Blackness and race mixture: the dynamics of racial identity in Colombia

Abstract

The idea of democracy in Latin American populations has traditionally assumed that class is a more significant factor than race. But, despite the emergence of a mesitizo class - people who are culturally and racially mixed in the broadest sense - there remains a complex discrimination against blacks. To explain this phenomenon, Peter Wade focuses on the population of the Choco province in Colombia - an area where the typical Latin American ambiguity surrounding racial identity is countered by the more definitive black identity of the local inhabitants. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork, Wade shows how the concepts of blackness and discrimination are deeply embedded in different social levels and contexts - from region to neighborhood, and from politics and economics to housing, marriage, music and personal identity. By uncovering what blackness means to the Chocoanos and how blackness is reproduced and transformed in different contexts, Wade brings to the study of race a perspective sophisticated enough to account for the real complexities of blackness, mixedness and whiteness; the conflicts among race, ethnicity and national ideologies; the development and transformation of cultural identities; the persistence of racial inequality and racism; and the constitution of society through topography and regionality.