Scripts of Blackness by Isar P Godreau

Author:Isar P Godreau [Godreau, Isar P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Gender Studies, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, History, Caribbean & West Indies
ISBN: 9780252080456
Google: ayiroAEACAAJ
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-01-20T04:06:33+00:00

Figure 16. 1898 U.S. Caricature of Spain. Source: La Gráfica Política del 98 (Junta de Extremadura Consejería de Cultura y Patrimonio,1998: 81).Originally published in El Diablo. Venezuela,1898.

Lanny Thompson’s (2007) excellent analysis of the photographs and texts of the widely circulated multivolume book Our Islands and Their People (1904), published at the turn of the century to describe the newly acquired U.S. possessions, also demonstrates the U.S. disdain for Spain and its influence on the newly acquired territories (Puerto Rico and the Philippines). Photographs included in the book portray images of poverty, decay, and “barbaric customs” to demonstrate the detrimental effects of Spanish colonialism on the Puerto Rican people. Others characterize Spaniards as “white,” wealthy, and domineering landowners who exploited the Puerto Rican people.

Thompson explains that, while Spaniards are depicted as greedy landowners, Puerto Ricans are presented in the text of Our Islands and Their People as members of the subaltern classes who—despite the negative influence of Spaniards—had great potential for being Americanized. Photographs used in the book helped to mold that strict dichotomy between an exploitative white Spanish class and the Puerto Rican people, by making invisible the criollo bourgeoisie (men in particular). When and if recognized, the U.S. represented the dominant class with pictures of Spanish women. They appeared elegant and refined but unfit to govern themselves, suggesting the need for the masculine presence of Anglo-Saxon U.S. functionaries (Thompson 2007, 57). In this way, photographs and text symbolically eradicate the presence of a male Puerto Rican governing class of Spanish ascendency, avoiding any discussion about the political and economic displacement of this “native” sector as a consequence of U.S. colonization.

Racial Innocence: The Cousin of Racial Democracy

Equally convenient to the colonizing mission was the U.S. representation of Puerto Ricans as naive people who paid no attention to racial differences. In Our Islands and Their People, photographs depicting a very mixed population are followed by a text that states: “In Porto Rico … there are no social distinctions on account of color. The people do not know what the color line means…. These conditions within themselves show the absence of all prejudice on account of color. But the African race is declining, and will eventually either disappear or be amalgamated with the white race. Whether this will produce a higher or a lower type of humanity is a question for the sociologists to settle” (José de Olivares, quoted in Thompson 2007, 69).

Such representations of Puerto Ricans as innocent and unaware of racial differences supported the U.S. colonizing discourse. Lack of knowledge about racial distinction was understood as a sign of naivité, which from the point of view of American colonizers further evidenced the native’s lack of understanding of social hierarchies, governance, and power. The claim that Puerto Ricans did not recognize internal differences among themselves also made U.S. colonial intervention appear undisruptive of a previous order, exempting the United States from the accusation that they were displacing a privileged sector.

At the same time, stressing the natives’ so-called unawareness of racial differences favors predictions about the gradual whitening of the population via race mixture.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.