1. Cultural Politics of Race and Ethnicity Colonial legacy
Cultural Politics of Race and Ethnicity Colonial legacy? Should we talk about it?
Week 8

2. What are your impressions of Peter Winn’s chapter?
Can we compare it to our own experience?
Why is race such a tricky topic?
Do you find yourself able to talk about race in an appropriate and constructive way, or do you tend to avoid the subject?
How do you think having a black president has affected the national “conversation” on race?

3. African descendant citizens:
- 30 % of Latin America’s population
- More than 50% of the poor

5. Casta - Limpieza de sangre (Spain – Jewish or Muslim)
Post-Conquest period
Degree of acculturation to Hispanic culture (proportion of Spanish blood)
Gente de razón (Hispanics)
Gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives)
Porous; you can even buy it!
How does it relate to
economic status?
Whitening

7. Peninsular
Criollo
Indio
Negro
“no te entiendo”

8. United Nations call for change
150 million African descendants in Latin America in 2006
28 million indigenous peoples
Five times larger… What about projects? Funding? Organizations?
Source: World Bank

9. 13:53 – 24:00 (Black in Latin America)

10. Rafael Trujillo ( )
: US occupation. Trujillo trains with US Marines
As president or military strongman under figurehead presidents
Haitian grandmother
White powder
50K deaths; 10K (at least at Parsley Massacre): pronounce “perejil”
Open for Jewish, Japanese, and Spanish immigration

11. Is racism in Latin America a colonial heritage??
DEBATE # 1
Is racism in Latin America a colonial heritage??
Haitian Revolution
System of Castas
Black in Latin America
Independence
Inequality
The “other”
Law
Land
Spaniards
National identity
Creoles

12. DNA Test – Ancestry.com

13. Brazil
Gilberto Freyre and the idea of racial democracy

14. Human Development Index (HDI) ranking:
Afro-Brazil: 101st
White Brazil: 46th
Brazil: 69th

15. Afro-Brazil: - 48 % of the population (80 million)
… But only 20% of GDP
Unemployment is 50%
higher
Blacks who are employed earn less than half of what whites earn
78%, live below the poverty line,
compared to 40% of whites

16. Afro-Colombians - 26% of the population - 75% of the poor
- Earn 34% less than
their non-black
counterparts
1993 Census: 1.5 %
identified as black

18. DEBATE # 2 Is race irrelevant? Is there a racial democracy?
Is it good or bad?
Haiti and Dominican Republic
Should we talk about it?
Or is it stimulating racism?
Racial categories
Can denial be a form of reinforcing racism?
Was slavery worse in Brazil?
Are we using U.S. categories?
Can we make such comparisons?
Racial democracy?
Can we compare fear?
If we don’t talk about the problem, does it cease to exist?
Late abolition in Brazil
Race as human creation