The absence of a rigid racial taxonomy led to an extraordinarily mixed country, with single families composed of multiple skin tones, and far more racial fluidity. Maybury-Lewis, Gilberto de Mello Freyre, Gilberto Freyre, University of California PressĬomments Off on The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian CivilizationĪfter slavery, Brazil didn’t institute prohibitions of interracial relationships or draconian racial distinctions, as the United States did.
This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization “ Why Do You Call Yourself Black And African?,” The Zeleza Post (July 4, 2009). The categories Black and Latino/Hispanic are often defined as mutually exclusive on identification forms in the U.S., such that one is instructed to check “Black” provided they are “not of Hispanic origin” and to check “Hispanic – regardless of race”! Since when has anything in America ever been regardless of race? As history has too often demonstrated this is a calculated attempt to create divisions between black people based on language and country of origin. Equally, I’ve always been unnerved by the categories Latino and Hispanic to describe people from the Spanish Caribbean and parts of Latin America that are heavily populated by people of African descent precisely because they erase/e-race our ties to Africa. I certainly recognize that I am multi-racial, but I don’t feel a common bond with mixed people simply because we have parents of different racial backgrounds.
I could call myself mixed race or even Latina/Hispanic. If blackness in America has been defined broadly enough to claim me as one of its own, that still leaves the question of why I claim my blackness.
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