{"id":12063,"date":"2011-02-13T20:58:36","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T20:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=12063"},"modified":"2011-10-27T19:49:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T19:49:12","slug":"determining-the-indeterminable-race-in-brazil-and-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=12063","title":{"rendered":"Determining the (In)Determinable: Race in Brazil and the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/Delivery.cfm\/SSRN_ID1474446_code877329.pdf?abstractid=1474446&amp;mirid=1\" target=\"_blank\">Determining the (In)Determinable: Race in Brazil and the United States<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/students.law.umich.edu\/mjrl\/\" target=\"_blank\">Michigan Journal of Race &amp; Law<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/students.law.umich.edu\/mjrl\/previousissues\/vol14-2abstracts.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 14, Issue 2<\/a>\u00a0(Spring 2009)<br \/>\npages 143-195<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cumberland.samford.edu\/faculty\/d-wendy-greene\" target=\"_blank\">D. Wendy Greene<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Law<br \/>\n<em>Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Recently, the Brazilian states of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rio_de_Janeiro_(state)\" target=\"_blank\">Rio de Janeiro<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/S%C3%A3o_Paulo_(state)\" target=\"_blank\">S\u00e3o Paulo<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mato_Grosso_do_Sul\" target=\"_blank\">Mato Grasso du Sol<\/a> have implemented race-conscious affirmative action programs in higher education. These states have established admissions quotas in public universities for Afro-Brazilians or afrodescendentes. As a result, determining \u201cwho is Black\u201d has become a complex yet important undertaking in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brazil\" target=\"_blank\">Brazil<\/a>. Contrary to many scholars\u2019 advancements race in Brazil is skin color or physical appearance, whereas in the United States race is based on ancestry, this Article advances the notion that in both American countries one\u2019s physical appearance is the primary determinant of Blackness. <strong>Furthermore, when U.S. courts have been charged with determining Blackness, racial constructs based on physical appearance\u2014not the rule of <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=86\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>hypodescent<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u2014have steered their legal pronouncement of race.<\/strong> This Article first offers a necessary survey of African slavery in Brazil and the United States. This Article demonstrates that despite the contrasts in demography, slave law, and ensuing racial ideology\u2014\u201cracial democracy\u201d in Brazil and \u201cracial purity\u201d in the United States\u2014the enslavement and subordination of Africans and their descendants spawned a common racial hierarchy and assembly of phenotypes designating Blackness and whiteness. Moreover, this Article surveys historical and contemporary racial determination cases which demonstrate the salience of physical appearance in determining race in the United States and debunks the notion that the hypodescent rule is applied to determine \u201cBlackness\u201d. These cases additionally illuminate the paradoxical nature of race\u2014specifically Blackness and whiteness\u2014in the Americas; race is contextual, subjective, and malleable yet simultaneously fixed, as physical constructs of Blackness and whiteness have transcended geography, time, ideology, and demography. Ultimately, this exploration of racial determination cases imparts insight and guidance to Brazilian arbiters currently determining who is Afro-Brazilian for affirmative action purposes.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>INTRODUCTION<\/li>\n<li>I. Slavery, Race, and Racial Ideology in Brazil and the United States Settlement, Slavery, and Demography\n<ul>\n<li>A. Race, Racial Ideology, and Racial Hierarchy<\/li>\n<li>B. Brazil: A \u201cRacial Democracy\u201d<\/li>\n<li>C. The United States: A \u201cRacially Pure\u201d Nation<\/li>\n<li>D. Brazil and the United States: A Transnational Concept of Race and Racial Hierarchy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>II. Constructing Race: The Role of U.S. Courts\n<ul>\n<li>A. Race as Physical Appearance and Beyond in the Nineteenth Century: Hudgins v. Wright and White v. Tax Collector<\/li>\n<li>B. Racial Determination in the Early Twentieth Century: In Re Cruz<\/li>\n<li>C. Moving Toward a New Millennium Yet Mired in the Past: The Malone and Perkins Cases<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>III. The Application of U.S. Racial Determination Methods to the Brazilian Case<\/li>\n<li>CONCLUSION<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On January 20, 2009 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Throughout President Obama\u2019s candidacy and after his victory, one of the primary queries raised by the media revolved around his race: is America \u201cready\u201d for a <em>Black<\/em> president? Even though it is publicly known that Obama\u2019s mother is a white American from the Midwest and his father is a native of Kenya,<strong> the press as well as most Americans would describe Senator Obama as the first Black president of the United States, rather than the first mixed-race president. The general depiction and acceptance of Senator Obama as Black rather than multiracial generates important questions related to America\u2019s common understanding of race. In the United States, is Obama deemed Black because he has self-identified as Black? Is Obama defined as Black due to his known African ancestry? Or is Obama generally regarded as Black in the United States, despite his known white parentage, because of his physical appearance\u2014one which conforms to a socially constructed image of Blackness?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Since the era of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=4781\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Crow<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">the rule of hypodescent<\/a>\u2014the presence of one ancestor of African descent makes an individual\u2019s race Black\u2014has been articulated as the guiding principle for determining one\u2019s \u201cBlackness\u201d and \u201cwhiteness\u201d in the United States. Accordingly, ancestry allegedly determines Blackness in the United States dissimilarly to Brazil, where one\u2019s physical appearance is determinative. In Brazil it is widely acknowledged that most Brazilians are descendants of Africans in light of the pervasive miscegenation that occurred during and after the Portuguese and Brazilian enslavement of Africans. Therefore, one\u2019s physical appearance\u2014hair texture, skin color, nose size, eye shape, etc.\u2014determines one\u2019s race in Brazil. Contrary to scholarly opinion \u201c[u]nlike in the United States, race in Brazil refers mostly to skin color or physical appearance rather than to ancestry\u201d and public adherence to this idea, one\u2019s physical appearance is the primary determinant of Blackness in both American countries. Indeed, an individual\u2019s ancestry is necessarily implicated in determining race based on his or her physical appearance, as this method of classifying race is grounded in socially mediated presumptions concerning how an individual\u2019s physical appearance denotes his or her genetic makeup&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;This Article examines the alleged complexity of determining who is Black or Afro-Brazilian for affirmative action purposes in higher education while surveying United States racial determination jurisprudence. This Article is not intended to serve as a dissertation on the legality of race-conscious affirmative action or the efficacy of these programs in the United States and Brazil. Since the United States is considered a global forerunner in the implementation of race-conscious affirmative action in higher education and employment, numerous scholars have debated the validity, constitutionality, and utility of race-conscious affirmative action in Brazil through a U.S.\/Brazil comparative lens. However, there is a paucity of literature exploring fundamental issues in facilitating race-conscious programs: specifically, who is the proper beneficiary; how should this determination be made; and can Brazilian arbiters adopt U.S. judicial modes of determining race to effectuate their raceconscious affirmative action programs? The objective of this Article is to mitigate this void in comparative scholarship by demonstrating the universality of race and the law\u2019s role in constructing race, racial ideology, and racial hierarchy.<\/p>\n<p>First, this Article discusses African slavery in Brazil and the United States, which is crucial to the understanding of race, racial ideology, and racial hierarchy in the two nations. Part I explores the differences and similarities between the conception of race in Brazil and the United States, specifically focusing on the construction of Black, white, and multi-racial classifications. Part I also considers the influence of slavery and settlement patterns on the contrasting racial ideologies in both American nations\u2014\u201cracial democracy\u201d in Brazil and \u201cracial purity\u201d in the United States. Additionally, this section illustrates that a mutual racial hierarchy constructed around physical appearance developed and endures despite the divergent racial ideologies, settlement patterns and slavery law in Brazil and the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Next, Part II examines a series of racial determination cases decided by American courts historically and contemporarily and the various methods these courts appropriated to determine an individual\u2019s race. This survey of racial determination cases illuminates the salience of physical appearance in determining race as well as the paradoxical nature of race\u2014specifically Blackness and whiteness\u2014in the Americas; race is contextual, subjective, and malleable yet simultaneously fixed, as physical constructs of Blackness and whiteness have transcended geography, time, ideology, and demography. Part III concludes with a consideration of Brazilian arbiters adopting American judicial modes of determining race and the potential consequences of doing so&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/Delivery.cfm\/SSRN_ID1474446_code877329.pdf?abstractid=1474446&amp;mirid=1\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Determining the (In)Determinable: Race in Brazil and the United States Michigan Journal of Race &amp; Law Volume 14, Issue 2\u00a0(Spring 2009) pages 143-195 D. Wendy Greene, Assistant Professor of Law Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama Recently, the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, S\u00e3o Paulo, and Mato Grasso du Sol have implemented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,83,21,459,1467,8,26,20],"tags":[5437,2260],"class_list":["post-12063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-d-wendy-greene","tag-michigan-journal-of-race-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}