Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T18:01:48.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Race-Making and the Nation-State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Anthony W. Marx
Anthony W. Marx
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access

Abstract

Why was official racial domination enforced in South Africa and the United States, while nothing comparable to apartheid or Jim Crow was constructed in Brazil? Slavery and colonialism established the pattern of early discrimination in all three cases, and yet the postabolition racial orders diverged. Miscegenation influenced later outcomes, as did economic competition, but neither was decisive. Interpretations of these historical and economic factors were shaped by later developments. This article argues that postabolition racial orders were significantly shaped by the processes of nation-state building in each context. In South Africa and the United States ethnic or regional “intrawhite” conflict impeding nation-state consolidation was contained by racial domination. Whites were unified by excluding blacks, in an ongoing dynamic that took different forms. Continued competition and tensions between the American North and South or South Africa's English and Afrikaners were repeatedly resolved or diminished through further entrenchment of Jim Crow or apartheid. With no comparable conflict requiring reconciliation in Brazil, no official racial domination was constructed, although discrimination continued. The dynamics of nation-state building are then reviewed to explain variations in black mobilization and the end of apartheid and Jim Crow.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , January 1996 , pp. 180 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Miles, Robert, Racism (London: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar; Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, Racial Formation in the United States (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989)Google Scholar; Rex, John, Race Relations in Sociological Theory (London: Routledge, 1970)Google Scholar; Wilson, William Julius, Power, Racism and Privilege (New York: Free Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

2 Taylor, Rupert, “Racial Terminology and the Question of ‘Race’ in South Africa” (Manuscript, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 For other comparative studies of these cases, see Van den Berghe, Pierre, Race and Racism (New York; John Wiley and Sons, 1967)Google Scholar; Greenberg, Stanley B., Race and State in CapitalistDevelopment (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1980)Google Scholar; Fredrickson, George M., White Supremacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Cell, John W., The Highest Stage of White Supremacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Degler, Carl N., Neither Black nor White (New York: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar.

4 Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen (New York: Knopf, 1946). See van den Berghe (fn. 3), 67.Google Scholar

5 Degler(fn. 3), chap. 2.

6 Conrad, Robert, “Nineteenth Century Brazilian Slavery,” in Toplin, Robert Brent, ed., Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974), 150Google Scholar; Moura, Clóvis, História do Negro Brasikiro (Sāo Paulo: Ed Atica, 1989), 14Google Scholar.

7 Moura (fn. 6), 15–32.

8 See Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1972)Google Scholar.

9 Tannenbaum (fn. 4), 53. The same argument is put forward in Hartz, Louis, The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt, 1964), 152Google Scholar. For a discussion of the role of Calvinism in the emergence of racial discrimination in South Africa, see Gerstner, Jonathan N., The Thousand Generation Covenant (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991)Google Scholar.

10 Genovese (fn. 8), 177; Prado, Caio Jr., The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 327Google Scholar; Jordan, Winthrop D., White over Black (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 206Google Scholar.

11 Anderson, Perry, “Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism 2,” New Left Review 16 (July-August 1962)Google Scholar.

12 Boxer, C. R., Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415–1825 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 42Google Scholar.

13 Anderson (fn. 11), 93. See also Bender, Gerald J., Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Rtality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

14 Anderson (fn. 11), 110,113.

15 Said, , Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978)Google Scholar.

16 Prado (fn. 10), 119; Burns, E. Bradford, A History of Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 37Google Scholar.

17 Wood, Charles H. and de Carvalho, J. A. Magno, The Demography of Inequality in Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Marvin, Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York: Walker, 1964)Google Scholar.

18 Conrad, Robert, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 12Google Scholar; Skidmore, Thomas E., “Bi-Racial U.S. versus Multi-Racial Brazil: Is the Contrast Still Valid?” (Manuscript, June 1992), 15Google Scholar.

19 Silva, Nelson do Valle, “Updating the Cost of Not Being White in Brazil,” in Fontaine, Pierre-Michel, ed., Race, Class, and Power in Brazil (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1985), 54Google Scholar. See also Silva, Nelson do Valle and Hasenbalg, Carlos A., Relaçōes Raciais no Brasil Contemporâo (Rio de Janeiro: Rio Fundo, 1992)Google Scholar.

20 Genovese (fn. 8), 414; Fredrickson (fn. 3), 134; Davis, F.James, Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 40Google Scholar; Nascimento, Abdias do, Brazil: Mixture or Massacre? (Dover: Majority Press, 1979), 65Google Scholar.

21 Keith, Verna M. and Herring, Cedric, “Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community,” American Journal of Sociology 97 (November 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Central Statistical Services, South African Statistics, 1988 (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1988),: tables 1.7,7.7Google Scholar.

23 See van den Berghe (fn. 3), 27–30; Cell (fn. 3), 104; Olzak, Susan, The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

24 Bonacich, Edna, “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market,” American Sociological Review 37 (October 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Burawoy, Michael, “The Capitalist State in South Africa,” in Zeitlin, Maurice, ed., Political Power and Social Theory (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1981), 2:282Google Scholar.

26 Cell (fn. 3), 62–67; Wolpe, Harold, “Capitalism and Cheap Labor Power in South Africa,” Economy and Society 1, no. 4 (1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Posel, Deborah, The Making of Apartheid (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991)Google Scholar.

28 Johnstone, Fredrick A., Class, Race and Gold (London: Routledge, 1976)Google Scholar.

29 Wilson, Francis, Labour in the South African Gold Mines, 1911–1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 11Google Scholar; Greenberg (fn. 3), 129,151.

30 Yudelman, David, The Emergence of Modern South Africa (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

31 Cell (fn. 3), 234.

32 Wilson (fn. 1), 56.

33 Fredrickson (fn. 3), 215–16.

34 Olzak (fn. 23), 110–11; Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar.

35 Myrdal, Gunnar, Am American Dilemma (New York: Harper and Row, 1944), 457Google Scholar.

36 Williamson, Joel, A Rage for Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 250Google Scholar. See also Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon, 1994), chap. 1Google Scholar.

37 Costa, Emilia Viotti da, The Brazilian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 55Google Scholar; Cdl(fn. 3), 11; Harris (fn. 17), 96–98.

38 Degler (fn. 3), 99; Hasenbalg, Carlos, “Race Relations in Post-Abolition Brazil” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1978), x, 240Google Scholar.

39 Silva, Nelson do Valle, “Black-White Income Differentials: Brazil, 1960” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1978), 99Google Scholar.

40 Foner, Philip S., Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973 (New York: Praeger, 1974), chaps. 14–16Google Scholar.

41 As quoted in Marshall, Burke, Federalism and Civil Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 85Google Scholar.

42 I am here applying arguments about ethnicity to the more specific case of race. See, for example, Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Enloe, Cynthia, “The Growth of the State and Ethnic Mobilization: The American Experience,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (April 1981), 123–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nagel, Joanne, “The Political Construction of Ethnicity,” in Olzak, Susan and Nagel, Joanne, eds., Competitive Ethnic Relations (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

43 Hartz(fn. 9), 3.

44 Karis, Thomas, “South Africa,” in Carter, Gwendolen, ed., Five African States (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), 480–81Google Scholar.

45 de Klerk, W. A., Puritans in Africa: A History of Afrikanerdom (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1975), 23Google Scholar. De Klerk is here quoting Piet Retief, from 1837.

46 See, for example, Hobson, J. A., The War in South Africa (London: George Allen, 1900)Google Scholar.

47 See, for example, Williams, Basil, ed., The Shelborne Memorandum (London: Oxford University Press, 1925)Google Scholar; Pakenham, Thomas, The Boer War (New York: Avon, 1979)Google Scholar; Wilson, Monica and Thompson, Leonard, eds., The Oxford History of South Africa, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

48 LeMay, G. H. L., British Supremacy in South Africa, 1899–1907 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 11–12Google Scholar.

49 Walshe, Peter, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 16Google Scholar. See also Goldin, Ian, Making Race: The Politics and Economics of Coloured Identity in South Africa (Cape Town: Longman, 1987), 32Google Scholar; Lewis, Gavin, Between the Wire and the Wall (Cape Town: David Philip, 1987), 15Google Scholar; Denoon, Donald, A Grand Illusion (London: Longman, 1973), 4, 111Google Scholar.

50 Kestell, D. and van Velden, D. E., The Peace Negotiations (London: Clay, 1912), 112Google Scholar.

51 Pakenham (fn. 47), 612.

52 Jordan (fn. 10), 332; Kluger, Richard, Simple Justice (New York: Knopf, 1980), 33Google Scholar.

53 Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Anti-Slavery (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 45Google Scholar.

54 Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 292–93Google Scholar.

55 Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon, 1966), 125, 136Google Scholar; Lewinson, Paul, Race, Class and Party (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1932), 26Google Scholar.

56 Stampp, Kenneth M., ed., The Causes of the Civil War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 63Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., 59.

58 Moore (fn. 55), 113.

59 Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bensel, Richard F., Yankee Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ixGoogle Scholar; Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide, eds., Workmg-Class Formation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 212Google Scholar; Foner, Eric, Reconstruction (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 23Google Scholar.

60 See, for instance, Key, V. O. Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York: Knopf, 1949)Google Scholar.

61 Woodward, C. Vann, Reunion and Reaction (Boston: Little Brown, 1951)Google Scholar; Fields, Barbara J., “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Kousser, J. Morgan and McPherson, James M., eds., Repm, Race and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

62 Fredrickson (fn. 3), 191. See also Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 65Google Scholar; Moore (fn. 55), 132,146.

63 Williamson (fn. 36), 85.

64 Bois, W. E. B. Du, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Athenaeum, 1992), 125Google Scholar.

65 Andrews, George Reid, “Review Essay: Comparing the Comparers: White Supremacy in the United States and South Africa,” Journal of Social History 20 (1987), 589CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Valelly, Richard M., “Party, Coercion, and Inclusion: The Two Reconstructions of the Souths Electoral Politics,” Politics and Socitty 21 (March 1993)Google Scholar.

66 Denoon (fn. 49), 158.

67 Zolberg, Aristide, “Moments of Madness,” Politics and Society 2 (1978)Google Scholar.

68 See Roett, Riordan, Brazil: Politics in a Patrimonial Society (New York: Praeger, 1984)Google Scholar.

69 Freyre, Gilberto, Brazil: An Interpretation (New York: Knopf, 1945), 120Google Scholar.

70 See Pierson, Donald, Negroes in Brazil (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), 335Google Scholar.

71 See Skidmore, Thomas E., Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

72 de Azevedo, Celia Marinho, Onda Negra, Medo Branca (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1987)Google Scholar.

73 Roosevelt, Theodore, “Brazil and the Negro,” Outlook 106 (February 21, 1914), 409–11Google Scholar.

74 See Dawson, Michael, Behind the Mule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

75 See Tarrow, Sidney, Poiver in Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

76 Marx, Karl, “The Poverty of Philosophy,” in McLellan, David, ed., Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 214Google Scholar.

77 See DuBow, Saul, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36 (Hampshire, England: Macmillan, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lodge, Tom, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1983)Google Scholar.

78 See Marx, Anthony W., Lessons of Struggle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Adam, Heribert and Moodley, Kogila, The Opening of the Apartheid Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

79 See Meier, August et al., eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (New York: Macraillan, 1971)Google Scholar.

80 The literature here is vast. See McAdam, Doug, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Morris, Aldon D., The Origins of the Civil Rights Movements (New York: Free Press, 1984)Google Scholar; McCartney, John T., Black Power Ideologies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

81 See Gonzalez, Lélia and Hasenbalg, Carlos, Lugar de Negro (Rio de Janeiro: Marco Zero, 1982)Google Scholar; Hanchard, Michael, Orpheus and Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

82 U.S. Department of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975)Google Scholar, series F-297–348, pp. 243–45, 295; Wright, Gavin, Old South, New South (New York: Basic Books, 1986)Google Scholar.

83 Myrdal(fn. 35), 1011.

84 Wofford, Harris, Of Kennedys and Kings (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 467Google Scholar.

85 Adam, Heribert and Giliomee, Hermann, Ethnic Power Mobilized (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 169–75Google Scholar. See also Horowitz, Donald L., A Democratic South Africa? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 79–81Google Scholar.

86 Author interview with Gerrit Viljoen, Pretoria, April 28, 1994.

87 Adam and Moodley (fn. 78), 2; Sisk, Timothy D., Democratization in South Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 137Google Scholar.

88 Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 90Google Scholar.

89 Brubaker, , Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

90 Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital and European States (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar.

91 Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1947), 12–13Google Scholar.

92 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar.