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Post-Revisionist Scholarship on Race

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DIPLOMA OF WHITENESS: RACE AND SOCIAL POLICY IN BRAZIL, 1917–1945. By DávilaJerry. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. 292. $64.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.)
SHADES OF CITIZENSHIP: RACE AND THE CENSUS IN MODERN POLITICS. By NoblesMelissa. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. 248. $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.)
RACIAL REVOLUTIONS: ANTIRACISM AND INDIAN RESURGENCE IN BRAZIL. By WarrenJonathan W. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 363. $64.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Nancy P. Appelbaum
Nancy P. Appelbaum*
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, State University of New York
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Abstract

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Type
Review Essays
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , 2005 , pp. 206 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

1.

The author thanks Roger Kittleson for comments on an earlier draft. Deep gratitude is also owed to Karin Rosemblatt, both for comments on this particular essay and for insights provided in an ongoing dialogue on the subject of race in Latin America.

References

2. The revisionist approach was pioneered by Latin American, especially Brazilian, social scientists at mid-century. See for example: Florestan Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Florestan Fernandes and Roger Bastide, Brancos e negros em São Paulo (São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1959); Magnus Mörner, ed. Race and Class in Latin America (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970). One might also include Tomás Robaína Fernández, El negro en Cuba, 1902–1958: Apuntes para la historia de la lucha contra la discriminación racial (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1990). Some of the best and most influential examples of revisionist work by scholars based in the United States are: George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1980), and Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil 1888–1988 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle For Equality, 1886–1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Richard Graham, ed. The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974; reprint with a new preface and bibliography, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993). Some recent books might arguably be grouped with the revisionist literature, given their strong emphasis on the negative effects of the racial-democracy myth, or might be classified as more in the post-revisionist vein because of the innovative methodology they employ; these include Michael Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimiento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo Brazil, 1945–1988 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); France Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), among others. The revisionist literature produced in the United States has incurred the ire of some Latin American and European scholars who accuse U.S. academics of imposing North American racial assumptions on distinct Latin American realities. See for example Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant,“ On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” Culture and Society 16 (1996): 41–51. For a nuanced, though polemical, critique of the revisionist approach to race, see Alejandro de la Fuente, “Myths of Racial Democracy: Cuba 1900–1912,” Latin American Research Review 34 (3): 39–73 (1999). De la Fuente does not consider egalitarian racial “myths of racial democracy” to be exclusively paralyzing and disempowering for Latin Americans of African descent; he views such discourses as at once empowering and disempowering. Similar views are increasingly common among the latest generation of scholars, though most would not go as far as he does in emphasizing the positive aspects of Latin American racial discourse.

3. Some scholars who exemplify the post-revisionist trend include Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation For All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); and the contributors Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, eds., Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

4. See for example Carl N. Degler, Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986); Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Thomas Skidmore, “Toward a Comparative Analysis of Race Relations since Abolition in Brazil and the United States,” Journal of Latin American Studies 4 (1): 1–28 (1972), and “Bi-Racial U.S.A. vs. Multi-Racial Brazil: Is the Constrast Still Valid?,” journal of Latin American Studies 25 (2): 373–385 (May 1993); Robert Brent Toplin, Freedom and Prejudice: The Legacy of Slavery in the United States and Brazil (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974).

5. George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 155–157, 205–207; Alejandro de la Fuente makes use of the Cuban census data on race in A Nation for All.

6. Personal electronic correspondence from George Reid Andrews, 3 September 2004.

7. On ethnicity and race, see Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 1997). The ethnicity research on indigenous peoples and immigrants has produced brilliant scholarship too extensive to summarize here. One of the most exciting new areas of inquiry into ethnicity, which has many points of intersection with the race literature, is research on the identities of Asian immigrants. See for example Jeffrey Lesser, ed., Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

8. See for example Nancy P. Appelbaum, Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 120; de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos, 306–14; Jeffrey L. Gould, To Die in this Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 48.

9. Thomas C. Holt, “Marking: Race, Race-making, and the Writing of History,” American Historical Review 100 (1):14 (February 1995), emphasis in the original.

10. De la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; Peter Wade, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Appelbaum, Muddied Waters.

11. I would welcome more inquiries along the lines of Benjamin S. Orlove, “Putting Race in its Place: Order in Colonial and Postcolonial Peruvian Geography,” Social Research 60 (2): 301–36 (Summer 1993); Raymond B. Craib, “A Nationalist Metaphysics: State Fixations, National Maps, and the Geo-Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, Hispanic American Historical Review 82 (1): 33–68 (February 2002), although the latter article does not specifically address race. See also Aims McGuinness, ”Searching for ‘Latin America’: Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s,“ Gerardo Rénique, ”Race, Region, and Nation: Sonora's Anti-Chinese Racism and Mexico's Postrevolutionary Nationalism, 1920s–1930s,“ and Barbara Weinstein, ”Racializing Regional Difference: São Paulo versus Brazil, 1932,“ all in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

12. On intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in modern Latin America, see for example Sueann Caufield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Sarah Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1870–1854 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; Eileen J. Suárez Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, “Sexuality and Biopower in Chile and Latin America,” Political Power and Social Theory 15 (2002): 229–262.

13. Some examples include: Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba; Marixa A. Lasso, “Race and Republicanism in the Age of Revolution, Cartagena, 1795-1831” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Florida, 2002)“; Alfonso Múnera, El fracaso de la nación: región, clase, y raza en el Caribe colombiano (1717-1821) (Bogotá: Banco de la República and Ancora Editores, 1998); James E. Sanders, ” ‘Citizens of a Free People:‘ Popular Liberalism and Race in Nineteenth-Century Southwestern Colombia,“ The Hispanic American Historical Review 84 (2): 277–313 (May 2004).

14. See for example Peter Wade, Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), among others.