Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

chapter 6
Identity Construct #1: Race
In the early 1990s, Cornell West, a U.S. academician, wrote Race Matters,
the title of which is a play on the word matter as both noun and verb. 1 West
rejects racism and even the existence of race, so to him race does not matter.
But he recognizes that ideas about race have affected and continue to affect,
if not to dominate, life in the United States, so he believes in the need to
study racial matters. He challenges those people who believe the United
States has rectifi ed its long history of racial injustice; West informs them
that, unfortunately, race does still matter.
The wordplay in the title of his book and the issues he addresses in his
work provide good points of entry for our exploration of essentialistic and
semiotic interpretations of race in Latin America. Essentialists who believe
in race, whom we can call “racialists,” believe in racial essences. They hold
the view that humans can be divided into distinct groups based on fundamental
and immutable traits. These differences can be most easily determined
by physical features, such as skin color and hair texture, but even if
these physical features are not obvious, racial essence is still present. Racialists
believe that racial divisions are objective characteristics of human
existence, not mere social conveniences. Thus, for a racial essentialist, having
lighter or darker skin refl ects a distinguishing essence.
It is worthwhile to differentiate racists from racialists. Racists hold a
hermeneutic view on race, but believe one racial group to be superior and
tend to advocate discrimination against the supposed inferiors. One obvious
example of a racist is a white supremacist. A black supremacist or an
Asian supremacist is also technically a racist. But as many scholars of race
point out, in a society where access to power is often determined by one’s