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603 q R q RACE AND COLOR CONSCIOUSNESS Among Latinas and Latinos in the United States, race and color consciousness are historical fictions that profoundly influence the concrete material opportunities and outcomes persons of dark skin color enjoy. Since the beginning of the twentieth century biologists and anthropologists worldwide have repudiated the concept of race as patently false. It lives on, nevertheless , having taken distinct meanings and forms over the course of time. Skin color, the most commonly recognized aspect of race, is the result of physical adaptation to environment, devolved genetically from one generation to the next. In the Hispanic world race as a concept was first used to explain the putative inferiority of the peoples Spaniards encountered in Africa and the Americas. The word race entered European languages at the beginning of the sixteenth century in tandem with voyages of discovery and encounter to Africa, Asia, and the Americas. European residents in agrarian societies during the Middle Ages had a clear understanding of the role of breeding and heredity in livestock production , and from such understandings they borrowed the concept of race to explain outward physical differences in human appearance, particularly that based on physical color. No one has yet established the exact etymology of the word race. Cambridge anthropologist J. C. Trevor maintains that race derives from the Latin ratio, originally a word used in the classification of animals into “species,” “kind,” and “nature.” The Spanish word raza, the Italian razza, the French race, and the Portuguese raça also came from the Latin ratio. Skin color as a physical assessment of a person’s social worth is unique and yet quite modern in human history as a form of differentiation and discrimination. Scholars of earlier periods in world history are in general accord that while well-known antipathies and stereotypes , due mainly to religious differences, deeply structured how peoples interacted with each other, no real textual evidence has yet been found in Greek, Roman, or Jewish sources showing low esteem for peoples with dark skin and high esteem for lighter complexions. The particular evolution of the concept of race in Latin America results from the conquest and colonization of America’s Indians and the importation of black African slaves. By the time Christopher Columbus sailed westward seeking a shorter route to India, the dark-skinned peoples of Africa were widely known to Europeans. Beginning with the Crusades and then with the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492, Spain’s Christian kings waged vicious war against the infidel followers of Mohammed, who were marked by their physical color. While religious difference marked the Moors as infidels, it was color that distinguished the black slaves bought and sold by African kings and European merchants. For the native populations of the Americas who became known to the Spaniards as Indians, a similar notion of religious difference was the principal basis upon which the conquerors racialized the conquered. The Spaniards relied on a number of metaphors to describe the difference between conquerors and conquered , namely, that they were cristianos (Christians) and the Indians paganos (pagans), that they were gente de razón (people of reason regarding the precepts of the Christian faith), and the Indians were gente sin razón (people lacking such reason), and that they were cristianos viejos (old Christians) and long protectors of the faith, while the Indians were cristianos nuevos (new Christians), recent converts who were flaccid in their faith. These “us-them” distinctions were thoroughly imbued with notions of race. The Spaniards were Christians, rational and “civilized” men who by force of arms had won titles, honors, tribute, and lands, and were known by their fair skin, their fine clothing, and their refined demeanor and comportment. The vanquished Indians were heathens, irrational, lacking intelligence , mere children before the conquistadores and their laws, and easily recognized by their crude behavior , their physical features, and particularly their dark skin. Race and Color Consciousness 604 q In medieval Spain families of nobility and wealth guarded their heredity with great care, maintaining their limpieza de sangre, their blood purity, by avoiding mixture with Jew, Moors, and others deemed infamous and vile. In Spanish America men of honor similarly protected their bloodlines against pollution by Indians, half-breeds, and persons of despicable birth, closely monitored the behavior of their daughters, prohibited marriage to racial inferiors, and tolerated cohabitation, but profoundly stigmatized the racially mixed progeny of such unions. The conquering soldiers who accompanied Spanish expeditions to...
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