Urban Areas in South America
In the scholarly journal ETHOS, there is an article by Baran (2007) entitled “Girl, You are Not Morena. We are Negras! Questioning the Concept of ‘Race’ in Southern Bahia, Brazil” that examines the way in which race is perceived in urban areas on South America—particularly in Brazil where the city of Salvador is located. Race is a major issue for urban areas in the United States, but in a different way than it is an issue for people in this part of South America. It is almost the exact opposite, in fact. While in the U.S., people are taught to embrace their ethnicity and to be proud of the things that make them unique and different, in Brazil there appears to be a campaign in the cities for people to categorize everyone as the same in terms of being light-skinned or dark.
Baran (2007) notes a shift taking place in the racial consciousness of urbanites: they want to divide people into two camps—anyone not purely white is to be labeled negro—i.e. black. Yet, traditionally, the people there have always identified themselves in degrees of color depending on their heritage. In other words, in the U.S. heritage is important and people try to discover their heritage or define it after years of generations trying to go through the melting pot—but in South America, people are trying to melt into the pot and forget their heritage.
Baran’s article is well-written and identifies the problem at the heart of this shift, noting that it is basically ideological. More people are wanting to be eliminate the distinctions that exist, which are subtle because of so much racial-mixing in South America. I found that this issue is interesting because it shows a trend for these South American countries to want to be more like the U.S. even at a time when people in the U.S. want to get away from narrow definitions of race. In the cities in Brazil, the people are willingly adopting more restrictive and narrow definitions of identity.
References
Baran, M. (2007). Girl, You are Not Morena. We are Negras! Questioning the Concept of ‘Race’ in Southern Bahia, Brazil. ETHOS, 35(3), 383-409.
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