Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The use of the term “colored” was coined by mixed-race people (Ottley 1968:95). In the eighteenth century this population and their descendants created their own caste system, which was marked by color and class. In one case in South Carolina, mixed-race people formed the Brown Fellowship Society, an exclusive mulatto organization that I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 2. Mixed descendants of French and Spanish settlers in New Orleans also distinguished themselves by adopting the terms gens de couleur or people of color. This term carried with it all the connotations of higher case associated with nonblackness and mixed ancestry. In the first half of the nineteenth century, “colored” also became the term of polite usage among free Negroes of the North.

Objections to the term “colored” were duly noted in the African American press. In the September 24, 1831, edition of The Liberator, an editorial declared that “the term ‘colored’ is not a good one. Whenever used, it recalls to mind the offensive distinction of color.” T. Thomas Fortune, a leading journalist in the first quarter twentieth century, also declared that the word was a vague misnomer and had “neither geographical nor political significance, as applied to race” (a quoted in Barry and Blassingame 1982:391). Nevertheless, many people, especially middle- and upper-class African Americans, used the term “colored” (Isaacs 1964:70). The need for a name that was self-defined and descriptive remained.

Obiagele Lake, Blue Veins and Kinky Hair: Naming and Color Consciousness in African America (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003), 11.

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

Tags: Anthony Marx, Anthony W. Marx, Cambridge University Press

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

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