Monday, May 08, 2006

is there racism in latin america?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Salaam

problem with talking about racism in Latin America with a North American (US) lens, and discourse is that it totally ignores class. This ignoring of class is something unique to the United States because of its cold war history, that identified any discussion of classism with the "communists" etc. However, there is no way one can understand Latin American racism (or even North American)without a class context.

The identification with fair skin with privelage and wealth - is a reality in many Latin American countries including Mexico, and Central American countries... This has a historical basis as the white Spanish still control huge amounts of wealth, while the mixed or indigenous populations were robbed off their land, culture and religion.

There are, as you know, strong latin american movements that are examining these issues - that includes race and class. What these movements bring to North America might prove to be uncomfortable since they are not the usual liberal discussions on race - that basically celeberates tokenism (including, by the way, Muslim tokenism... that we see often these days... celebrating this or that Muslim being praised... as if that makes any difference to the millions under occupation).

Altaf

Abdul-Halim V. said...

I don't know how to follow up. Yes, exactly.