{"id":24881,"date":"2012-08-19T23:48:06","date_gmt":"2012-08-19T23:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24881"},"modified":"2015-02-16T23:49:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T23:49:15","slug":"obama-and-myths-of-racial-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24881","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Myths of Racial Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama and Myths of Racial Democracy<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

NACLA Report<\/a>
\nNorth American Congress on Latin America<\/a>
\n2008-11-17<\/p>\n

Marisol LeBr\u00f3n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political pundits have celebrated president-elect Barack Obama\u2019s sweeping and historic victory as evidence that the United States has taken an initial step toward a \u201cpost-racial\u201d or \u201ccolorblind\u201d society.<\/p>\n

In a recent Los Angeles Times<\/em> Op-Ed, Shelby Steele provocatively asked, \u201cDoesn’t a black in the Oval Office put the lie to both black inferiority and white racism? Doesn’t it imply a \u2018post-racial\u2019 America?\u201d Analysts on both sides of the political spectrum have answered yes. Phillip Morris of the Cleveland Plains Dealer<\/em> declared, \u201cAmerica has completed its evolution into a racial meritocracy.\u201d While Jonathan Kay of Canada’s National Post<\/em> wrote, \u201cElecting a black president won\u2019t instantly cure \u2018the ugly racial wound left by America\u2019s history\u2019 (as The Economist put it in its Obama endorsement). But it will at least prove that America has finally become a fundamentally post-racial society\u2014a place where tribal loyalties are based on ideology, not skin color.\u201d Meanwhile, another conservative columnist, Laura Hollis of Townhall.com, flatly claimed, \u201cRacism is dead.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…U.S. commentators most often point to the concept of mestizaje<\/a><\/em> as an example of Latin America\u2019s seamless racial integration. Mestizaje<\/em>, or racial mixing, is often seen as diametrically different to historical U.S. legal sanctions against miscegenation<\/a>\u2014the so-called “one-drop” rule<\/a>. Mestizaje<\/em> is cited as a prime example of how Latin Americans have been able to move beyond race. Although mestizaje<\/em> has different historical roots and trajectories within different Latin American countries, there has been a rhetorical emphasis across the board on a kind harmonious racial exceptionalism at work in Latin America…<\/p>\n

…The promotion of mestizaje<\/em> and racial democracy in Latin America has often existed alongside, and as part of, the suppression of populations of African and indigenous descent. National identities based on mestizaje<\/em> served the dual purpose of “uniting” fractious nations under one banner while at the same time promoting the mass marginalization of racial and ethnic groups by denying their discrimination.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several scholars have helped dispel the myth of racial democracy in Latin America by documenting what is often referred to as blanqueamiento<\/em> (whitening), or mejorando la raza<\/em> (improving the race). In one example, blanqueamiento<\/em> is actively sought out by marrying a lighter-skinned person, thereby producing lighter, racially mixed offspring. Sociologist Ginetta E. B. Candelario<\/a> has traced the many ways blanqueamiento<\/em> is promoted in Dominican society. As evidence, she points to the range of skin creams and hair products marketed to produce a whiter-looking phenotype among Dominican women<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama and Myths of Racial Democracy NACLA Report North American Congress on Latin America 2008-11-17 Marisol LeBr\u00f3n Political pundits have celebrated president-elect Barack Obama\u2019s sweeping and historic victory as evidence that the United States has taken an initial step toward a \u201cpost-racial\u201d or \u201ccolorblind\u201d society. In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, Shelby Steele provocatively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,21,8,394,20],"tags":[11585,11586,11587],"class_list":["post-24881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-marisol-lebron","tag-nacla-report","tag-north-american-congress-on-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24881","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=24881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}