"We are unique in this country in the way we describe and define race and ascribe to it characteristics that other cultures view very differently," says Congressperson Thomas C. Sawyer (Democrat-Ohio), who chaired the House Subcommittee on Census, Statistics, and Postal Personnel, which has to decide on which racial categories are used in the census.

Here people are considered black if they have even the faintest African traits --"one drop of blood" -- evident in skin color or hair or facial structure, for example, or even if they do not have such traits but claim to be, or are regarded by others as, black.The label white is reserved exclusively for supposedly pure Euro-Americans.

"I've never heard of this, where can I read more?"

see article from the New York Times recently reporting on the same cultural difference (here) VERY Useful if you are having trouble grasping the differences in the ways race is understood in Latin and North America

 

In contrast, in most of Latin America and most other parts of the world, there are intermediate categories, and "skin color is an individual variable -- not a group marker -- so that within the same family one sibling might be considered white and another black." More likely, each sibling would be called by some more nuanced term. People in Puerto Rico or South America or Mexico can be more or less white, black, or Amerindian. For example, a trigueño, or "wheat-colored" person, is generally lighter-skinned than a moreno (from the word for moor); a zambo in several Latin American countries is a mix of Amerindian and African and may be quite dark, with straight hair; an aindiado, or "Indianized" person, is perceived as mainly white but with some Indian features, such as straight black hair or high cheekbones; an achinado, or "Chinese-looking" person, has slanted eyes, regardless of whether derived from African or Indian rather than Asian ancestors. Each of these and dozens of other racial descriptions (café con leche or "café au lait," for example) have status implications, the most African looking generally (but not always) being the most stigmatized. But the opposite is also true: Status differences have color implications, or to be more precise, affect perceptions of color.

In Anglo America, people sometimes speak of "soul," meaning a special cultural authenticity or depth of feeling, as a black trait, as though race determined culture. In most of Latin America people speak as though culture determined race. Thus, a person who is called negro or prieto when he is poor and uneducated will almost always be described by some more flattering term, such as trigueño, if he rises in status. And all these classifications are subject to interpretation and negotiation.

These same and other mixes of skin-color, hair-texture, and bone-structure traits occur in the native population of the United States. Here, however, those who possess them have all learned to think of themselves as blacks. Frequently, they become annoyed with Latin Americans for insisting on subtler distinctions, thinking they are denying their African heritage. To the Latin American, it is the mixed-heritage persons who insist on calling themselves black who are denying the real complexity of their ancestries.

Although their influence reached the American interior only gradually, European migrants radically transformed the social order in the regions where they established imperial states or settler colonies. All European territories became multicultural societies where peoples of varied ancestry lived together under European or EuroAmerican dominance. Spanish and Portuguese territories soon became not only multicultural but ethnically mixed as well, largely because of migration patterns. Migrants to the Iberian colonies were overwhelmingly men: about 85 percent of the Spanish migrants were men, and the Portuguese migration was even more male-dominated than the Spanish. Because of the small numbers of European women, Spanish and Portuguese migrants entered into relationships with native women, which soon gave rise to an increasingly mestizo (or mixed) society.

Most Spanish migrants went to Mexico, where there was soon a growing population of mestizos – individuals of Spanish and native parentage… Women were more prominent among the migrants to Peru than to Mexico, and Spanish colonists there lived mostly in cities, where they maintained a more distinct community than did their counterparts in Mexico. In the colonial cities Spanish migrants married among themselves and re-created a European-style society In less settled regions, however, Spanish men associated with native women and gave rise to mestizo society.

With few European women available in Brazil, Portuguese men readily entered into relations both with native women and with African slave women. Brazil soon had large populations not only of mestizos, but also of mulattoes born of Portuguese and African parents, zambos born of indigenous and African parents, and other combinations arising from these groups themselves. Indeed, marriages between members of different ...communities became very, common in colonial Brazil and generated a society even more thoroughly mixed than that of mestizo Mexico.

In both the Spanish and the Portuguese colonies, migrants born in Europe known as peninsulares (those who came from the Iberian peninsula) stood at the top of the social hierarchy, followed by, criollos or creoles, individuals born in the Americas of Iberian parents. In the early days of the colonies, mestizos lived on the fringes of society. As time went on, however, the numbers of mestizos grew, and then, became essential contributors to their societies, especially in Mexico and Brazil...

The social structure of the French and English colonies in North America differed markedly from that of the Iberian colonies. Women were more numerous among the French and especially the English migrants than in Spanish and Portuguese communities, and settlers mostly married within their own groups. [In contrast,] French fur traders often associated with native women and generated metis (the French equivalent of mestizos) in regions around forts and trading posts. In French colonial cities like Port Royal and Quebec, however, liaisons between French and native peoples were less common.

Mingling between peoples of different ancestry was least common in the English colonies of North America.…English settlers attempted to maintain sharp boundaries between themselves and peoples of American and African ancestory.