Colonialism
and Whiteness
This is the first
post in a series of blog posts that seeks to understand the development of
Whiteness in the Americas from colonialism to today. These blog posts are
short necessarily short and are not meant to be exhaustive, but to give the
reader an idea of where Whiteness comes from and how it appears in our culture. The need for these posts came out of the backlash against Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College this April, 2016.
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| Casta Painting |
A Casta (Spanish: [ˈkasta], Portuguese: [ˈkastɐ, ˈkaʃtɐ]) was a hierarchical system of race classification created by Spanish elites (españoles) in Hispanic America during the Spanish colonial period. The sistema de castas or the sociedad de castas was used in 17th and 18th centuries in Spanish America and Spanish Philippines to describe as a whole and socially rank the mixed-race people who were born during the post-Conquest period. These unions produced in the process known as mestizaje. A parallel system of categorization based on the degree of acculturation to Hispanic culture, which distinguished between gente de razón (Hispanics) and gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives), concurrently existed and supported the idea of casta. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta
Whiteness
Whiteness
has been with us since the beginning of European colonialism. When
Europeans conquered what was to become the Americas, they also established a
racial caste system based on skin color. The darker one was, the
lower they were on the social scale. Whiteness is a concept that
describes the cultural, lingual, institutional beliefs, practices and behavior
that maintains access to power and reinforces power for White people and people
of lighter skin tones. This colonial system was created for and by
Europeans for the benefit of Europeans. Everything was in relation to the
European--this is a hallmark of the concept of Whiteness--that everything is
judged in relation to Whiteness and not something else.
Españoles (Spanish) [White people]
Peninsulares (Spaniards) [White people]
Criollos (Spanish Americans) [White people]
Indios (Amerindians)
Mestizos (Amerindian and Spanish mix)
Castizos (Spanish with some Amerindian mix)
Cholos (Amerindian with some Spanish mix)
Pardos (Spanish, African, and Amerindian Mix)
Mulattos (African and Spanish mix)
Zambos (Amerindian and African mix)
Negros (Africans)
This is,
in a nutshell, how the European imposed hierarchy in the Americas looked.
This
system was brutally enforced. There were strict rules about who could do
what with whom....This system was directly related to slavery and servitude.
The people higher up (Whiter) the hierarchy were granted more privileges
and rights than those in the lower section. Consequently,
the amount of distance one could put between oneself and the lower states of
the hierarchy, the better chance one had of making a living, or even succeeding
in the European (White) dominated world of the Americas (Whiteness).
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| Another casta painting |
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Casta
paintings
The casta
series represent different racial mixtures that derived from the offspring of
unions between Spaniards and Indians–mestizos, Spaniards and Blacks–mulattos,
and Blacks and Indians–zambos. Subsequent intermixtures produced a mesmerizing
racial taxonomy that included labels such as “no te entiendo,” (“I don’t
understand who you are”), an offspring of so many racial mixtures that made
ancestry difficult to determine, or “salta atrás” (“a jump backward”) which
could denote African ancestry. Source:https://goo.gl/O9DdUP
These
paintings show us the importance of Whiteness to the Spanish from the very
beginning of their conquest of the Americas. The resultant mixture with
indigenous, African and Asian people led to a complex hierarchy of racial
superiority that was adhered to and, in many ways, is still upheld today.
These notions permeate our society, but in a different guise.
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| High Civilization (NOT White) |
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Indigenous
People and Whiteness
In an
idealized Mexico where people of African, European and indigenous heritage were
intermingling in seeming harmony, the paintings were a reminder to Spaniards
that there was still a strong hierarchy of racial purity — with Europeans on
top. Source: http://goo.gl/y1mAZQ
On the
social scale indigenous people are close to last. It was a survival
strategy to distance oneself from anything that is indigenous. Choices
like adopting the god of the Europeans, to using their script instead of the
indigenous forms of writing, and becoming as Guero (White) in dress,
speech and color if possible.
They had
been here thousands of years and had established societies, cultures and
hierarchies.
Once the
casta system was imposed by invading Europeans they concept of Whiteness became
increasingly important. The abandonment of their culture, their languages
and their identity is what was required, at baseline, if one wanted to survive
or even advance in the new hierarchy that had been established by bloodthirsty
conquerors.
Up until
recently, skin color has been a defining factor in Latino life.
Are you:
Guero?
(White, or Whiter Than)
Maron?
(Brown)
Negro?
(Black)
The answer
could be a determining factor in your life....
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| Spanish burning indigenous books/knowledge/culture |
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Cultural Genocide
The racial
hierarchy in combination with the destruction of the indigenous cultures by
book burning, destroying cultural monuments and using them to build churches
(Whiteness), and the enslavement of the indigenous people did much to reinforce
the casta system. Our (Latinos) indigenousness had been written out of
the history books, it had been derided and our people discriminated against and
persecuted (according to their skin color). Whiteness can be uncovered
when one thinks about how the descendants of European immigrants want to
persecute indigenous people from Mexico and other parts of central America for
wanting to migrate on their own continent. Even Latinos are hesitant to
use this argument against immigration restrictions on Latinos. I can only
imagine that the bias against Indios still permeates Latino culture and
prevents this strong argument from being presented.
Contemporary Latinos
and Whiteness
As always,
this is not a sweeping generalization, but a description of a large part of
Latino society in the US that I have been witness to my entire life.
Latinos in
large part lost their indigeneity by distancing themselves from their
indigenous heritage and appropriating the European religion and culture as much
as possible. It was advantageous to do so, economically, socially
and health-wise, it was advantageous to be as European (White) as
possible. This is where we see Whiteness beginning in the Americas.
Since the
1990's there has been a resurgence of interest in indigenous culture by Latinos
who want to claim that part of their heritage. It had never really been a
option before--now we see Aztec dancers, and other parts of our indigenous
heritage celebrated and exalted by some Latinos.
An example of
contemporary Whiteness
When I
pick up a book entitled, American Ethnic Folklore and I open it up and it is
really about Indigenous mythology. I then realize that this is
whiteness. The fact that this book has been written for White people by
White people without regard to any other readership uncovers Whiteness in this
particular context and moment. This is Whiteness. These kinds of
subject categories still permeate education and information in general.
We must
seek to uncover Whiteness where it is, when it appears. Whiteness is not
a stable, abstract concept. Whiteness changes according to setting, in
shifts it's mode of providing access and maintaining power for White people.
We should and help our allies see and explicate Whiteness when it
appears in our institutional and social contexts.
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| Whiteness displayed before the Irish were considered White |
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One other
thing about Whiteness is that it can be adhered to by non-white people.
Many people of color and those who purport to want to help People of
Color adhere to the system of Whiteness that the educational system upholds,
supports and requires of POC who want to succeed. I say that this is why
we have made little to no progress in equity, diversity and inclusion in our
school systems and our society.
The brutalities that were used to enforce the racial hierarchies of yesterday are still with us today.They used to come in the form of lynchings--back in the days of Jim Crow.... Now they come in the forms of Police shootings of unarmed African Americans and Latinos in far greater numbers than Whites. They come in vigilante shootings of unarmed African Americans, for example--the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
Colonialism
is still in full effect....
I
appreciate any and all comments (except spam).
