Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil

Why and how has race become a central aspect of politics during this century? This book addresses this pressing question by comparing South African apartheid and resistance to it, the United States Jim Crow law and protests against it, and the myth of racial democracy in Brazil. Anthony Marx argues that these divergent experiences had roots in the history of slavery, colonialism, miscegenation and culture, but were fundamentally shaped by impediments and efforts to build national unity. In South Africa and the United States, ethnic or regional conflicts among whites were resolved by unifying whites and excluding blacks, while Brazil's longer established national unity required no such legal racial crutch. Race was thus central to projects of nation-building, and nationalism shaped uses of race. Professor Marx extends this argument to explain popular protest and the current salience of issues of race.--Publisher description. Cover Epigraph Half-title Series-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Bounding the State and Institutionalizing Identities Comparing and Excavating Historical Foundations Constructing Racial Domination Challenging the Racial Order What Is at Stake? Historical and Cultural Legacies Trajectories from Colonialism Portuguese Brazil Dutch and British Colonial Legacies Comparative Overview Lessons from Slavery The Myth of Brazil's “Humanitarian” Slavery Slavery and Abolitionism in the United States Comparing Slavery and Its Implications The Uncertain Legacy of Miscegenation Implications Racial Domination and the Nation-State “We for Thee, South Africa” White Conflict, Forced Unity, and Black Exclusion Ethnic Political Competition and Segregation Apartheid and Greater White Unity “To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds” The Nation Divided Segregation, Party Competition, and Nation-State Consolidation Centralizing Power and Greater White Unity “Order and Progress” Unity and Discrimination The Persistent Myth of Racial Democracy Comparative Racial Domination Race Making from Below “We Are a Rock” Consolidation of Racial Identity and Protest Black Protest Forces Inclusive Nation-State Building Burying Jim Crow Toward Racial Solidarity Rising Black Protest Forces State Reforms National Black Protest and White Backlash The Movement Fractures Breaching Brazil's Pact of Silence Constrained Afro-Brazilian Solidarity under Racial Democracy Afro-Brazilian Activism Emerges Comparative Overview Conclusion Unmaking Legal Racial Domination and the Continuing Legacies of Discrimination General Implications Notes Bibliography Index Ideas, policies, conflicts about race and images of nationalism have been major themes of politics for more than a century. This book illuminates the particular experiences of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil, but also uses comparisons to reveal patterns and linkages between race, nation, state and class dynamics not otherwise apparent. PRIOR PRACTICES AND BELIEFS set the context in which post-abolition and post-colonial racial order was constructed.