Race and Migration Papers
(Hw 8)

Note:

(1) assignments appear in the syllabus on the day assigned, not the day due

(2) You must submit your written work by blackboard

(3) BE SURE TO FOLLOW THE FILE-NAMING CONVENTIONS FOR THIS COURSE (5% penalty if you do not).

All files should be saved on your computer as: your last name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the first two letters of your first name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the assignment number. So if a student named Saddam Hussein were to submit assignment number 8, the file name would be:


hussein_sa_8.doc

THIS IS ASSIGNMENT 8

 


Chart that will be VERY helpful in organizing your thoughts for the paper



"Wait, this assignment makes it sound as if there aren't actually different races?" Doesn't the fact that no one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese mean that races are real? See "Ten Things Everyone Should Know about race"

 

Examining a sample essay can sometimes help in writing your own; see a model essay and discussion here

In this essay of 380 – 575 words (roughly 1.5 -2.5 pages), describe how differing patterns of migration helped create the conditions that gave rise to dramatically differing visions of race in North and Latin America.



Evidence for the differing patterns of migrations will be found in the excerpt below from Traditions and Encounters by J. Bentley and H. Ziggler; evidence for the differing visions of race is provided by the Mexican scholar Geoffrey Fox in an excerpt from his book Hispanic Nation (also below).

To be clear, your goal here is to explain how historical events can help us understand why people in Latin America (and many other parts of the world) view race differently than North Americans view race. How can a knowledge of history explain why many people in Latin America understand race as an individual marker (like having a green eyes), whereas in the United States, many think of race as a group marker (that is, one somehow "belongs" to one of several large groupings of people called "races," e.g. one is somhow a "member" of a "Black race," "Asian race," "White race" etc...).

Your focus, accordingly, should be on the differing IDEAS of race in the regions more so than on (perceived) particular racial groupings. If the concept of race as an idea created by society (in the same way society creates the ideas of "responsibility" or "fashion") rather than a reality determined by biology (such as blood cells) is new to you, see "Ten Things Everyone Should Know about race".

One good form for your thesis for this paper might be, "Patterns of migration that differed in way X produced visions of "race" that differed in way Y for reason Z."


Finally,
do not write a book report of either excerpt! If you find yourself summarizing either excerpt, you are writing the wrong paper. Connect the two readings analytically rather than summarizing the two readings sequentially. (se·quen·tial ly, adv, happening in a particular order or forming a particular sequence)

Some Writing Hints:

1) Remember to use and identify Cl/Ev/Wa structures in those paragraphs that present evidence, but NOT in those paragraphs that do not present evidence. If you are having trouble organizing your ideas to write the paper, you might look at this very helpful chart.

2) Be very careful not to be ethnocentric in your discussion; that is, don't assume that the way race is conceived of in North America is the NATURAL and ONLY way of viewing the world. Do not project your vision of race onto another culture when doing this assignment. KEEP IN MIND THE THEMES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE YOU READ.

3) Be sure to provide evidence in the form of direct quotations from the excerpts below for each of your claims. Remember, however, that
your quotations from the excerpts should be no more than 10 words and preferably MUCH shorter -- if you are unsure how to omit unnecessary information from a quotation, see here. (very usefu)

4) See a proposed outline here (VERY USEFUL)


Edited excerpt from Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics, and the Construction of Identity by Geoffrey Fox (University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp. 23 - 24

"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.

Edited excerpt from Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past by J. Bentley and H. Ziggler, pp. 679 - 680


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.