“Racial Democracy” and Racial Inclusion

Maroon Socioterritorial Movements

“…Political discourses have portrayed Latin American countries as racial democracies (Rodrigues Alves 1980;Wade 2008aWade , 2008bAlberto and Hoffnung-Garskof 2018;Schwartzman 2020). Blackness as a social concern has been successfully erased from national projects, as in Argentina (Gordillo 2016; Lamborghini, Geler, and Guzm an 2017); neutralized, as in Colombia (Arocha 1998;Wade 2009); or deeply marginalized, as in Uruguay (G. R. Andrews 2014).…”

Troubling the Essentialist Discourse of Brown in Education: The Anti-Black Sociopolitical and Sociohistorical Etymology of Latinxs as a Brown Monolith

“…We use culture intentionally in this case because mestizx identities are often politically championed in the making of homogenous national identities while Blackness throughout Latin America and the Caribbean is viewed as an ancestral or folkloric ingredient to the cultural identity (e.g., dance, music, and food) of particular nation-states (Alves, 2014; Godreau, 2015; Paschel, 2009, 2016; Rivera-Rideau, 2013b; Sue, 2013; Vigoya & Espinel, 2014). However, and perhaps more importantly, what emerges from this sociohistorical canon of scholarship are the ways in which Afro-Latin American thinkers, intellectuals, and interlocutors challenged “deceitful myths” (Alberto & Hoffnung-Garskof, 2018, p. 265) of racial inclusivity, of universal Brownness, that were and still are promoted through official nationalisms. Although this significant canon of literature in Afro-Latin American studies critiques dominant ideologies underscoring monolithic representations of Latinidad, U.S. education research is yet to fully apprehend the mobility of political theories from the Global South in discourses of race and racialization (Calderón & Urrieta, 2019; Dache, 2019; Urrieta & Calderón, 2019).…”

“…Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre conceptualized what came to be known as “racial democracy” after completing graduate work in the United States from 1917 to 1920. There he observed the social, political, and economic segregation of Black populations (Alberto & Hoffnung-Garskof, 2018; Guimarães, 1999). Freyre’s experience in the United States altered his perception of Brazilian race relations, which he viewed as more peaceful after returning from graduate studies (Telles, 2004).…”

“…In many ways, contextualizing the work of Vasconcelos and Freyre is necessary to avoid binary-oriented geopolitical approaches to theories of race formation in Latin America. As Alberto and Hoffnung-Garskof (2018) caution, because of the complex nature of racial democracy, adherence to one interpretation fails to account for the multitude of factors that shaped and continue to affect projects and patterns of racial formation in Latin America. Indeed, a textured approach to discourses of racial harmony in Latin America can unearth hidden layers of anti-imperialism, although “the proponents of racial democracy did not completely escape the heritage of scientific racism” (de la Fuente & Andrews, 2018, p. 12).…”

“Latinidad Is Cancelled”

“…Coming into being in the period after the independence movements from Spain of the early nineteenth century, the region's French-given namesake differentiated it not just from the motherland but also from Haiti, and later the United States. 25 Even though it is a purportedly geographic region, it does not actually exist on any map; rather, Latin America is a metageography that has been described as "not logically constituted." 26 I would argue that it is constituted so as to exclude spaces where the majority populations are Black.…”