Is race mixture an antidote to racism_link.pdf

2017

Race mixture, or mestizaje, has played a critical role in the history, culture, and politics of Latin America. In Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom, Peter Wade draws on a multidisciplinary research study in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. He shows how Latin American elites and outside observers have emphasized mixture's democratizing potential, depicting it as a useful resource for addressing problems of racism (claiming that race mixture undoes racial difference and hierarchy), while Latin American scientists participate in this narrative with claims that genetic studies of mestizos can help isolate genetic contributors to diabetes and obesity and improve health for all. Wade argues that, in the process, genomics produces biologized versions of racialized difference within the nation and the region, but a comparative approach nuances the simple idea that highly racialized societies give rise to highly racialized genomics. Wade examines the tensions between mixture and purity, and between equality and hierarchy in liberal political orders, exploring how ideas and scientific data about genetic mixture are produced and circulate through complex networks.

Theory & Event

This paper juxtaposes the temporalities at work in the discourses of racial democracy in Brazil and post-racialism in the United States. It finds that each provides a distinct example of what Charles Mills calls white time, or a temporal imaginary that functions to protect extant forms of white supremacy. Furthermore, as each discourse transforms itself in the face of criticism, they increasingly converge on a prophetic temporality that represents both the most seductive and the most dangerous version of white time.

Cultural studies, 2005

Antipode, 2007

In a world where racism persists undiminished (if not intensified) in a multitude of configurations, there is a pressing need to consider the state of anti-racist theory and practice. Drawing on the multidisciplinary contributions to this special issue alongside a panoramic snapshot of current scholarship, this article wrestles with several matters central to the ongoing development of anti-racism. Junctures with social justice, equality, recognition, tolerance, indifference, and acknowledgement are explored along with the varieties, and co-constitutions, of racism and anti-racism. Post-racial potentialities and the double-bind of anti-racism amidst the twin liberal desires of sameness and difference are examined alongside the nascent growth of alter-racism via concepts such as embodiment, viscerality, humour, affective ambiences, and everyday race labour. It is hoped that this article will foster ongoing reflection, discussion, and, most importantly, action aimed at defying racism across the globe.

Ethnohistory, 2006

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and victory were highly publicized events that reverberated outside the United States and were of significant interest to many Brazilians. In this research note, I argue that the longstanding comparison betweenrace relations in Brazil and the United States contributed to Obama’s meaningfulness for Afro-Brazilian activists. Many scholars and non-elite Brazilians have depicted Brazil as less racist than the United States, which contributes to an idea of Brazilianexceptionalism. Afro-Brazilian activists seized upon the public attention paid toObama to counter this Brazilian exceptionalist position by pointing to forms of racismin Brazil that limit Afro-Brazilian political ascension.

Small Axe, 2014

While scholarly and popular attention has focused on both inter-ethnic tensions and hyper-diverse mixtures in Trinidad, this article considers solidarities based on neither mixture nor bounded, antagonistic cultures. These “altered solidarities” reflect the ways that subaltern Indian and African Trinidadians have articulated trust and influence through ethno-racial difference. I construct both a counter-history of ethno-racial relations in Trinidad and a counter-narrative to culturalist explanations for contemporary violence to foreground less legible forms of inter-racial connection and intra-ethnic division. Although these counter-narratives remain provocations defined by the particular context of African and Indian relations in “rural cosmopolitan” Trinidad, altered solidarities point towards wider interventions in debates that surround pluralism, creolization theory, and the delimitation of national, ethnic, or political communities.

Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of …, 2009