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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (16245)	3/16/2000 4:53:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Multiracial promiscuity does not preclude a subtle form of pigmentocracy as the testimony below reveals it.... From: "Gordon Tapper" gwtapper@hotmail.com Subject: The American Latino Experience Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 Before we embrace the Latino model of race relations some important thing need to be pointed out. Latin America, particularly countries like Brazil and the countries of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, have presented themselves as racial democracies. The logic being that because miscegenation is so wide spread and universally admitted to there can be no racism. This myth has often led to Latinos taking a holier than though attitude when discussing issues of race in the United States. However, the reality in Latin America (and to a lesser extent the non-Spanish speaking Caribbean) is much more complex. Racism and miscegenation are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What exists in Latin America is a pigmentocracy; a vertically oriented spectrum of skin tones, hair textures and phenotypes with the lighter more Iberian in appearance at the top and the darker more Negroid/African and/or Amerindian in appearance at the bottom. Miscegenation within these regions is not necessarily due to more enlightened attitudes about race mixing or racial differences on the part of the Iberian Europeans, but rather an adaption, on their part, to the reality of colonizing a region in which the number of European men significantly outnumbered the number of European women. Consequently, what the Spanish and Portuguese wrought were societies in which officially racism does not exist and there may be --as in Brazil-- a celebration of all the racial ingredients that go into the community's make up, but there is actually a mixture of contempt and denial of non-European ancestry, especially if it is African. This is reflected in concepts like "improving the race" or "purifying the blood", which in essence signify weeding out of any visible trace of Amerindian and (especially) African ancestry. An illustrative example from my own experience growing up in New York would be the number of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans I encountered of obvious African ancestry (either black, mulatto or any combination of those two with some Amerindianancestry) who not only were offended at the suggestion that they had African ancestry (note: I don't mean black) but were not above referring to black people (in this case, any non-latino African descended person) by such racist terms as "cocolo" or "mayete". In addition, I have personally encountered South Americans who consider themselves superior to Latino Caribbean people because those people have black blood and are therefore tainted and inferior compared to them with their predominant European and Amerindian ancestry (even though many countries in South America outside of Brazil have been "tainted" with the tar brush just as much as Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic).[] It is tempting to blame much of this on Latino's residence within the cultural orbit of the United States, either here or south of the border. But the fact remains that Latin America is far from the racial democracy that both it and we purport it to be. But the fact remains that Latin America has not adequately addressed the historical belief that white is superior to black and red. Race mixing alone cannot and has not countered this. If the multiracial/biracial movement is looking for sources of inspiration, it should look more critically at Latin America. If anything, Latinos can learn alot more from some people in the multiracial/biracial movement who embrace all of their ancestries without deeming one to be superior to the others. Excerpted from: webcom.com [] The 1990 New York population census, which offers the most recent racial breakdown, puts the city's white population at 3.1 million, its Asian population at 500,000, its black population at 2.1 million and its Hispanic population at 1.8 million. Of course these figures are dated, and the proportion of black and Latino residents is claimed to be substantially higher. The terms "black" and "Hispanic" however, are a little confusing: most of those New Yorkers labelled Hispanic are from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Here is one of the best-kept secrets of the African diaspora --Caribbean Latino cultures have maintained their deep roots in Africa. Demographically and culturally then, New York reveals itself as a substantially African metropolis.