Blackness and Race Mixture: Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture) - Hardcover

Wade

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801844584 ISBN 13: 9780801844584

Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 1993

Synopsis

The idea of "racial democracy" in Latin American populations has traditionally assumed that class is a more significant factor than race. But, despite the emergence of a "mesitizo" class - people who are culturally and racially mixed in the broadest sense - there remains a complex discrimination against blacks. To explain this phenomenon, Peter Wade focuses on the black population of the Choco province in Colombia - an area where the typical Latin American ambiguity surrounding racial identity is countered by the more definitive "black" identity of the local inhabitants. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork, Wade shows how the concepts of "blackness" and discrimination are deeply embedded in different social levels and contexts - from region to neighborhood, and from politics and economics to housing, marriage, music and personal identity. By uncovering what "blackness" means to the Chocoanos and how "blackness" is reproduced and transformed in different contexts, Wade brings to the study of race a perspective sophisticated enough to account for the real complexities of "blackness", "mixedness" and "whiteness"; the conflicts among race, ethnicity and national ideologies; the development and transformation of cultural identities; the persistence of racial inequality and racism; and the constitution of society through topography and regionality.

About this title

Review

"Wade's insistence on analytic issues throughout makes it impossible to read this as a book simply about race relations in Colombia. A major contribution to several fields of scholarship."--Virginia R. Dominguez, Duke University "Wade has captured the essence of blackness in Colombia...All students of race relations in the Americas should read the book."'--The Americas' "A provocative and innovative contribution to the ongoing debate on blackness and racial democracy in the Americas."'--American Historical Review'

Review

"Wade's insistence on analytic issues throughout makes it impossible to read this as a book simply about race relations in Colombia. A major contribution to several fields of scholarship." -- Virginia R. Dominguez, Duke University

Edition details

• Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801844584
• ISBN 13: 9780801844584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 424