Las Krudas?
      • 10.2 Las Krudas: Raperas Underground
      • 10.3 Krudas‘ Black Feminist Discourse
      • 10.4 Como Existe La Heterosexualidad, Existe Homosexualidad/Just As There Is Heterosexuality, There Is Homosexuality
      • 10.5 Krudas and the Queer of Color Critique
      • 10.6 Reaction to Krudas‘ Work
      • 10.7 Conclusion/Discussion
  • Chapter XI: Conclusion
    • The Sociological Implications of My Research
  • Appendix
  • Discography, Interviews, IRB Forms & Supplementary Materials
  • Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.

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“Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century,” talk by Dorothy Roberts

Posted in Health/Medicine/Genetics, Live Events, Media Archive, United States on 2013-03-29 03:42Z by Steven

“Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century,” talk by Dorothy Roberts

University of Michigan
Hatcher Library Gallery, Room 100
913 S. University Avenue
Ann Arbor, Michigan
2013-04-04, 16:00-17:30 CDT (Local Time)

Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Professor Roberts will be discussing her latest project in connection with the “Understanding Race” theme semester. In “Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century” she argues that America is experiencing a dangerous resurgence of classifying populations into biological races. By searching for differences at the molecular level, a new race-based science is obscuring racism in our society and legitimizing state brutality against communities of color at a time when many claim that the United States is “post-racial.” Moving from an account of the evolution of the concept of race—proving that it has always been a mutable and socially defined political division supported by mainstream science—Roberts delves deeply into the current debates, interrogating cutting-edge genomic science and biotechnology, interviewing its researchers, and exposing the political consequences of the focus on race-based genetic difference. Fatal Invention is a powerful call for us to affirm our common humanity by eliminating the social inequities preserved by the political system of race…

For more information, click here.

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AAS 490: Special Topics in Black World Studies: Section 008: Race and “Black Indians”

Posted in Anthropology, Course Offerings, History, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Slavery, United States on 2013-03-12 13:32Z by Steven

AAS 490: Special Topics in Black World Studies: Section 008: Race and “Black Indians”

University of Michigan
Winter 2013
Theme Semester Courses

Tiya Miles, Professor of American Culture, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies

This seven week mini course is a special winter 2013 offering for the LSA Theme Semester on Race. The course will introduce students to a range of issues and experiences related to the topic and identity category of “Black Indians.” Popularized in the 1980s by a book of the same title, the term “Black Indians” is often used to identify and describe people of mixed-race African American and Native American ancestry. It is also applied to people with strong bi-cultural connections across these groups who may or may not have Black and native “blood” ties. This class will explore and analyze three major aspects of our subject matter:

  1. historical contexts for the interactions of Africans, African Americans and Native Americans;
  2. personal experiences stemming from mixed race and bi-cultural Afro-Native identities;
  3. meanings and effects of “racial stories” that have been crafted and told about “Black Indians” over time.

Major themes and ideas that will emerge in our discussions include: indigeneity, European and U.S. colonialism, slavery, racial formation and racial hierarchy, mixed-race coupling and family making, tribal sovereignty, personal and community identities, and racial and cultural authenticity.

Textbooks/Other Materials

  • Confounding the Color Line, Author: Brooks, James F.
  • Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage, Author: written by William Loren Katz.
  • Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: the African diaspora in Indian country, Author: edited by Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland.
  • IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, Author: general editor, Gabrielle Tayac.

For more information, click here.

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U-M’s Understanding Race Project examines issues at heart of the human experience, advances national conversation on race

Posted in Anthropology, History, Live Events, Native Americans/First Nation, Social Science, United States on 2012-12-20 21:31Z by Steven

U-M’s Understanding Race Project examines issues at heart of the human experience, advances national conversation on race

University of Michigan
News Release
2012-12-19

Contacts:

Frank Provenzano, (734) 647-4411
Maryanne George, (734) 615-6514
Deborah Greene, (734) 763-4008

Twitter hashtags: #UnderstandRace, #UMtheme


 
ANN ARBOR—Few subjects provoke as strong a visceral response as the topic of race. One-hundred-and-fifty years after the United States was nearly fractured by the battle over slavery and more than a half-century since the modern Civil Rights Movement emerged, the University of Michigan is launching the Understanding Race Project.
 
From January through April, an extensive range of public exhibits, performances, lectures, symposia and more than 130 courses in several disciplines will explore the concept of race and its impacts. The historical, cultural, psychological and legal interpretations of race will be examined from both national and global perspectives.
 
Highlights of the project include the “Race: Are We So Different?” exhibit developed by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota and “IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit.
 
Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center; Angela Davis, educator and civil rights activist; and Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., are among the dozens of lecturers speaking at U-M as part of the project…

…JANUARY EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
 
WHAT: IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit

WHEN: Jan. 9-31

DESCRIPTION: The story of people who share African American and Native American ancestry has long been invisible. For 500 years or more, African American and Native people have come together, creating shared histories, communities and ways of life. Often divided by prejudice, laws or twists of history, African-Native Americans are united by a double heritage that is truly indivisible.

WHERE: Duderstadt Center Gallery on U-M’s North Campus, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor. The gallery is open Noon-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and Noon-5 p.m. on Sundays. The gallery will be open from Noon-6 p.m. on Martin Luther King Day.
 
WHAT: “Identities in Red, Black and White: A Roundtable Discussion”

WHEN:  4-6 p.m. Jan. 10

DESCRIPTION: This public program will address mixed-race identities from autobiographical and storytelling perspectives and within the context of social and cultural analysis.

EXPERTS: Roundtable panelists express a mixed native identity of some kind—whether that connection is via family ties and/or cultural ties, including:

  • Tiya Miles, U-M professor of Afroamerican and African studies and Native American studies
  • Adesola Akinleye, dance scholar and founder of Dancing Strong
  • Elizabeth Atkins, U-M alumna and Detroit-based best-selling novelist and journalist
  • Robert Keith Collins, assistant professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University.
  • Philip Deloria, U-M professor of history, American culture, and Native American studies

For more information, click here.

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“Incestuous Sheets” and “Adulterate Beasts”: Incest and Miscegenation in Early Modern Drama

Posted in Dissertations, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2012-10-29 03:31Z by Steven

“Incestuous Sheets” and “Adulterate Beasts”: Incest and Miscegenation in Early Modern Drama

University of Michigan
2011
199 pages

Kentston D. Bauman

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature)

This dissertation explores the centrality of incest and miscegenation in the early modern cultural imaginary. Incest, which occurs with surprising frequency in the drama of the period but with equally surprising scarcity in everyday social life, is frequently invoked in conjunction with miscegenation in all of its various forms (social, religious, ethnic/cultural/racial). As boundary phenomena – the two extreme ends of the spectrum of sexual alliance – incest and miscegenation served as powerful and surprisingly flexible dramatic tropes, providing a useful means of interrogating the social processes that create, instill, and redefine acceptable choices in sexual and social partners. I divide the project into two sections. In the first, I investigate the interplay among incest, social miscegenation, and social mobility. Looking at Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, I explore how these issues become filtered through the figure of the incestuous widow, whose treatment serves as both a critique of aristocratic hierarchies and a means of promoting sexual and social mobility. The second, which examines the relations between incest and ethnic miscegenation, centers on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Noting that Shakespeare takes the incestuous rape in Ovid’s tale of Philomel and replaces it with the miscegenistic rape of Lavinia, I investigate how this transposition interrogates the family’s relationship to itself and to the state. I situate my readings of these plays in a socio-political context that takes into account two different, yet intricately connected, cultural issues: the painful transition of a society still highly stratified along feudal lines to one suddenly faced with the possibilities for radical economic and political advancement; and the anxieties of a culture just as suddenly exposed, through exploration and trade, to other geographic and cultural realms. The attempt to navigate the new terrain opened up by changes in the social, political, and geographic climate, I argue, disrupts long-established institutions – the family, marriage, hierarchical stratification. Significantly, the tensions between incest and miscegenation so apparent in the period’s drama express, in part, cultural anxieties fostered by a new social openness combined with a newly heightened sense of an enticing yet threatening Other.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • DEDICATION
  • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  • CHAPTER
    • Introduction. Incest and Miscegenation on the Early Modern Stage
    • One. The Incestuous Widow and Social Mobility in Early Modern Drama
    • Two. Aristocratic Endogamy and Social Miscegenation in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
    • Three. “Unkind and Careless of Your Own”: Incest, Miscegenation, and Family in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
    • Epilogue. Looking Forward: A Pattern for Reading
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the entire dissertation here.

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Race and Making America in Brazil: How Brazilian Return Migrants Negotiate Race in the US and Brazil

Posted in Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Dissertations, Identity Development/Psychology, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-07-10 00:54Z by Steven

Race and Making America in Brazil: How Brazilian Return Migrants Negotiate Race in the US and Brazil

University of Michigan
2011
314 pages

Tiffany Denise Joseph

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in The University of Michigan

This dissertation explores how US immigration influenced the racial conceptions of Brazilian returnees, individuals who immigrated to the US and subsequently returned to Brazil. Since Brazil was once regarded as a multi-racial utopia and represents a very distinct social environment when compared to the US, the dissertation objective was to learn how returnees adapted to the US racial system and if they “brought back” US racial ideals to Brazil upon returning. I conducted semi-structured retrospective interviews with 49 Brazilian returnees in Governador Valadares, Brazil, the country‘s largest immigrant-sending city to the US to explore how these individuals perceived and navigated racial classification and relations in Brazil and the US before, during, and after the US migration. To more effectively isolate the influence of immigration for returnees, I also interviewed a comparison group of 24 non-migrants.

Findings suggest that returnees relied on a transnational racial optic to navigate the US racial system as immigrants and to readapt to the Brazilian racial system after returning to Brazil. I use the term “transnational racial optic” to demonstrate how migration transformed returnees‘ observations, interpretations, and understandings of race in Brazil and the US. Returnees felt the US racial system was characterized by more rigid racial classification, overt forms of racism, and pervasive interracial social and residential segregation compared to Brazil. The US migration also influenced returnees‘ perceptions of racial stratification in both societies, particularly with regard to the socio-economic positions and behaviors of US and Brazilian blacks.

After the US migration, most returnees were not conscious of how their racial classifications or perceptions changed, although the results indicate shifts in their racial and skin tone classifications over the course of the migration. Furthermore, returnees felt that they did not remit US racial ideals to Brazil after returning. While both returnees and non-migrants thought racism existed in Brazil, returnees, after having lived in the US, were more cognizant of the structural manifestations of racism than non-migrants. This suggests that returnees‘ observations of race in the US influenced their perceptions of race in Brazil post-migration, which is indicative of the transnational racial optic.

Table of Contents

  • Dedication
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • List of Appendices
  • Abstract
  • Chapter 1 Introduction
  • Chapter 2 Background and Theoretical Framework
  • Chapter 3 Methodology
  • Chapter 4 Examining Brazilian Return Migrants‘ Personal Conceptions about Race in the United States
  • Chapter 5 Examining Brazilian Return Migrants‘ Societal Conceptions about Race in the US
  • Chapter 6 The Return: Brazilian Return Migrants‘ Post-Migration Conceptions of Racial Classification in Brazil
  • Chapter 7 Contemporary Life in GV: Conceptions of Race among Return Migrants and Non-Migrants
  • Chapter 8 Conclusion
  • Appendices
  • Bibliography

List of Figures

  • Figure 1: Returnees‘ Race in Brazil Pre-Migration (Brazil Census)
  • Figure 2: Returnees‘ Race in US (US Census)
  • Figure 3: Returnees‘ Average Skin Tone Classifications during Migration Process
  • Figure 4: Non-Migrants‘ Racial Classifications (Brazil Census)
  • Figure 5: Returnees’ Racial Classifications at Time of Interview
  • Figure 6: Coding Schema for Returnees’ and Non-Migrants’ Brazilian Racial Conceptions
  • Figure 7: Coding Schema of Returnees‘ US Racial Conceptions

List of Tables

  • Table 1: Demographics of Return and Non-Migrants
  • Table 2: Immigration Demographics for Return Migrants
  • Table 3: Topics in Interview Protocols
  • Table 4: How Participants Racially Classified Interviewer
  • Table 5: Importance of Race before Immigrating
  • Table 6: Importance of Race in US
  • Table 7: Importance of Race before Immigrating vs US
  • Table 8: Brazilian Racial Classifications
  • Table 9: Open-Ended Racial Classifications in US
  • Table 10: Self-Ascribed vs. External Racial Classification in US
  • Table 11: Factors Influencing Open-Ended Racial Classification
  • Table 12: Experiences of Discrimination by Racial Classification
  • Table 13: Defining Race- Return Migrants vs Non-Migrants
  • Table 14: Factors Influencing Return Migrants and Non-Migrants
  • Table 15: Returnees’ Skin Tone Classifications at Each Retrospective Migration Stage
  • Table 16: Racial Classification in the US vs Racial Classification
  • Table 17: Pre-Migration Racial Classification vs Racial Classification
  • Table 18: Self-Ascribed Racial Classification-Return Migrants vs. Non-Migrants
  • Table 19: Importance of Classifications
  • Table 20: Return Migrants‘ Skin Tone Classifications across Racial Categories
  • Table 21: Returnees’ Perceptions of Racial Democracy
  • Table 22: Manifestations of Racism
  • Table 23: Return Migrants’ Demographic Info (Returnees 1-24)
  • Table 24: Return Migrants’ Demographic Info (Returnees 25-49)
  • Table 25: Non-Migrants‘ Demographic Info

List of Appendices

  • Appendix 1 Demographic Information
  • Appendix 2 Coding Schema
  • Appendix 3 Interview Protocol for Return Migrants-English Version
  • Appendix 4 Interview Protocol for Non-Migrants-English Version
  • Appendix 5 Interview Protocol for Return Migrants-Portuguese Version
  • Appendix 6 Interview Protocol for Non-Migrants- Portuguese Version

Chapter 1: Introduction

I filled it out [Census form]. Yes, they asked [for my racial classification] and I put white because I wasn‘t Hispanic or Latino. [The form] had Hispanic, white, black, there wasn‘t an option for me specifically. Even though in Brazil, I considered myself white, there [in the US] for them [the Americans] I am not white because white there is blue eyes and blonde hair.

–Renata, white woman, 46 years, New York

Because when they [Americans] look at you, they know, they know that you‘re not American. (quirks) I don‘t know how they know, but…if you speak English [with a foreign-sounding accent] like in America, they know you are not American. I don‘t know why.

-Amanda, white woman, 33 years, Massachusetts

Increasing immigration to the United States in the last fifty years has had a significant impact on the population’s racial and ethnic diversity. Although the US historically has been predominantly white and black, the 2000 US Census revealed a population that has become increasingly racially nonwhite since the majority of recent immigrants have come from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean.2 While these immigrants bring with them hopes for a brighter future, they also come with conceptions of race from their countries of origin, which are not easily shed and may influence their perceptions of and incorporation into US society. In the US, race is a primary mode of social organization and the social construction of race has created widespread social inequality between whites and people of color since the nation’s inception (Feagin 2000; Omi and Winant 1994). Feagin (2000) argues that the black-white racial binary is the foundation of US race relations and is the ruler by which other racial and immigrant groups are measured. Therefore, immigrants who come to the US enter a racially polarized social context.

The quotes at the beginning of this chapter provide recollections of how Brazilian return migrants, or Brazilians who immigrated to the US and subsequently returned to Brazil, negotiated race while living in the US as immigrants.3 The ideas captured in Renata and Amanda’s quotes suggest a reconfiguration in the US of self-ascribed racial classification that differed from their racial self-classifications in Brazil, as well as recognition of how “Americans” identify foreign others.

While race is a strong structuring factor for US residents, race and racial classification in immigrants’ countries of origin may be very different from those in the US, which means immigrants must learn how to negotiate race in their new context. According to Landale and Oropesa (2002):

“Not only must migrants adapt to change in their status from majority group member to minority group member; they also face pressure to redefine themselves in terms of the black-white dichotomy that delineates race relations in the U.S.” (pg. 234).

Such a process of redefinition may be challenging for immigrants who never before have classified themselves using rigid racial terms, particularly for those who come from Latin America, which has a history of more socially-accepted racial mixing that has resulted in populations with a diverse range of physical racial markers, such as skin tone and hair texture (Landale and Oropesa 2002; Roth 2006; Duany 2002; Itzigsohn et. al 2005). Brazil, once considered a racial utopia compared to the US because of its perceived harmonic interracial relations, is such a country. Whereas one’s ancestry and physical features are generally the basis for classification into a single specific racial group in the US, such characteristics may signify different racial classifications in Brazil and other Latin American countries. Renata’s quote clearly demonstrates how her physical features are considered white in Brazil although she is considered nonwhite in the US. Thus, Renata and other Latin American immigrants come to the US with a different understanding of race and must adjust to existing racial classifications and race relations upon arrival. As Latinos are currently the largest ethno-racial minority in the US and do not easily fit into the historical black-white racial binary, it is important to explore how immigrants from Latin American countries, more specifically Brazil, adapt to race in the US.

Brazil is the Latin American country of interest in this study for three reasons. First, there have been various comparative studies of race in the United States and Brazil that have explored the unique racial characteristics of these countries (Degler 1986; Marx 1998; Telles 2004; Bailey 2009). Brazil and the US are two of the largest countries in the Americas and share a history of European colonization, Indigenous conquest, and African enslavement. Yet, the social construction of race has unfolded very differently in each context, motivating studies that explored how the racist US differed from Brazil’s multi-racial paradise.4 Second, as the largest slave-holding societies in the Americas, Brazil and the US have large African-descended populations. The majority of African slaves imported to the Americas were sent to Brazil. Even after the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, African slaves were still illegally imported to Brazil, which was last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. Thus, Brazil’s African-descended population is significantly larger than its US counterpart (Telles 2004). In fact, it has been argued that Brazil has the world’s second largest-African descended population after Africa (Telles 2004; Martes 2007). Finally, this research is also motivated by the increase in Brazilian immigration to the US in the last thirty years. Brazil’s economic recession in the 1980s with its high unemployment and inflation rates encouraged significant emigration for employment purposes to the US, Canada, and Japan (Goza 1999; Margolis 1994; Takenaka 2000). Since that time, Brazilians have migrated to the US in large numbers, yet there had been very little research examining their experiences until the mid-1990s.

Given the plethora of comparative race research on Brazil and the US and the growth of Brazilian immigrant communities in the US, a study exploring how Brazilian immigrants come to understand race in the US is warranted. The primary goal of this dissertation is to comparatively explore the social constructions of race in Brazil and the US through the observations, perceptions, and experiences of individuals who have lived in each country for an extended period of time. While other comparative studies have relied on survey and historical data to understand how race and racism “work” on a macro-level in each society, I examine how individuals make sense of and negotiate race in both countries at the personal level. Because Brazilian immigrants are one of the most recent immigrant groups to the US and extensive return migration has been documented among this group, Brazilian return migrants are the ideal group for such a study. As individuals who were racially socialized in Brazil, they entered the US with a different perception of race and encountered a racial system that relied on more rigidly defined racial categories and groups and appeared to be more overtly racist than Brazil.

Furthermore, upon leaving the US, Brazilian return migrants go home with a different mindset that has been shaped by their experiences abroad. Migration between both countries facilitates comparisons between migrants’ quality of life in Brazil and the US that make it difficult to readapt to life in post-migration Brazil (Margolis 2001). Margolis (2001) argues that “some returnees become people in-between [who] are not entirely satisfied with life in either country” (pg. 243). Thus, if their mindsets are “changed” by living in the US, it is possible that US migration also facilitates a change in these individuals’ racial conceptions in Brazil after the US migration. I define racial conceptions as a set of ideas that help individuals understand how social actors, in this study Brazilian returnees, negotiate race in a particular context. In this study, I operationalize these conceptions in three ways using data from respondents’ experiences of: (1) racial classification, (2) observations, perceptions, and experiences of racism or racial discrimination, and (3) an understanding of how race functions on a societal level. For example, Brazilian return migrants in this study negotiated racial conceptions in the US through: (1) their personal, professional, and miscellaneous interactions with other Brazilians, other immigrants, and native born US citizens, and (2) their “consumption” of US culture through television, music, and newspapers.

This dissertation examines how exposure to racial systems in the United States and Brazil influences the racial conceptions of Brazilian return migrants in three contexts: (1) in Brazil before the US migration; (2) in the US as immigrants; and (3) in Brazil after the US migration. To comparatively explore race in the US and Brazil via Brazilian return migrants’ racial conceptions, I address two major questions in this study:

(1) How does immigration to the US change racial conceptions for Brazilian return migrants while they are living in the US and after returning to Brazil?

(2) Do return migrants “bring back” racial ideals from the US and if so, what impact does extensive US migration have on racial relations in returnees’communities?

To address these research questions, I rely on data obtained from semi-structured interviews with 49 Brazilian return migrants and 24 non-migrants (Brazilians who never migrated) in Governador Valadares, Brazil, a city of 250,000 residents in the South Central state of Minas Gerais. Governador Valadares (GV) has historically been Brazil’s largest immigrant-sending city to the US. Emigration to the US has so heavily influenced the local economy that the city has been famously nicknamed by Brazilians as “Governador Valadolares,” as in US dollars. About 15 percent of GV residents, also known as Valadarenses, are estimated to be living in the US and nearly 80 percent of Valadarenses have at least one relative residing in the US (CIAAT 2007; Margolis 1998). Additionally, return migration to GV after the US migration has been heavily documented (Marcus 2009; Assis and de Campos 2009; Martes 2008; Siqueira 2008; CIAAT 2007; Siqueira 2006). The prevalence of US migration has created a constant flow of people, money, and culture between GV and the US, so much so that GV and particular US cities with large numbers of migrants from GV are considered transnational social fields or:

“… set[s] of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed… [that] connect actors through direct and indirect relations across borders” (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004, 1009).

Because the majority of migrants from GV intend to return to their native city after the US migration, they maintain social and economic ties while living in the US. Valadarenses generally immigrate to the US to work for two to five years to earn and save as much money as possible for the purpose of purchasing a home and car or starting a business upon returning from the US. This process has been referred to as “Fazer à América,” which translates in English to “making America” (Martes 2008; CIAAT 2007; Siqueira 2006). These migrants hope the US migration will facilitate upward social mobility and access to what they perceive to be a better or more “American” quality of life in GV after migration…

…Additionally, the exploration of racial conceptions for this subset of individuals who are on the move between the US and Brazil also helps me develop a more nuanced argument about race as a social construction that varies from place to place. This is particularly true for the comparison of the US and Brazil, two countries with very distinct racial histories that are now experiencing shifts in racial discourses due to changing ethnic demographics (US) and the introduction of affirmative action policies (Brazil). The increase in rates of interracial marriage, introduction of an option to classify in more than one racial category on the US census, the dismantling of race-based affirmative action policies in the US and the recent election of Barack Obama as the first black (biracial) president of the United States have spurred debates about whether the US has now become a postracial society. Furthermore, the growth of the Latino population into the country’s largest ethno-racial minority and increased immigration from Latin America have had a significant impact on US demographics.

At the same time, to address racial inequality in Brazil, some universities and companies have begun to implement racial quotas to increase the representation of Afro-Brazilians in Brazil’s higher education system, which has been very controversial. Although nonwhites constitute nearly half of the Brazilian population, whites constitute about 73 percent of university students (Telles 2004; Stubrin 2005; Bailey 2009). Due to the prevalence of racial mixing in Brazil and many white Brazilians’ acknowledgment of having black racial ancestry, the implementation of affirmative action has made it necessary to racially classify individuals (blacks) in a socially meaningful way to determine who can benefit from race-specific policies. This policy has facilitated discussions about an importation of US racial classification standards (Telles 2004; Araujo 2001; Fry and Maggie 2004; Maio and Santos 2005; Bailey 2009). Because both Brazil and the US are experiencing shifts in racial discourse as they relate to discussions of racial demographics, racial classification, and inequality, some researchers have argued that the US will undergo either a (1) “Latin-Americanization” of race in which existing racial boundaries will become more ambiguous or (2) shift from the traditional black-white racial binary to a black-nonblack binary in which existing racial boundaries will be realigned (Bonilla-Silva 2004; Skidmore 2003; Lee and Bean 2004; Yancey 2003). Other researchers suggest that the US and Brazilian racial classification systems are on “converging paths,” as each country’s racial dynamics seem to be resembling its counterpart (Daniel 2006; Bailey 2009):

It appears to be the case that racial dynamics in the United States and in Brazil are like two ships passing in the night, one showing signs of movement toward mixed-race framings and the other toward single-race identification (Bailey 2009, 8).

Thus, it is possible that just as Brazilians are moving back and forth across US and Brazilian borders, that racial ideals in each country are also being exchanged, which highlights the significance of this study in another way. If race in the US is becoming “Latin-Americanized,” it is important to understand how Latin Americans (in this study Brazilians) conceive of race in their countries of origin and in the US if researchers are to understand how the social construction of race in the US may evolve in the future…

Read the entire dissertation here.

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Other Communions: Maya, Mulatto, Woman and God in Miguel Ángel Asturias 1923-1974

Posted in Caribbean/Latin America, Dissertations, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive on 2011-06-23 03:38Z by Steven

Other Communions: Maya, Mulatto, Woman and God in Miguel Ángel Asturias 1923-1974

University of Michigan
2010
218 pages

Andrea Leigh Dewees

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Romance Languages and Literatures: Spanish) in the University of Michigan

“Other Communions: Maya, Mulatto, Woman and God in Miguel Ángel Asturias 1923-1974” engages the Guatemalan Nobel Laureate’s literary production over five decades, beginning with his portrayals of the Maya and expanding to include his representations of the mulatto, female and God. I am primarily concerned with close readings of Los ojos de los enterrados (1960), Mulata de Tal (1963) and El árbol de la cruz (1997) but I draw also from others of Asturias’s novels, as well as historiography, postcolonial and feminist theory, to show how Asturias narrates the nation through literary figures of the Other.

Chapter 2 begins with an intellectual history of Asturias as a “Maya” author, tracing the roots and permutations of this myth through biography, autobiography, and literary criticism. I then show how his appropriative creation of a Maya indigenismo is central to his political and aesthetic conception of Latin American literature. However, Asturias’s novels extend beyond this fictive Maya center. Chapter 3 analyzes a non-Maya, untranslated phrase associated with a mulatto character in Asturias’s Banana Trilogy. I analyze an emerging negrista aesthetic and argue that the interruptive repetition of the phrase structures the novel’s account of the recent history of revolution, land reform and democratic rupture in Guatemala, as well as the more distant legacies of the conquest, colonialism and slavery.

Mulata de tal also features a mulatta character and in Chapter 4 I explain how Asturias connects land to the female body through a complex series of fragmentations, profanations and redemptions. In contrast to the more historical concerns of the Banana Trilogy, this novel is encased within an apocalyptic framework, marking a shift in Asturias’s attention from a Maya origin to the end of days.

Finally, I examine a sketch published after Asturias’s death, El árbol de la cruz, calling attention to Asturias’s connection between the female Other and the cross in what amounts to a brief treatise on communion. I show how this text, read accumulatively through popular religiosity in others of Asturias’s novels, balances between definitive origin and conclusive end.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • Abstract
  • Chapter 1 Introduction Mimesis and Guatemalan National Literature
  • Chapter 2 Asturias and lo maya
  • Appendices
  • Chapter 3 Irrupted History: 1944, 1954 and Los ojos de los enterrados
  • Chapter 4 Fragments between hell and heaven: land, the female body and the text in Mulata de tal
  • Chapter 5 Crosses, Origins, Communions
  • Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.

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