Abstract
Ethnic minority rights movements around the world threaten dominant paradigms. In response to this threat, twenty-first century ethno-racial rights activists in many countries find themselves co-opted, alienated, or submerged in melting pot notions of multiculturalism or postracial coexistence. In her book, Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil, Tianna Paschel brings us an informed look at how black citizens navigate state mechanisms of subjugation in Colombia and Brazil, and how movements for black rights have dealt with challenges to their agendas and autonomy. Through comparative historical analysis, as well as extensive ethnographic work, Paschel shows how the convergence of domestic and global factors reverberated in the making of black political subjects in Colombia and Brazil. She reveals the many obstacles individuals and groups faced along the way in working for new ethno-racial legislation.
Paschel builds her argument around case divergence; the Colombian state included black citizens through the logic of cultural difference while the Brazilian state opted for the logic of cultural equality. These two expressions of state attention to minority rights—in the Colombian example by acknowledging that black Colombians are somehow culturally separate from their mestizo or white counterparts, and in Brazil by addressing citizens as equals regardless of racial or ethnic identity—mark two distinct paths that states may take when attending to constituent concerns involving identity politics. Paschel’s book contributes not only to a deeper understanding of how these processes work but also cautions us as to their consequences. After all, for the attainment of rights to be divided among categories of citizens who previously did not have access to such rights, something must be sacrificed. Land access for mining companies and the privileges of the traditional white elite are foremost among these privileged entitlements. These are not privileges given up easily, and black activists are targeted with death threats and assassinations. Paschel explores how the type and extent of claims that black citizens can make, and the way in which such claims can be voiced, may directly affect the price black citizens pay for their institutionalization in both countries.
While much of the book is dedicated to documenting through rich ethnographic analysis the black rights movements in these two countries, Paschel also notes the large gap between legislation and implementation. Activists have dedicated their lives to fighting for the legal recognition of black communities for affirmative action, and the implementation of these rights is not straightforward. How are culturally specific, collective communities defined in the case of Colombia, and how is blackness determined in Brazil’s university admission procedures? Paschel cites the infamous case of twins who applied to the University of Brasília, where affirmative action policies relied not on racial self-identification but on a panel that labeled one of the twins black and the other white. It is hard to see the process of legislation when the implementation is so problematic. Given these challenges, Paschel advocates the use of a more temporally expansive ethnographic approach to the study of social movements in order to place emphasis on how activists navigate their relationships with the state to define the boundaries of black political subjectivity.
Paschel’s scholarship in this book contributes eloquently to the fields of ethnic studies and democratization, but also to the use of ethnography in social science research. She models reflectivity regarding her own positionality, a critical practice for all researchers, but one that is frequently given short shrift in favor of claims to objectivity and neutrality. In her methodological appendix, Paschel frankly discusses how her identity as an African American woman trained in elite universities informed the data collection process. Paschel’s candidness about her own role is a refreshing approach that should be a model for ethnography across the range of disciplines. She shows readers how identity matters for social and political inclusion and exclusion not solely through the experiences of documented “others” but also through her own experiences in a range of ethnographic contexts.
Paschel stakes out important claims regarding the trajectory of multiculturalism in Latin America in her conclusion, overall contributing to an important time line for understanding the politics of difference and equality in Latin America. I have only a minor quibble with one of her claims. She states that Brazil aside, Latin American countries managed to recognize black and indigenous rights within frameworks of mestizaje nationalism rather than by addressing legacies of discrimination (p. 233). In fact, social movement actors in many countries have challenged state discourses of mestizaje and demanded rights-as-reparations frameworks. This has certainly been the case in Mexico where indigenous communities have been astute at using memories of violence as strategic resources to shame states into granting their rights claims. For example, while a flawed model in some respects, the legal recognition of usos y costumbres in Mexico, referring to traditional uses and customs of leadership selection and governance outside of political party systems, and its widespread implementation in Oaxaca shows that Brazil is not alone in legislating to address political exploitation of ethnic minorities. In Paschel’s summing up of large themes and presentation of Brazil as exceptional, readers should not overlook important contributions by communities outside the scope conditions of her project. Her excellent analysis of ethno-racial social movements and their relationships with state policies of rights provisions can be scaled out to address other cases in Latin America.