Latin American Research Review

Appelbaum, Nancy P.
Post-Revisionist Scholarship on Race
Latin American Research Review - Volume 40, Number 3, 2005, pp. 206-217

University of Texas Press

Nancy P. Appelbaum - Post-Revisionist Scholarship on Race - Latin American Research Review 40:3 Latin American Research Review 40.3 (2005) 206-217 Post-Revisionist Scholarship on Race Nancy P. Appelbaum Binghamton University, State University of New York Diploma Of Whiteness: Race And Social Policy In Brazil, 1917-1945. By Jerry Dávila. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. 292. $64.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.) Shades Of Citizenship: Race And The Census In Modern Politics. By Melissa Nobles. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. 248. $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.) Racial Revolutions: Antiracism And Indian Resurgence In Brazil. By Jonathan W. Warren. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 363. $64.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.) Indian And Nation In Revolutionary Mexico. By Alexander S. Dawson. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004. Pp. 240. $45.00 cloth.) Introduction Beginning in the late 1950s and peaking in the 1980s and 1990s, a revisionist wave of scholarship focused on dismantling myths of Latin American "racial democracy." Scholars emphasized the insidiously disempowering effects of egalitarian myths and documented pervasive inequality and racism. By the late twentieth century, most scholars had reached a consensus on some basic principles underlying all critical race scholarship: Race is a contingent social and historical construct; racial identities are not simply determined by ancestry or phenotype. We generally agree...