We have to talk about whiteness: widening the decolonial gates

Social Identities Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 2023

Recently, the Latin American decolonial perspective has been receiving growing attention, not only in academia, but also in other social, political, and cultural spaces, particularly in Brazil. Among other debates, decolonial thinkers have brought to light the continuity of coloniality in different dimensions (particularly, even if not only) of Latin American realities, long after the territorial colonization was over. Therefore, by highlighting, debating, and theorizing on the colonialities of power, knowledge and being from a decolonial perspective, scholars have been unmasking the vast, violent, and oppressive consequences of Western, Eurocentric, modern, colonial, capitalist, racist and patriarchal paradigms, which still (even if with adaptations) dominate our multiple realities. Race is at the center of the continuity of coloniality and colonial heritage, imposing ontological and epistemological hierarchies that have caused the never-ending racialization, marginalization and suffering of most Latin Americans for centuries. Still, some debates and dimensions related to race could (and, as I will argue, should) be further explored within the decolonial perspective. In this paper, I would like to present whiteness studies and scholars as potential contributors to these debates in Latin America, further widening the decolonial gates, allowing us to better comprehend and critically analyze the many forms of continued coloniality and their violent, oppressive, and terrible consequences.

Unoesc International Legal Seminar, 2017

This paper examines deep colonization in Latin America and the connected histories of the postcolonial world. It critically examines race, racism and colonialism in the history of Latin America, and the legal steps taken to minimize the consequences of prejudice and exclusion. It has identified exploitable individuals and populations for subjection, and indicates the scope of deep colonization in the continent attempting to remove the concept of skin color and other physical attributes as superficial indicators of social, political, or economic conditions. Spaniards and Portuguese colonizers in Latin America have invaded, subjugated, and occupied the territory without the consent of the indigenous inhabitants. In Brazil, the Portuguese colonizers have tried to subjugate the indigenous population and they refused to subdue to their power, then slaves were brought from Africa to coffee and sugar plantations. This essay examines deep colonization in Latin American, and the economic an...

A companion to racial and ethnic …, 2002

2009

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2010

This essay deconstructs the ways in which Brazilian patriotic intellectuals transformed the oppressive whiteness of the Portuguese colonial project to what I call "benign whiteness." After providing a brief history of the development of whiteness and hybridity in Latin America, I highlight patriotism and racism in thinkers such as Cuban José Martí, Uruguayan Enrique Rodó, and Brazilian Euclides da Cunha. After World War I, Brazilian cultural elites, along with the bourgeois state, promoted and institutionalized cultural hybridity as a unique trait that bound Brazilians together in a superior way to the United States. The patriotic trope of hybridity masked white privilege while benign whiteness stymied racial solidarity even as it continued to marginalize non-white populations. I show how whites and many almost whites along with foreign intellectuals, helped propagate the idea of Brazilian benign whiteness, an ideology that continues to impact Latin Americans today.

Psicologia e Sociedade, 2013

This article is a literature review on how the ideology of white racial supremacy dehumanizes and colonizes the minds of Whites and Blacks in Brazil. For this aim I use critical references about whiteness to highlight dehumanization processes in Whites, and I make use of critical references of Black and African studies to examine specific dehumanization processes of the Black population. Furthermore, the work seeks to reflect on possibilities of mental humanization and de-colonization in both groups considering current policies of Affirmative Action in Education in Brazil.

o This Senior Seminar will study and compare social movements of Afrodescendents and Indigenous peoples of Latin America within the framework of STPEC's initiative for decolonizing the academy. In this vein, the seminar articulates and develops an argument about the key role of Black and Indigenous movements as producers of their own forms of politics and knowledge that had historically represented critical challenges to the racial regimes and racist cultures of western modernity in general and Latin American nation-states in particular, at the same time that they create alternate and alternative spaces for cultural expression, community-making, and intellectual production. The comparative inquiry of Black and Indigenous movements in Latin America will be done from world-historical lens, meaning exploring the historical groundings and global linkages for the very constitution of "Indios" and "Negros" as ethnic-racial categories in the context of the so-called...

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2023

This introductory essay outlines and contributes to ful ll the major goals of this special issue: 1) The examination of whiteness in Latin America in its articulation with broader social hierarchies, and 2) The development of a conceptual and theoretical roadmap for the study of whiteness in the region. The essay is divided into ve substantive sections through which we develop our main arguments. In the rst section, we o er a brief and admittedly incomplete overview of the literature on race in Latin America, paying particular attention to how whiteness was, until recently, rendered peripheral or entirely absent. In the second section, we consider the concept of 'ordinary whiteness' and its usefulness for capturing the often taken-for-granted aspects of white privilege and the everyday ways through which whiteness organizes routines, perspectives, subjectivities, and a ects. In the third section, we approach the intersection of race and class to examine the materiality of whiteness in the multiple forms of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital. In the fourth section, we examine the politics of race, space, and (im)mobility in the production of whiteness in the region. In the last part, we conclude with a commentary on the methodological and epistemological challenges of studying whiteness in Latin America.