AAA 2013 CFP: "Neither Black nor White"

[Da Silva, Antonio B - (ajbsilva)]

Jennifer Roth-Gordon and I are putting together a AAA panel to submit to the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology currently titled: “‘Neither Black nor White:’ Reexamining Carl Degler’s Mulatto Escape Hatch in Brazil and Beyond.” We welcome participation from both linguistic and sociocultural anthropologists. We would love to hear from interested panelists working on related topics in Brazil or the Americas more broadly. We would hope that all papers would be able to directly engage with some aspect of Carl Degler’s work.
Please contact either Antonio José da Silva (ajbsilva at email.arizona.edu<mailto:ajbsilva at email.arizona.edu>) or Jen Roth-Gordon (jenrothg at email.arizona.edu<mailto:jenrothg at email.arizona.edu>) with any questions or with a tentative abstract (up to 250 words). We are also interested in those willing to serve as discussant. Please respond as soon as possible, preferably before March 25th.  Our panel abstract draft is included below.
“Neither Black nor White:” Reexamining Carl Degler’s Mulatto Escape Hatch in Brazil and Beyond
Over 40 years ago, historian Carl N. Degler won both a Pulitzer Prize and the Brancroft Prize for his 1971 book entitled “Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States.” In this comparative account, Degler made several now well known claims: First, that slavery in Brazil was not, as commonly thought, more “benevolent” than in the United States, and second, that light skinned Brazilians of African descent experienced a social mobility not offered to mixed race peoples in the United States due to its “one-drop rule” of hypodescent. He further argued that this so-called “mulatto escape hatch” served as the critical distinction between North American and Brazilian race relations and that it explained the comparative lack of race-based protest movements in Brazil. His book was widely influential in the U.S. until it was roundly critiqued by a wave of quantitative sociological studies in the 1980s that found that both blacks and pardos (or browns, the official census category for mixed-race people) experienced racial discrimination that affected all major quality of life factors, from income disparity to educational level and infant mortality. While Degler’s conclusions about Brazilian slavery have been supported by later scholarship, his mulatto escape hatch was widely contested. As Peter Wade noted in a recent book on Latin American race relations: “No one now argues that the key to Brazilian race relations is preferential treatment for ‘mulattoes’” (2004:358).
Drawing on qualitative anthropological research, the panelists assembled here reexamine the validity of Degler’s claims about the position and experience of those who occupy an “intermediate” racial category. In particular, we seek to explore the relation of “mulattoes” (who, in Brazil today, more commonly identify as moreno) to both whiteness and blackness. We ask: Do lighter-skinned people of African descent receive benefits due to their relative whiteness? How do daily acts of whitening (embranquecimento or blanqueamiento) make mobility a social, if not always a statistical, reality for some individuals? Conversely, given the current context of sweeping anti-racist legislation and policies across the Americas, how do mixed-race people position themselves vis-à-vis blackness? How are their ideas about racial identification influenced by long-held mixed-race ideologies that are now juxtaposed with race-conscious laws and policies? Drawing on research throughout the Americas, this panel honors Carl Degler’s belief in the benefits of a comparative approach to the study of race relations.
Antonio José B. da Silva (ajbsilva at email.arizona.edu<mailto:ajbsilva at email.arizona.edu>)
Jennifer Roth-Gordon (jenrothg at email.arizona.edu<mailto:jenrothg at email.arizona.edu>)