Race, culture and concepts of ethnicity

Post Reply New Topic

From what I know, race is actually a social construct...

... is there is some human equivalent of Fédération Cynologique Internationale that defines race standards and anything without their ancestry documentation is considered "mixed"?

I meant for human races.

Race has been conceptualized differently in Anglo America from how it is Latin America, and the Caribean(Anglo meaning the US and Canada).

Long complicated story short: there was more actual mixing of Europeans with other races in Spanish, French, and Portugese America than in Anglo America. And "mixed race" also has more of history of being recognized as a thing in Latin America than in Anglo America.

When Spain colonized the Caribbean, and when Cortez conquered Mexico, and Pizarro conquered the Incas, they sent the Conquistadors: all male army divisions. The conquistadors intermarried into the native populations. This resulted in the modern descendants being "mestizo" (part White and part Indian descent).

In contrast: when England colonized the eastern seaboard of what was to become the United States they sent whole families: like the storied Pilgrims to Massechusettes, and the Jamestown colonists to Virginia. So the White tended to stay all White as they spread across the English speaking north America.

Africans were later imported as slaves to Brazil and the Caribbean, and finnally to England's North American colonies. Just like Mestizo (mixed Indian and White) became a thing in Mexico and Peru, Mulatto (mixed Black and White) became a category in the Caribbean and in Brazil.

In Contrast the US evolved the "one drop rule" in law and in attitude. In the Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, or even in French Louisiana, if you were half Black you were "Mulatto". And there were even categories like Quadroon and Octoroon for one fourth and one eighth Black respectively. But in the US if you were one part in 16 Black, or even one part in 32 (in some locations), you were legally defined as being entirely "Black"(ie having one drop of blood). There was never a concept of in-between, or mixed race cetegory. You were one category or the other Black or White.

indeed in the former French colony of New Orleans Mulattoes had always been a cetegory of their own - above Blacks and below Whites in the social strata. And it was brutal shock to them, as the area became assimilated to the Anglo AMerican south in the 19th Century, and Mulattos were forced into the same box as "n****rs" with Blacks by American Jim Crow era laws and attitudes.

There was still a racial hierarchy in the Caribbean/Latin America. There were racial tensions between Mulattos and Blacks in the Caribbean.

Also in Brazil there is a saying that "money bleaches"- if you get richer and move up in society -somehow-magically- your race can also change- in the eyes of others- from Black to Mulatto to even White. in contrast in pre WWII America even Black celebs were still denied service in restaurants in the segregated south.

From what I know, race is actually a social construct...

In my language, "Murzyn" is someone of sub-Saharean African ancestry (specifically African, excluding other dark-skinned ethnicities) and "Mulat" is someone of visibly mixed African-European ancestry, regardless of the ratio. That appears closer to the Spanish-Portuguese-French concept of "race".

What in your opinion contributed to emergence of the one drop rule?

That might be a factor. In the case of less democratic societies there was a higher likelihood that a member of the old money/power class might have mixed ancestry reflecting the norms early on when few women of European descent made the journey.

For a number of reasons parts of the US had more women of European descent available and therefore had fewer mixed people, even when that society was attached to a more typical colonial society (like the US north and south) this laid the groundwork for ethnic background to dominate the concept of race, whereas in Latin America race and class identities tended to merge a bit more. Among things, this meant that poor whites had no reason to try to preserve their kids 'whiteness', rich 'whites' could be not entirely white and still count and that it would be much harder to establish 'white only' parts of society. Even in practice, white supremacists in Latin America are more likely to care about 'whitening' society than 'segregating'.

In a lot of colonial societies white men were expected to 'assimilate' their families into white society and when they chose not to they were ostracized and treated with the same racist contempt as their brothers-in-law.