Focused principally on the 20th and 21st centuries, this course will study the legacies and implications of the massive migration, forced and otherwise, from the African continent to the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. Topics will range from the creation of racial categories in the contexts of slavery and colonialism to the making of transnational and transracial families to the recent cultural politics of “blackness” with emphasis on the ways that different kinds of archives produce multiple and often conflicting narratives. Students will produce as well as consume history. In addition to scholarly monographs and articles, course material will include film, sound, and fiction.
I’m very excited to be teaching this course, and looking forward to working with you all semester. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the website and read the syllabus. We will use this site extensively for announcements, postings, and virtual conversations. You should feel free to treat it as your own, and post links, images, videos, or anything else of interest to the class.
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From the beginning of the Nina Rodrigues text, we are met with the assertion that ‘inferior races’ are unfit for monotheism, especially Christianity. There is a lot to unpack within that single concept. First, to acknowledge a mental/psychic imbalance between peoples and their capabilities delves into a realm of unofficial science that Nina Rodrigues claims to be delving into. Second, it paints Christianity and monotheistic religions more broadly as incomprehensible for those with a lesser mental capability. Never is it examined what about monotheism is more complex. In fact, to considering a religion focussing on a single entity more complex than a religion system focussing on multiple deities seems quite contradictory to me, and this contradiction is not particularly well-reconciled in this text. There is a circular argument about religion made here — ‘inferior peoples’ do not have the mental capacity for understanding monotheism. This is evidenced by the fact that they incorporate Christianity into their own spiritual practices. In other words, the outcome — incorporation of Christianity into traditional spiritual practices — is explained self-referentially.
The criticism of fetishism is particularly interesting. Fetishism, in this context, referring to the worshipping and deification of objects. From a Christian/Catholic perspective presented here, the worshipping of objects is considered to be sacrilegious, an instance of idolatry. Why should a sacred object be given that designation?
That being said, it is clear that Catholic writers only viewed certain types of fetishism as negative. Fetishism in a Catholic context — although it would never be called as such — is a widely-accepted phenomenon. Consider the art from this time period depicting saints and biblical figures. The laity would come into houses of god and worship images, depictions, of these figures, not their true essences. Furthermore, the cults surrounding saints, images, and relics all put a heavy focus on objects and iconography, which the Catholic religion has always maintained as a central theme. They too have been accused of idolatry (see: the entire phenomenon of The Reformation and Protestantism), and this makes the criticism of “fetishism” seem even more unsubstantial.
But what do you folks think? How could this understanding be reconciled — i.e. the difference between “fetishism” and the Catholic worship of objects? Would this once again become a discussion of inferior races, or would the defence be of the Catholic worship?
Also, hope to see some of you attending other days of the Black History Month features at VIFF! I myself am planning to double-feature Loving (which I sadly missed in theatres) and Birth of a Nation on the 20th. Have a good week, folks!
Hello Saheli!
Great questions and wonderful analysis of both the articles. Although I don’t have concrete answers to your questions, I do want to chime in on my thoughts about object fetishism, and how that relates to the conversation about race.
What I found really interesting in Vasconcelos’ prologue to “The Cosmic Races” is that he draws attention to the relationship between race and religion, and how religion participates in constructing hierarchies of race. At the end of the prologue he even writes, “[a] religion such as Christianity made the American Indians advance, in few centuries, from cannibalism to a relative degree of of civilization” Such a heavy statement and there is so much to unpack here.
I agree with you with the idea that Christian writers would never write about Christian fetishism, in the sense that fetishism seems to be something imbedded in what is foreign, alien, and outside of the hegemony. The ‘fetish’ is a mixture of being repulsed but also fascinated by (and using science as a way to excuse this exotification) what is outside the Christian-norm. And, with the writers that we are looking at, Christianity is prioritized in this constructed idea of a religious hierarchy. If Christianity is held as the standard to which all else is compared, then everything falls into the category of the foreign and fetishized.
I feel like there is a really strong relationship between the constructed nature of race and the construct of religion. There seems to be a lot of ways in which religion is re-written and re-contextualized as a way to attain conclusions about race, or in some ways, legitimize the constructed ideas surrounding race. Referring back to the Vasconcelos’ quotation about “American Indians”and how Christianity gave civilization to these communities, I feel like as much as there is a constructed idea of the hierarchies of race, religion is used as the legitimizing force for these ideas. Again, a lot to unpack, and I’m still trying to think through how the construction of religion and race are tied together. The only conclusion I can come up with right now, is that they are both based in ideas of a hierarchy, and used to legitimize what is the norm and what is foreign and fetishistic.
But what I think this conversation can also lead into is the relationship between the signified/signifier, and how that relationship is heavily based within culture and language specificities. Referring back to Vasconcelos’ prologue, he writes, “the Blacks have actually remained apart in regards to the creation of power, yet the spiritual penetration they have accomplished through music, dance, and quite a few aspects of artistic sensitivity has had great importance.” I’m really interested in that statement because he’s invoking the idea of the “spiritual” which seems like another category in itself, and how the spiritual is tied to objects and practices. The drums are an entirely different signifier with entirely different associations that for someone, who is say, Christian. It’s a sonic difference, with a signifier that is all together different from Christian objects/practices/symbolic systems of understanding. To put that on a hierarchal order is to judge that based on cultural differences.
There is still lots to unpack here, and a lot more questions to think through for sure. But I hope what I wrote can start a conversation about 1) the constructedness of religion and how that is tied to constructs of race; 2) how cultural signifiers play into the idea of religion and race, and how we can also add culture into the mix.
Rodrigues defined racial differences along the lines of religion and spirituality. I found Rodrigues’ work strange considering the manner in which he attempted to advocate racial tolerance by having to evince to perhaps intellectual audiences they were indeed capable of spirituality through evidence of fetishism, as if spiritual capabilities humanized and civilized Africans and Mestizos. Rodrigues envisions a spiritually tolerant and inclusive future in Brazil.
I found Valconcelos to be informed by anthropological science where he attempts to advocate tolerance for, and integrations of, other races to better the “racial stock” for places such as Mexico. Mixing races would be beneficial to the human specie. However, Vasconcelos does mention that not all races mix well. There was room for degrading race mixes such as mixing with Chinese. This approach to racial equality and tolerance was understood to be evolutionally inevitable for Vasconcelos, which is also another strange way to humanize and be inclusive of others.
Both Rodrigues and Valconcelos envision very weak form of cosmopolitanism, a term I use very loosely. Where their past was customarily exclusive and their prospective futures would comprise of various people with previously distinguishable differences with perhaps moderate equality. However, those differences such as spirituality and racial purity would phase out over time.
This was not the case as we saw in the final reading by Lee. Lee, like the others, is also informed of racial differences by exclusion, in particular Asian exclusion from the Americas. Exclusion was justified by both religious differences and national or racial exclusivity. Asian migrants were perceived as possible contaminates to racial stocks or spirituality therefore should not be permitted to be included in places in Latin America, the United States and Canada. Such negative and radicalized sentiments about Asian migrants were propagandized and circulated through imagery and realized through law. Negative sentiments of Asian migrants are not unlike the previous negative sentiments of Africans and Mestizos in Mexico or Brazil, which is what was so striking. Although I don’t think the declarations of equality were necessarily gone or ignored. The declarations only applied when integration of others was perceived as beneficial or “scientifically or spiritually” and unfortunately Asian migrants during the 20th century were seen as a threat or, to place the language back to the 19th century, a contaminant.
Now, 21st century and declaratively modern and progressive, I would argue otherwise. I don’t think the negative sentiment of Asian migrants has ever left British Columbia and the United States has never approached racial inclusivity well. What do ya’ll think? Are the Americas better at social inclusion or do the various nations still see others as threatening or plausible contaminants?
This week’s reading “The Fetishist Animism of the Bahian Blacks” by Raimundo Rodrigues is, while difficult and uncomfortable due to its racist nature, still extremely fascinating to read, as it is a primary source.
To begin, I would like to address the way in which Rodrigues criticizes “official science” for being inefficient in its study of religion and race. Rodrigues views his method of investigation and research far more cutting edge. However to the reader, due to the time in which he is writing, Rodrigues himself is still lacking in his research due to extreme racism present throughout his writing. Nonetheless Rodrigues pin points the error with ‘official science’ with his dismissal of the statement that a majority of the Bahia population is Christian, which he claims to be impossible due the fact that 2/3 of their population are African. One can extract from reasoning that Rodrigues believes Africans and as he claims their ‘pyschic unfitness’ were unable to understand Christianity and thus the official science statement must be wrong. While Rodrigues may have been correct in saying that a majority of the population was in fact not Christian, his reasoning is extremely racist and incorrect.
This leads us into the second topic of the excerpt which is Rodrigues analysis of African Fetishism. While he does not dive too much into the practice of fetishism, which we discussed in class to be the practice or belief of certain objects having super natural powers and/or an object that has powers over others, he does dissect reasons for which the whites were so anti-fetishism. Rodrigues claims that the traditional view that masters should simply subject their slaves to Christianity through punishment required to be further investigated, something the he again says official science fails to do. He stresses that the real reasons the white slave owners hated fetishism was their that their slaves would use such practices on them due to their mistreatment, fear that the practices and religious festivals that went with fetishism would create idleness among the slaves, and that ultimately they were scared of losing power over their slaves.
In Sum, Rodrigues take on fetishism along with overall topics of race and religion allow the reader to analyze a controversial societal view at the time for which this study was written. Nonetheless while it may have been cutting edge for the time period in which it was written, it is still extremely racist and thus hard to accept any real claim he makes.
After reading the three texts and comparing them, I think what it tells us is that the way the idea of race was understood in the Americas varied depending on the agenda of the leading elites of those nations. In “The Cosmic Race” Vasconcelos tries to argue in favour of a Mexican or, more broadly, a Latin American agenda. The independent nations of Central and South America inherited from the Spanish empire societies in which racial mixing had been ongoing for centuries and had thus developed a new demography. Vasconcelos understands this and models his arguments to create a prediction of History, in which inevitably the mixture of races will give birth to a definitive race. In that sense, his argument validates whatever path the nations south of the United States are taking, for they are going, according to him, in the right direction. In my opinion this responds to the historical context of the Americas at the time: a powerful United States rising at the very end of the 19th century as an imperial power and later as an industrial and economic power which prompted them to the status of a continental power. Events leading to this new geopolitical panorama include the Spanish American war of 1898, the Philippine–American war and, previously in the mid 19th century, the Mexican-American war.
Lee’s essay supports what I mention above by showing the continental scope of anti-Asian racism, and not only that, but also the interrelations and cooperation among nations of the Americas in order to stop the entrance of Asian migrants plus their efforts to expel them out of their territories. This only shows the racist agenda that prevailed through all of the Americas in the late 18th and early 19th century. In the case of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, their efforts are focused on preventing more racial mixing than the one that had already inevitably taken place during Spanish rule.
Asian migration proved to be the first significant wave of migration to the Americas after the conclusion of the independence processes and presented itself as a threat to racial superiority notions of the time and thus, as threat to the national project and identity of this young states.
Erika Lee’s article discussed about the notion of global migration versus “hemispheric Orientalism”, where the latter concept referred to a phenomenon of transnational anti-Asian racism. Throughout the history of Asian migration to both Europe and North America, they had become the victims of specific discriminatory immigration laws that effectively installed state sanctioned violence, incarceration and expulsion toward the Chinese, Indians, Koreans, and Japanese people. Whether it was the practice of forcible relocation or deportation, they all contributed to the growing divide between the Asian immigrants and their European counterparts. The immigration laws that excluded certain Asian races from entering into the United States, led to the increasing rate of illegal immigration, as well as remigration to countries like Mexico and Peru.
On the other hand, in latter years of the post war era, Asian immigrants also became the targets of the local people’s grievances against competition for jobs and opportunities. This phenomenon often led to violent results, which were the results of state institutionalized hatred against the Asian immigrants. I agree with Lee’s argument of how the exclusion of the Asian Races from transnational migration, contributed to how race, international relations and migration intersect at multiple levels as the concept become institutionalized. Vascancelos approached the question of politicized and institutionalized racial differentiation from another perspective , where the mixture of various races were to be recognized by the dominant political forces that governed the global discourse of race. The mixing of certain similar races would be perceived to be productive, while others weren’t. I found this argument to be particularly absurd and vague, since no explanation was provided as to exactly what constituted productivity.
The Cosmic Race: The Mission of the Ibero American Race by Jose Vasconcelos was a very interesting and important introduction to the ideology of mestizaje. The romanticizing of the violence of Spanish colonization namely on page 17 “This mandate from History is first noticed in that abundance of love that allowed the Spaniard to create a new race with the Indian and the Black, profusely spreading white ancestry through the soldier who begat a native family, and Occidental culture through the doctrine and example of the missionaries who placed the Indians in condition to enter in to the new stage, the stage of the world One” (17) demonstrates why it is important to think through the foundations of mestizaje and its links and investments in white supremacy. While Peter Wade doesn’t frame it so bluntly in Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience, the whitening that occurs in processes of mestizaje is historically linked to investments in white supremacy as illustrated by Vasconcelos. While Vasconcelos is critical of the Anglo-Saxons and challenges the existing racial hierarchy through this critique, much like whiteness, Vasconcelos demonstrates the ways in which mestizaje parallels the same exclusionary and hierarchical practices that feed and sustain white supremacy. By failing to see agency and resistance of both Indigenous and Black peoples in the Americas , Vasconcelos illustrates how the foundation of many Latin American country’s national identities rely heavily on the dehumanization, exclusion, and invisibilization of the history of colonization. One example of this is the exclusion of the Haitian Revolution in an understanding of race in Latin America.
“In this manner, a selection of taste would take effect, much more efficiently than the brutal Darwanist selection, which is valid, if at all, only for the inferior species, but no longer for man” (32). While Vasconcelos distances his theory from Darwanism, it is impossible to not see the ways in which The Cosmic Race is a poetic and romanticized explanation of Social Darwinism. Biological essentialisms are the foundation of his analysis, and the dehumanization of Black and Indigenous peoples are necessary in this process. Although difficult to read, as a light skinned Mexican women, this reading illustrates the discourses that maintain Méxican mestizo identity as national identity. Although I challenge anti-black racism and anti-Indigenous racism in my community, I benefit from the ambiguity of my personal familial history that through my identity as Mexican inherently depends on racial hierarchies.
I also think this reading is very timely in the anti-Latino political climate in the United States because much of the discourse of the “togetherness” that has been used to challenge racism and xenophobia continues to perpetuate the exclusion of marginalized people’s lived experiences. Both the United States’ melting pot as well as multiculturalism in Canada, don’t recognize the violent history of colonization and settlement. Much like Vasconcelos understanding of mestizaje that sees the process of blending as one in which power is manifested in more ways than one, simultaneously, the discourse of togetherness does the same. It attempts to homogenize many lived experiences of oppression with the idea that this unity will lead to progress. Vosconcelos’ theories on race rely on single dimension understandings of power, obscuring the impacts of factors such as class, gender, sexuality and ability and their influences on racial hierarchy. Because of this single dimension analysis Vasconcelos sees things similarly in that the fifth race would lead to progress, but only once full unity was achieved. Reading The Cosmic Race serves as a warning for dependency on these types of discourses.
I found the Rodrigues text particularly interesting as it attempts to define race in scientific and spiritual terms. I thought the interaction between “official science” and religion was strange to see as I see the two as being so divorced from each other in the contemporary context. Among other things, I took issue with Rodrigues’ statement that the African element had been diluted in America, as he provides no evidence of the “mongrel practices and beliefs” that African “fetishism” had become. Rodrigues’ attempt to criticize this lack of “purity” in African spiritualism was undoubtedly in order to perpetuate the idea that this spiritualism was nothing but fetishism.
I found the Vasconcelos approach to defining race almost easier to stomach than Rodrigues’ approach (if that makes sense?) The slow build up almost made it seem like a more logical approach (still super problematic), but he provided an explanation for his thoughts, whereas I found the Rodrigues piece to lack that “road map”. Both pieces imagine fraught futures. Selective mixing just seems so unobtainable and impossible to enforce I’m curious about what the public’s reaction was to this concept.
The Lee piece did a nice job of contextualizing Asian migration and subsequent exclusion as a global phenomenon. Too often is this limited to the gold rush/the railway/the Exclusion Act. I found the piece to be extremely relevant, especially the rhetoric of immigrants “stealing jobs” or the portrayal of immigrants as “evil” and “immoral”.
I found the theme of duality present in both the Lee and Vasconcelos pieces. I mean this in the sense that Vasconcelos applies the Darwinist notion of natural selection to promote this selective mixing of races, rather than using the concept to promote one superior “pure” race. In the Lee piece I found this duality in the section regarding coolie labour. Lee explains that coolies were either a labour force that rendered slavery unnecessary, or on the other hand, as another race that was inferior and fit to be slaves.
This weeks reading by Erika Lee explores key moments in the transnational, national, and international history of Asian migration and exclusion in the Americas. Her account excels in using micro-historical events to colour the wider historical narrative of Asian migration: in other words, Lee writes about individual people such as Kihachi Hirakawa, and describes their independent journeys to the US. In this way, her work becomes more accessible, as it goes beyond stating figures that can be difficult to comprehend. Lee’s central argument highlights the global flows of people and ideas across borders, and in doing so complicates the more traditionalist views that saw Asian immigration to the US as direct, rather than via Canada or Mexico. Similarly, her work complicates and challenges the black-white paradigm that continues to dominate studies relating to race.
For me (a British exchange student with a limited knowledge on Canadian history), this piece opened my eyes to the exclusionary policies undertaken by the Canadian government in the late 19th/ early twentieth century. The reason I am focusing particularly on the Canadian narrative, rather than the Americas as a whole relates to the fact that Canada has been and continues to be remembered as a nation of acceptance; one that welcomes diversity. Canada introduced the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, which imposed a head tax on all immigrants from China. Similarly, the Pacific Coast race riots took place in San Francisco, Bellingham and British Columbia. In BC a crowd a 10,000 performed an Anti-Asian parade, which turned into a rioting mob that attacked almost every building occupied by Chinese immigrants. Lee’s work suggests the actions of the Canadian state to impose anti-Asian legislature stemmed from a desire to mirror policies being undertaken in the US. Teddy Roosevelt’s calling for ‘unity of action’ among the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia in order to promote a ‘white pacific’ perhaps suggests that the Canadian state was acting to align itself with the ideals of the US, rather than because its government was intrinsically racist. Nonetheless, the actions of the rioters demonstrate that racism was at least in some ways embedded in the minds of the Canadian people.
I would like to ask the class whether this history of Canadian exclusionary practices are taught in mainstream history classes at school, or whether this unpleasant historical truth has been overshadowed by narratives that promote Canada’s image as diverse and multicultural?
Of this week’s readings, the Vasconcelos chapter was particularly interesting. I found it included numerous contradictions, with Vasconcelos clearly blinded by his nationality and the era in which he lived. For example, Vasconcelos condemned the Anglo-Saxons (and notably, the British Empire), for killing and abusing those who they considered subordinate. Whilst this is true, it completely fails to contend with the treatment of Central Americans by the Spanish conquistadors. This was a trend I noticed throughout the piece – despite his assertion that the Americas would be the place from which the cosmic race can emerge, it was ironic that Vasconcelos disregarded the role of indigenous groups in shaping this future. One exception to this was a quotation in which he mentioned the region’s history should not be written as Columbus and other Iberians, but with Cuauhtemoc and Atahualpa – respective Aztec and Inca figures.
In some senses, Vasconcelos and Rodrigues are calling for the same thing. Rodrigues’ call for the right to religious expression and identity recognition beyond Christianity aligned with Vasconcelos’ depiction of a secular post-white society. Having said this, both authors praised the role of Christianity in facilitating greater socialization of non-European groups. However, to two differ in their construction of race; Vasconcelos favours the evolution of History as a driver of this, whilst Rodrigues asserts the power of religion. Vasconcelos’ perspective was especially interesting to me as he discussed the close relationships between “white man countries” which still exists today. Based on my opinion, his belief that Hispanic America and Spain do not share such a close relationship is true. Furthermore, the identification of Napoleon Bonaparte as a reason for the lack of Iberian influence in North America was another example of the bold and entertaining statements which Vasconcelos makes.
Ultimately, what I appreciated most about this week’s readings was the diversity they showcased within the Americas. Each article considered different racial groups; African-Americans, Europeans, and Asians, demonstrating how the racial composition of the Western Hemisphere is incredibly complex and often includes a difficult story for minority groups.
I was doing some background reading on Vasconcelos and his others writings and found a really interesting article by Linette Manrique about the way race was discussed in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Manrique writes that Vasconcelos was concerned in elevating the people of Latin America through a “paternalistic effort” (6) in reforming education, but by adopting this approach, he “frame[d] the racialized and classed others as needing to be brought into civilization” (6). He was concerned about producing “superior beings” (4) for the greater good of Mexico. Of course, his approach was overwhelmingly racist, as we see in “The Cosmic Race”, as we see in his discussion of the Chinese. In “The Cosmic Race”, Vasconcelos seems to be taking the same approach as Rodrigues, in that he frames religion as a civilising force, claiming that those races that don’t embrace Christianity or monotheism are somehow inferior in intelligence. His discussion of the Chinese and his disgust towards them stems from his disdain for their religion – he states that it is “under Confucian morality” that they “degrade the human condition”. Vasconcelos, argues for racial mixing only under the condition that it produces beings who are mostly white and Christian, hardly a progressive perspective. He shares this vision for the future with Rodrigues, with Rodrigues arguing for a definition of race that seems to be based solely on religion, praising monotheism above all.
Lee examines what happens when Rodrigues’ and Vasconcelos’ rhetoric goes unchecked and unchallenged. The exploration of the history of anti-Asian sentiment and racism is still pertinent today, particularly at this time in the global political climate. This particular kind of racism seemed to become embedded in the global perception of Asian immigrants, with an unfounded fear and hatred of immigrants emerging rapidly. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lee characterises different races as being defined in opposition to each other, with white and non-white races placing themselves in opposition Asian immigrants. At a time where we see anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Eastern discourses emerging as some of the dominant modes of discussion, Lee’s article acts as a strong warning against a simplified and oppositional narrative in regards to race and religion.
Hi Kate, I agree with your response wholeheartedly. I, as well, found that Vasconcelos did not offer a progressive perspective. Your point on Vasconcelos taking the same approach as Rodrigues could be summarized with Vasconcelos writing that Asiatic people are isolated because they have not been Christianized. I find that is a very belligerent approach to the idea of race; for a man who envisioned a fifth race dominating the world, in which white people would have to dispose their pride, he is simply conforming to the idea that the “white” race is the best race. Lee responds to this notion by stating that “we often overlook the effect of white supremacy on other races”, and to me, this sentence alone sums up the ideas of race during this time. There is fear for anyone outside of the white race, simply because there is no knowledge or understanding of other races.
Your mention of anti-Muslim notions today resonates strongly with me, because I strongly believe that this hatred towards Muslims and their respective Middle Eastern countries comes from fear, and fear stems from ignorance. It is very interesting to see the same patterns of our human instincts at play again; we are simply reliving this part of history today. We are once again, fearing another race, another religion, all because we are not educated enough to think otherwise.
Rodrigues believes that official science is biased and misses things, so he attempts to use a different scientific method to accurately observe and analyze the religious aspects of another race. He proposes that meticulous observation and psychological analysis can lead to unbiased facts, while official science is hindered by ungrounded assumptions, but Rodrigues himself makes assumptions that may, like official science, ?Blindly yield to outward appearances that will prove illusory and misleading upon the most superficial examination,? (p. 1). His assumption that some races are mentally inferior to others and therefore do not have the mental capacity to convert to a monotheistic religion is an assumption that may hinder a ?neutral and impartial approach?. I am making this criticism from a modern viewpoint and not within the historical context of the excerpt, but the assumption Rodrigues makes is not given enough explanation in this text and it also highlights the possible gaps in his theories and methods.
He says there must be ?An understanding of the mental conditions prerequisite to the adoption of any religious belief,? and then states that inferior races are psychically unfit and that they cannot comprehend the ?elevated abstractions of monotheism? (p. 1). He argues that observations about inferior races? adoption of aspects of Catholicism have been inaccurately documented due to ungrounded assumptions, but his assumption about the mental inferiority and the abstractness of monotheism appears to be an assumption that may also lead to inaccuracies in his documentation. Rodrigues? approach goes back to Trouillot?s epistemological argument regarding the ?unthinkability? of the Haitian Revolution. It may have been unthinkable that other races may have the same mental capacity or capabilities as others. It also may have been unthinkable that religions or belief systems could not conflict or that systems could be different without one being superior to the other.
I think that Rodrigues? aim was to gain a better understanding of African religious practices and to discover, ?How purely these imported religious practices and beliefs have been preserved,? (p. 5). His goals for accuracy and authenticity are admirable, but in reading this text from our current perspective I would think that his findings were ultimately flawed because of the assumptions he made regarding mental and religious superiority. His work may have been progressive for his time and may have lead to a better understanding of these issues, but he does seem to run into the unthinkability problem. How do you all interpret Rodrigues? aim and method? Do you find this text problematic?
A common theme that spoke out to me the most out of the readings is the supremacy of the white race, and the struggle of the “other” in overcoming this supremacy.
Vasconcelos speaks of the hostility between the Latins (Spaniards/Mexicans) and the Anglo-Saxons (British/North Americans) that through time became a “war” of moral power; in other words there is fight of superiority between these two regions (or races) to which the Anglo-Saxons has continued to conquer. He admits the defeat in the combat of ideologies, and continues to speak of how great the Latins used to be and Latin Americans should not compare themselves to the Anglo-Saxons. He approached the idea with acknowledging the diversity of races and cultures and brings forth the idea of a common race (the fifth race) to which with its emergence, ‘white supremacy’ will no longer prevail in the long run.
Lee’s article on the other hand, shows us the struggles of the Asian migrants in the Americas – she mentions a “globality of race”; stipulating how white supremacy demonstrates how race plays a driving force in the development of the modern world. From these points, I would argue that the emergence of different races within the North American atmosphere, created a sense of fear within the white race. In which, this supreme race played a major part in consolidating “white supremacy” in a global scale. A race that has dominated and settled on their dominance for so long felt their power challenged by migrants who are relatively different that challenged American aspects. Using their dominance and power abroad, the US circulated their negative views of the Chinese which influenced how neighbouring countries (as an example in the reading, Mexico) view them as well; “the Yellow Peril” – which in a way can be argued still persist up until today.
What becomes particularly salient after reading The Cosmic Race, Yellow Peril, and Fetishist Animism, is that colonialism was (and continues to be) a complicated process. All too often, conceptualizations of colonialism reduce it to a phenomenon that was (is) simply characterized by the imposition of European will onto Afro-Indigenous communities worldwide. This worldview, while adequately capturing the general theme of the phenomenon, omits the nuance of colonial doctrine. It is important to note that in order to justify their colonial exploits, European colonizers had to systematically degrade Afro-Indigenous peoples on a multitude of levels. To do so, European colonizers relied on the two primary doctrines outlining the justification for European colonization of the Americas (as well as the rest of the world), the doctrine of discovery for uninhabited lands and the doctrine of conquest for inhabited lands. These established the specific criteria that outlined what constituted appropriate civilization. Using these stipulations, colonizers were able to frame Afro-Indigenous and Asian people as ‘uncivilized’ owners of their lands because they did not fit the meet the criteria found within these doctrines. Specifically, The Cosmic Race, Yellow Peril, and Fetishist Animism make it clear that Europeans deemed Afro-Indigenous and minority (Asian) communities inferiors based on cultural practices, physiology and geography. These readings emphasize that colonialism is best understood as an intricate process of systematic dehumanization that operates several levels simultaneously.
In Fetishist Animism, Rodrigues makes several references to the eerie and mysterious cultural practices of the ‘negroes’. Describing them as ‘savages’, Rodrigues paints the traditions of African communities in a questionable light, making them out to be primitive and inferior to other theological practices and understandings. This becomes particularly clear in Rodrigues’ description of the ‘unknown nature’ of their ‘sorcery’. This articulation of their culture illustrates how one dimension of colonial oppression focused on the reduction of cultural/religious practices to uncivilized, superstitious and even pathological ones.
In the same vein, The Cosmic Race illustrates how colonial-era rhetoric also dehumanized through another form of discrimination, based instead on physiology/physical attributes. Vasconcelos refers to the “underdevelopment of the Hispanic American people”. He adds that the mixing of disparate races can produces questionable offspring, hinting at the inferiority of certain mixed people. This displays how colonialism harnessed the power of physiology/physical characteristics as a grounds for the inauguration of colonial regimes.
Erika Lee’s Yellow Peril points to how geography was also used as a justification for colonial supremacy. For example, Lee cites the restrictive immigration policies that targeted Chinese migrants in the United States and later, Canada as well. These were based on premises that these individuals did not belong in a certain jurisdiction, specifically North America. Effectually, this positioned Asian migrants as the ‘other’, giving rise to a discourse about their inferiority. This goes to show how geography was also used as a basis for colonial rule.
Taken together, these three texts highlight that colonialism was a complicated process based on an ability to dehumanize along different axes. The ones that I have analyzed here, namely, culture, physiology and geography, are not the only justifications that exist. Colonialism moves and discriminates in hidden ways, and our studies should caution us into staying vigilant, combating oppressive regimes that promote discrimination based on our unique characteristics and traits.
In Rodrigues’ piece on fetishistic animism, he intends to shed light on the religious diversity amongst the black community in Bahia, which he states has been erased by ethnographers and their assumptions surrounding religion and race. However, as he goes on his own assumptions surrounding race and religion come to the surface.
For one, he asserts the superiority of the “white race” because of their ability to experience and understand monotheism, while the lesser races are not intellectually capable, and thus have devised “mongrel practices and beliefs” that seek to imitate the “pure African element” as he puts it, which is a theme that is also present in Vasconcelos’ reading, but in regards to race. Rodrigues argues that, while fetishism was born out of a genuine desire to have a spiritual connection, it is still a lesser expression of that sentiment since it is not purely/authentically African or Catholic.
Vasconcelos makes similar claims in “the cosmic race” as he argues that while a mixed human race is inevitable, there are some races that mix well and others that don’t, and regardless of the combination in question, whiteness is superior. one such example would be the inability of the Central American states to coalesce into one nation because of a “lack of creative thinking and an excess of critical zeal, which we have certainly borrowed from other cultures”. The solution to this problem, in Vasconcelos’ mind, is to retrace their roots back to the Spanish fatherland.
Another point that i found interesting about Rodrigues was how he delves into how secrecy is an integral part of the black religious experience born out their fear of persecution and violence, but that over time it has been transformed (or warped, according to him) into an expression of power used by black priests to cruelly exploit the gullibility of believers. Without evidence to support this claim, it seems to me that Rodrigues may be projecting a power relationship unto “African Fetishism”, which definitely exists in the way Catholicism is practiced. I mean how historically, the Catholic priests would possess a monopoly on knowledge and on the ability to interpret the bible, which other people could not do because they were illiterate and not of the clergy.