Racial Subordination in Latin America
The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response

This book examines customary laws of racial regulation and the historic complicity of Latin American states in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies.

Tanya Katerí Hernández (Author)

9781107695436, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2014

258 pages, 2 maps 1 table
23 x 15.3 x 1.4 cm, 0.36 kg

'Hernández has constructed a well-written accessible analysis of racial subordination that deserves a wide audience in and beyond Latin America, especially among policy makers. Summing up: highly recommended. All readership levels.' C. H. Blake, Choice

There are approximately 150 million people of African descent in Latin America yet Afro-descendants have been consistently marginalized as undesirable elements of the society. Latin America has nevertheless long prided itself on its absence of US-styled state-mandated Jim Crow racial segregation laws. This book disrupts the traditional narrative of Latin America's legally benign racial past by comprehensively examining the existence of customary laws of racial regulation and the historic complicity of Latin American states in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies. Tanya Katerí Hernández is the first author to consider the salience of the customary law of race regulation for the contemporary development of racial equality laws across the region. Therefore, the book has a particular relevance for the contemporary US racial context in which Jim Crow laws have long been abolished and a 'post-racial' rhetoric undermines the commitment to racial equality laws and policies amidst a backdrop of continued inequality.

1. Racial innocence and the customary law of race regulation
2. Spanish America whitening the race - the un(written) laws of 'blanqueamiento' and 'mestizaje'
3. Brazilian 'Jim Crow': the immigration law whitening project and the customary law of racial segregation - a case study
4. The social exclusion of Afro-descendants in Latin America today
5. Afro-descendant social justice movements and the new anti-discrimination laws
6. Brazil: at the forefront of Latin American race-based affirmative action policies and census racial data collection
7. Conclusion: the United States-Latin America connections.

Subject Areas: Law [L]