Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie du Chien, 1750–1860

Posted in Books, Media Archive, Monographs, Native Americans/First Nation, United States, Women on 2016-06-08 15:17Z by Steven

Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie du Chien, 1750–1860

Cambridge University Press
September 2014
326 pages
25 b/w illus. 6 maps 7 tables
236 x 157 x 22 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781107052864
Paperback ISBN: 9781107674745
eBook ISBN: 9781139990660

Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Professor of History
Ohio State University, Newark

A case study of one of America’s many multi-ethnic border communities, Great Lakes Creoles builds upon recent research on gender, race, ethnicity, and politics as it examines the ways that the old fur trade families experienced and responded to the colonialism of United States expansion. Lucy Murphy examines Indian history with attention to the pluralistic nature of American communities and the ways that power, gender, race, and ethnicity were contested and negotiated in them. She explores the role of women as mediators shaping key social, economic, and political systems, as well as the creation of civil political institutions and the ways that men of many backgrounds participated in and influenced them. Ultimately, The Great Lakes Creoles takes a careful look at Native people and their complex families as active members of an American community in the Great Lakes region.

  • Builds upon recent research in gender, race, ethnicity, and politics
  • Connects American Indian history with major historical themes
  • Examines Native people and their complex families as active members of an American community in the Great Lakes region

Table of Contents

  • List of Tables
  • List of Figures
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • 1. ‘The rightful owners of the soil’: colonization and land
  • 2. ‘To intermeddle in political affairs’: new institutions, elections, and lawmaking
  • 3. ‘Damned yankee court and jury’: more new institutions, keeping order and peace
  • 4. Public mothers: women, networks, and changing gender roles
  • 5. ‘A humble type of people’: economic adaptations
  • 6. Blanket claims and family clusters: autonomy, land, migration, and persistence
  • Conclusion
  • Epilogue
  • Index
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Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Barack Obama, Books, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-12-22 04:19Z by Steven

Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives

Cambridge University Press
January 2015
Paperback ISBN: 9780521154260

Edited by:

Karim Murji, Senior Lecturer in Sociology
The Open University, United Kingdom

John Solomos, Professor of Sociology
University of Warwick, United Kingdom

How have research agendas on race and ethnic relations changed over the past two decades and what new developments have emerged? Theories of Race and Ethnicity provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge collection of theoretically grounded and empirically informed essays. It covers a range of key issues in race and ethnicity studies, such as genetics and race, post-race debates, racial eliminativism and the legacy of Barack Obama, and mixed race identities. The contributions are by leading writers on a range of perspectives employed in studying ethnicity and race, including critical race feminism, critical rationalism, psychoanalysis, performativity, whiteness studies and sexuality. Written in an authoritative yet accessible style, this volume is suitable for researchers and advanced students, offering scholars a survey of the state of the art in the literature, and students an overview of the field.

  • A unique set of views on race and ethnicity by writers committed to advancing scholarship
  • Covers some of the latest issues and debates in the field, including genetics, post-race eliminativism and mixed race identities from a range of perspectives
  • Opening and closing editorial chapters provide a route map of shifts in the field of race and ethnicity studies, and return to some recurring debates to demonstrate how the field changes and has continuing and persisting questions in theorising race and ethnicity

Table of Contents

  • 1. Introduction: situating the present Karim Murji and John Solomos
  • Part I. Debates: Introduction to Part I
    • 2. Race and the science of difference in the age of genomics Sandra Soo-Jin Lee
    • 3. Colour-blind egalitarianism as the new racial norm Charles A. Gallagher
    • 4. Getting over the Obama hope hangover: the new racism in ‘post-racial’ America Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (with Victor E. Ray)
    • 5. Does a recognition of mixed race move us toward post-race? Miri Song
    • 6. Acting ‘as’ and acting ‘as if’: two approaches to the politics of race and migration Leah Bassel
    • 7. Can race be eradicated? The post-racial problematic Brett St Louis
  • Part II. Perspectives: Introduction to Part II
    • 8. Superseding race in sociology: the perspective of critical rationalism Michael Banton
    • 9. Critical race feminism Adrien K. Wing
    • 10. Performativity and ‘raced’ bodies Shirley Tate
    • 11. Racism: psychoanalytic and psycho-social approaches Simon Clarke
    • 12. The sociology of whiteness: beyond good and evil white people Matthew W. Hughey
    • 13. (Sexual) whiteness and national identity: race, class and sexuality in colour-blind France Éric Fassin
    • 14. Racial comparisons, relational racisms: some thoughts on method David Theo Goldberg
  • 15. Conclusion: back to the future Karim Murji and John Solomos
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Race: An Introduction

Posted in Africa, Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Europe, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States on 2015-09-21 20:56Z by Steven

Race: An Introduction

Cambridge University Press
August 2015
272 pages
13 b/w illus. 4 tables
245 x 190 x 12 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781107034112
Paperback ISBN: 9781107652286

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

Taking a comparative approach, this textbook is a concise introduction to race. Illustrated with detailed examples from around the world, it is organised into two parts. Part One explores the historical changes in ideas about race from the ancient world to the present day, in different corners of the globe. Part Two outlines ways in which racial difference and inequality are perceived and enacted in selected regions of the world. Examining how humans have used ideas of physical appearance, heredity and behaviour as criteria for categorising others, the text guides students through provocative questions such as: what is race? Does studying race reinforce racism? Does a colour-blind approach dismantle, or merely mask, racism? How does biology feed into concepts of race? Numerous case studies, photos, figures and tables help students to appreciate the different meanings of race in varied contexts, and end-of-chapter research tasks provide further support for student learning.

  • Combines a broad historical overview (from the ancient world to the present day) with wide geographical and comparative coverage to show that race means different things in different contexts
  • Detailed historical and ethnographic material in textboxes, figures, photos and tables demonstrates the operation of race in everyday life
  • Offers an up-to-date, critical overview of a fast-changing field

Contents

  • List of figures
  • List of tables
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1 Knowing ‘race’
    • 1.1 Chronology of race
    • 1.2 Is race defined by appearance, biology and nature?
    • 1.3 Culture, appearance and biology revisited
    • 1.4 Race, comparatively and historically
    • 1.5 Comparisons
    • 1.6 Race in the history of Western modernity
    • Conclusion: so what is race?
    • Further research
  • Part I race in time
    • 2 Early approaches to understanding human variation
      • 2.1 Nature and culture
      • 2.2 Ancient Greece and Rome
      • 2.3 Medieval and early modern Europe
      • 2.4 New World colonisation
      • Conclusion
      • Further research
    • 3 From Enlightenment to eugenics
      • 3.1 Transitions
      • 3.2 Changing racial theories
      • 3.3 The spread of racial theory: nation, class, gender and religion
      • 3.4 Nature, culture and race
      • 3.5 Black reaction
      • Conclusion
      • Further research
    • 4 Biology, culture and genomics
      • 4.1 Darwin (again), genetics and the concept of population
      • 4.2 Boas and the separation of biology and culture
      • 4.3 Nazism, World War II and decolonisation
      • 4.4 UNESCO and after
      • 4.5 The persistence of race in science
      • 4.6 Race and IQ
      • 4.7 Race and sport
      • 4.8 Race, genomics and medicine: does race have a genetic basis?
      • 4.9 Race, genomics and medicine: racialising populations
      • Conclusion
      • Further activities
    • 5 Race in the era of cultural racism: politics and the everyday
      • 5.1 Introduction
      • 5.2 The institutional presence of race
      • 5.3 Race, nature and biology in the everyday world of culture
      • Conclusion
      • Further research
  • Part II Race in practice
    • 6 Latin America: mixture and racism
      • 6.1 Introduction
      • 6.2 Latin America and mestizaje
      • 6.3 Colombia: racial discrimination and social movements
      • 6.4 Structural disadvantage, region and mestizaje: lessons from Colombia
      • 6.5 Brazil: variations on a theme
      • 6.6 Guatemala: racial ambivalence
      • 6.7 Performing and embodying race in the Andes
      • Conclusion
      • Further research
    • 7 The United States and South Africa: segregation and desegregation
      • 7.1 Changing US demographics
      • 7.2 Caste and class in segregated Southern towns
      • 7.3 Black reaction and ‘desegregation’
      • 7.4 Segregation in practice: ‘the ghetto’
      • 7.5 Latinos and brownness
      • 7.6 South Africa
      • Conclusion
      • Further activities
    • 8 Race in Europe: immigration and nation
      • 8.1 European histories of race
      • 8.2 Issues in post-colonial migration in Europe
      • 8.3 White Britons in Leicestershire
      • 8.4 Asian Leicester
      • 8.5 The Asian gang in London
      • 8.6 Geographies of race in black Liverpool
      • 8.7 Algerians in France
      • Conclusion
      • Further activities
    • 9 Conclusion
      • 9.1 Theorising race
      • 9.2 Globalising race
      • 9.3 The future of race
    • References
    • Index
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Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present

Posted in Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Slavery on 2014-12-15 18:32Z by Steven

Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present

Cambridge University Press
January 2013
219 pages
19 b/w illus. 1 map 19 tables
229 x 153 x 14 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9780521193627
Paperback ISBN: 9780521145350
eBook ISBN: 9781139602723

Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present examines the immigration to Brazil of millions of Europeans, Asians, and Middle Easterners beginning in the nineteenth century. Jeffrey Lesser analyzes how these newcomers and their descendents adapted to their new country and how national identity was formed as they became Brazilians along with their children and grandchildren. Lesser argues that immigration cannot be divorced from broader patterns of Brazilian race relations, as most immigrants settled in the decades surrounding the final abolition of slavery in 1888 and their experiences were deeply conditioned by ideas of race and ethnicity formed long before their arrival. This broad exploration of the relationships between immigration, ethnicity, and nation allows for analysis of one of the most vexing areas of Brazilian study: identity.

  • Includes oral histories and primary documents so readers can get a sense of the voices of immigrants and those with whom immigrants interacted
  • Does not treat immigrants only as victims, unlike other immigration studies
  • Places immigrants within a broader context of racial and ethnic relations

Table of Contents

  • List of Figures, Tables, and Documents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Chapter 1: Creating Brazilians
  • Chapter 2: From Central Europe and Asia: Immigration Schemes, 1822–1870
  • Chapter 3: Mass Migrations, 1880–1920
  • Chapter 4: The Creation of Euro-Brazilian Identities
  • Chapter 5: How Arabs Became Jews, 1880–1940
  • Chapter 6: Asianizing Brazil: New Immigrants and New
  • Identities, 1900–1955
  • Epilogue: The Song Remains the Same
  • Historiographical Essay
  • Index
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Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884–1960

Posted in Books, Europe, History, Media Archive, Monographs on 2014-01-20 07:44Z by Steven

Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884–1960

Cambridge University Press
September 2013
379 pages
18 b/w illus.
235 x 158 x 22 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781107041363

Robbie Aitken, Senior Lecturer in Imperial History
Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom

Eve Rosenhaft, Professor of German Historical Studies
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

This groundbreaking history traces the development of Germany’s black community, from its origins in colonial Africa to its decimation by the Nazis during World War II. Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenhaft follow the careers of Africans arriving from the colonies, examining why and where they settled, their working lives and their political activities, and giving unprecedented attention to gender, sexuality and the challenges of ‘mixed marriage’. Addressing the networks through which individuals constituted community, Aitken and Rosenhaft explore the ways in which these relationships spread beyond ties of kinship and birthplace to constitute communities as ‘black’. The study also follows a number of its protagonists to France and back to Africa, providing new insights into the roots of Francophone black consciousness and postcolonial memory. Including an in-depth account of the impact of Nazism and its aftermath, this book offers a fresh critical perspective on narratives of ‘race’ in German history.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. The first generation: from presence to community
  • 2. Should I stay and can I go? Status and mobility in the institutional net
  • 3. Settling down: marriage and family
  • 4. Surviving in Germany: work, welfare and community
  • 5. Problem men and exemplary women? Gender, class and ‘race’
  • 6. Practising diaspora – politics 1918–33
  • 7. Under the shadow of national socialism
  • 8. Refuge France?
  • Epilogue
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Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative

Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2013-11-18 21:28Z by Steven

Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative

Cambridge University Press
November 1994
276 pages
31 b/w illus
229 x 152 x 16 mm
Paperback ISBN: 9780521469593

Robert S. Tilton, Professor of English
University of Connecticut, Torrington

From the time of its first appearance, the story of Pocahontas has provided the terms of a flexible discourse that has been put to multiple, and at times contradictory, uses. Centering around her legendary rescue of John Smith from the brink of execution and her subsequent marriage to a white Jamestown colonist, the Pocahontas convention became a source of national debate over such broad issues as miscegenation, racial conflict, and colonial expansion. At the same time, Pocahontas became the most frequently and variously portrayed female figure in antebellum literature. Robert S. Tilton draws upon the rich tradition of Pocahontas material to examine why her half-historic, half-legendary narrative so engaged the imaginations of Americans from the earliest days of the colonies through the conclusion of the Civil War. Drawing upon a wide variety of primary materials, Tilton reflects on the ways in which the Pocahontas myth was exploded, exploited, and ultimately made to rationalise dangerous preconceptions about the native American tradition.

  • The only study to focus exclusively on the Pocahontas narrative during this period
  • Deals with crucial aspects of Indian/white relations, such as interracial marriages, and the place of the Indian in ‘Manifest Destiny’ ideology
  • Brings together a number of visual images not elsewhere presented together

Table of Contents

  • 1. Miscegenation and the Pocahontas narrative in colonial and federalist America
  • 2. The Pocahontas narrative in post-Revolution America
  • 3. The Pocahontas narrative in the era of the romantic Indian
  • 4. John Gadsby Chapman’s Baptism of Pocahontas
  • 5. The figure of Pocahontas in sectionalist propaganda
  • Index
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Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil

Posted in Africa, Anthropology, Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science, South Africa, United States on 2013-06-17 01:44Z by Steven

Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil

Cambridge University Press
December 1997
412 pages
228 x 152 mm
Paperback ISBN: 9780521585903
Hardback ISBN: 9780521584555

Anthony W. Marx, President and CEO
New York Public Library

In this bold, original and persuasive book, Anthony W. Marx provocatively links the construction of nations to the construction of racial identity. Using a comparative historical approach, Marx analyzes the connection between race as a cultural and political category rooted in the history of slavery and colonialism, and the development of three nation states. He shows how each country’s differing efforts to establish national unity and other institutional impediments have served, through the nation-building process and into their present systems of state power, to shape and often crystallize categories and divisions of race. Focusing on South Africa, Brazil and the United States, Marx illustrates and elucidates the historical dynamics and institutional relationships by which the construction of race and the development of these nations have informed one another. Deftly combining comparative history, political science and sociological interpretation, sharpened by over three-hundred interviews with key informants from each country, he follows this dialogue into the present to discuss recent political mobilization, popular protest and the current salience of race issues.

Features

  • A comprehensive historical comparative study of the major issues of race and nation
  • Combines political, social and economic analysis to break barriers between country studies and issues of race, nation, state and social movement
  • Draws upon archival material, literature, and more than 300 interviews

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1. Introduction
  • Part I. Historical and Cultural Legacies:
    • 2. Trajectories from colonialism
    • 3. Lessons from slavery
    • 4. The uncertain legacy of miscegenation
      • Implications
  • Part II. Racial Domination and the Nation-State:
    • 5. ‘Wee for thee, South Africa’: the racial state
    • 6. ‘To bind up the nation’s wounds’: the United States after the Civil War
    • 7. ‘Order and progress’: inclusive nation-state building in Brazil
    • Comparative racial domination: an overview
  • Part III. Race Making from Below:
    • 8. ‘We are a rock’: Black racial identity, mobilization and the new South Africa
    • 9. Burying Jim Crow: Black racial identity, mobilization and reform in the United States
    • 10. Breaching Brazil’s pact of silence
  • 11. Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
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The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations

Posted in Anthropology, Books, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Monographs on 2013-03-10 03:09Z by Steven

The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations

Cambridge University Press
December 2001
528 pages
12 b/w illus. 128 tables
228 x 152 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9780521652759
Paperback ISBN: ISBN:9780521022392
eBook ISBN: 9780511837128

Francisco M. Salzano
Departamento de Genética, Instituto de Biociências
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Maria C. Bortolini
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

The human genetic make-up of Latin America is a reflection of successive waves of colonization and immigration. There have been few works dealing with the biology of human populations at a continental scale, and while much data is available on the genetics of Latin American populations, most information remains scattered throughout the literature. This volume examines Latin American human populations in relation to their origins, environment, history, demography and genetics, drawing on aspects of nutrition, physiology, and morphology for an integrated and multidisciplinary approach. The result is a fascinating account of a people characterized by a turbulent history, marked heterogeneity, and unique genetic traits.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • 1. Origins
  • 2. Environment and history
  • 3. Socioeconomic indices, demography, and population structure
  • 4. Ecology, nutrition, and physiological adaptation
  • 5. Morphology
  • 6. Health and disease
  • 7. Haemoglobin types and haemoglobinopathies
  • 8. Normal genetic variation at the protein, glycoconjugate, and DNA levels
  • 9. Gene dynamics
  • 10. Synthesis.
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Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response

Posted in Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Law, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science on 2013-01-14 18:56Z by Steven

Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response

Cambridge University Press
October 2012
254 pages
2 maps; 1 table
228 x 152 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781107024861
Paperback: 9781107695436
Adobe Ebook Reader ISBN: 9781139786676

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Professor of Law
Fordham University, New York

There are approximately 150 million people of African descent in Latin America yet Afro-descendants have been consistently marginalized as undesirable elements of the society. Latin America has nevertheless long prided itself on its absence of U.S.-styled state-mandated Jim Crow racial segregation laws. This book disrupts the traditional narrative of Latin America’s legally benign racial past by comprehensively examining the existence of customary laws of racial regulation and the historic complicity of Latin American states in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies. Tanya Katerí Hernández is the first author to consider the salience of the customary law of race regulation for the contemporary development of racial equality laws across the region. Therefore, the book has a particular relevance for the contemporary U.S. racial context in which Jim Crow laws have long been abolished and a “post-racial” rhetoric undermines the commitment to racial equality laws and policies amidst a backdrop of continued inequality.

Features

  • Provides a comprehensive examination of the entire Latin American region with regard to racial inequality
  • Hernández is the first author to thoroughly consider the role of customary law in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies
  • Offers a comprehensive examination of development of racial equality laws across the region

Contents

  • Maps
  • 1. Racial Innocence and the Customary Law of Race Regulation
  • 2. Spanish America Whitening the Race – the Un(written) Laws of Blanqueamiento and Mestizaje
  • 3. Brazilian “Jim Crow”: The Immigration Law Whitening Project and the Customary Law of Racial Segregation – a Case Study
  • 4. The Social Exclusion of Afro-Descendants in Latin America Today
  • 5. Afro-Descendant Social Justice Movements and the New Antidiscrimination Laws
  • 6. Brazil: At the Forefront of Latin American Race-Based Affirmative Action Policies and Census Racial Data Collection
  • 7. Conclusion: The United States–Latin America
  • Connections
  • Appendix A: Afro-Descendant Organizations in Latin America
  • Appendix B: Typology of Latin American Racial Antidiscrimination Measures
  • Bibliography
  • Index

I don’t think there is much racism in [Latin] America because we are a mix of races of all kinds of Europeans, Africans, Asians, and other races that were or will be; but I understand that in many other parts there is racism, above all in the United States and Europe, is where there is the most racism.1

There are approximately 150 million people of African descent in Latin America, representing about one-third of the total population (see Maps 1 and 2). Yet, these are considered conservative demographic figures given the histories of undercounting the number of persons of African descent on Latin American national censuses and often completely omitting a racial/ethnic origin census question. At the same time, persons of African descent make up more than 40 percent of the poor in Latin America and have been consistently marginalized and denigrated as undesirable elements of the society since the abolition of slavery across the Americas. Yet, the view that “racism does not exist” is pervasive in Latin America despite the advent of social justice movements and social science researchers demonstrating the contrary. When the BBC surveyed Latin Americans in 2005 regarding the existence of racism, a significant number of respondents emphatically denied the existence of racism. Many, for instance, made statements such as “Ibero-Americans are not racist,” and “Ibero-America is not a racist region, for the simple fact that the majority of the population is either indigenous, creole, or mixed.”

Thus the denial of racism is rooted in what many scholars have critiqued as the “myth of racial democracy” – the notion that the racial mixture (mestizaje/mestiçagem) in a population is emblematic of racial harmony and insulated from racial discord and inequality. Academic scholarship has in the last twenty years critiqued Latin American “mestizaje” theories of racial mixture as emblematic of racial harmony. Yet, Latin Americans still very much adhere to the notion that racial mixture and the absence of Jim Crow racial segregation are such a marked contrast to the U.S. racial history that the region views itself as what I term “racially innocent.” Indeed, the extensive survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s “Americas Barometer 2010” demonstrates that biased Latin American racial ideologies have not completely evolved despite the existing scholarly critiques of mestizaje as a trope of racial innocence. For instance, in the Americas Barometer 2010 survey of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, the vast majority of the country populations (of all races) agreed with the mestizaje notion that “racial mixture is good for the country.” In fact, more than 75 percent of all respondents agreed with the statement and largely endorsed the idea of interracial marriages. Yet, the Americas Barometer data also show that for those Latin Americans who did express disagreement with the idea of their children marrying black partners, the opposition level was dramatically greater from white respondents in contrast to black respondents. Specifically, in those countries where the Americas Barometer asked whether there was disagreement with one’s own children marrying a black person, such as Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador, the opposition by whites to interracial black marriages was on average 60 percent greater than the opposition of blacks to such marriages. (Other countries were asked about marriage to a person of indigenous descent.) These results thus accord with the long-standing data that marriage patterns in Latin America are generally racially endogamous.

The Americas Barometer 2010 data also indicate that white respondents in several Latin American countries are considerably more likely than other groups to state a preference for lighter skin. For instance, in Colombia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic, on average 26 percent of white respondents agreed that they would prefer lighter skin, in contrast to the 13 percent average of black respondents who prefer lighter skin. In Mexico and Peru, blacks on average had greater rates of preference for lighter skin (37%) than whites (26%). In Brazil the rate of white preference for lighter skin closely approximated blacks’ lighter-skin preference rate. Even socialist Cuba continues to manifest a preference for whiteness and a white opposition to interracial marriage. Moreover, in a 2004 comparison of implicit and explicit racial bias in the United States, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, the rates of both implicit and explicit racial bias were higher in all three Latin American contexts as compared to the United States. Thus despite the overwhelming articulation of mestizaje as an indicator of racial harmony across much of Latin America and the different ways that it is articulated within each country, attitudes of racial distinction and superiority persist beneath the celebration of racial mixture. In part, the absence of a legal critique of the Latin American comparisons to the Jim Crow United States has enabled the Latin American “racial innocence” stance to remain. This book seeks to fill in that gap in the literature and provide the legal critique.

Specifically, this book is about the ways in which the Latin American denial of racism operating in conjunction with the notion that true racism can only be found in the racial segregation of the United States veils the actual manifestations of racism in Latin America. I will argue that an examination of the role of the state after the abolition of slavery in regulating race through immigration law and customary law disrupts this picture of Latin America as “racially innocent.” I will then assess the ways in which the contemporary Latin American antidiscrimination laws seek to eradicate the legacy of racial inequality wrought by the historic racism of the state. Finally, I will conclude the book with insights as to how the examination of the Latin American context may be helpful to the U.S. racial justice movement today, given the growing denial of the existence of racism in the United Sates. In doing so, I shall adopt the term “Afro-descendants,” which Latin American race scholars and social justice movement actors use to encompass all persons of African descent in Latin America who are affected by antiblack sentiment whether or not they personally identify as “black” or adopt a mixed-race identity such as mulatto or mestizo. This book will not focus upon the racial inequality issues of indigenous groups in Latin America given the extensive literature that already exists regarding that topic. Instead the analysis will focus upon the particular history of Afro-descendants’ relationship to the state as formerly enslaved subjects seeking visibility as citizens and full participants in the national identity despite the societal denial of racism…

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Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Books, History, Law, Media Archive, Monographs on 2012-10-26 01:57Z by Steven

Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family

Cambridge University Press
November 2011
286 pages
6 b/w illus. 3 maps
228 x 152 mm; 0.51kg
Hardback ISBN: 9781107012615
Adobe eBook ISBN: 9781139181242
Mobipocket eBook: ISBN:9781139184861

Chandra Mallampalli, Associate Professor of History
Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California

How did British rule in India transform persons from lower social classes? Could Indians from such classes rise in the world by marrying Europeans and embracing their religion and customs? This book explores such questions by examining the intriguing story of an interracial family who lived in southern India in the mid-nineteenth century. The family, which consisted of two untouchable brothers, both of whom married Eurasian women, became wealthy as distillers in the local community. When one brother died, a dispute arose between his wife and brother over family assets, which resulted in a landmark court case, Abraham v. Abraham. It is this case which is at the center of this book, and which Chandra Mallampalli uses to examine the lives of those involved and, by extension, of those – 271 witnesses in all – who testified. In its multilayered approach, the book sheds light not only on interracial marriage, class, religious allegiance, and gender, but also on the British encounter with Indian society. It shows that far from being products of a “civilizing mission” who embraced the ways of Englishmen, the Abrahams were ultimately – when faced with the strictures of the colonial legal system – obliged to contend with hierarchy and racial difference.

Features

  • A singular court case from the nineteenth century is at the heart of this intriguing book on race and hierarchy in colonial India
  • A rich and engaging multi-layered approach which interrogates legal documents and interviews with witnesses to unveil social history of the period
  • For students and scholars of colonial India, and legal and social historians

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. Remembering family
  • 2. Embodying ‘Dora-hood’: the brothers and their business
  • 3. A crisis of trust: sedition and the sale of arms in Kurnool
  • 4. Letters from Cambridge
  • 5. The path to litigation
  • 6. Litigating gender and race: Charlotte sues at Bellary
  • 7. Francis appeals: the case for continuity
  • 8. Choice, identity, and law: the decision of London’s Privy Council.
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