Research Paper on Mullattoes

Paper Type:  Research paper
Pages:  7
Wordcount:  1921 Words
Date:  2022-06-05
Categories: 

Introduction

The term mullato is used to define a type of individual that is characterized because their parents do not have the same race, more specifically, one of them is black and the other white. Throughout history many have been the precedents that have given rise to a great ethnic diversity, one such event was the arrival of the Spanish conquerors to America where the various social groups of the region, such as indigenous people of that continent, the Europeans and the slaves native of Africa, carried out an important mixture of races among which the mullatos stood out. To be more specific, the mulattoes are the result of the crossing that took place between a European individual and another African, during the colonial era in America, the mulattoes occupied one of the lowest echelons as far as social class is concerned, since part of the other ethnic groups even for the Indians themselves, an individual who did not have purity in his blood, who in addition fused his African ancestors with the Europeans. It is believed that the term began to be used because this type of people was the representation of what the mules were in the animal kingdom since these were the result of the interbreeding between a donkey and a horse.

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As expected in terms of rights they refer, these people had no privilege, despite the fact that most of them were not treated as slaves openly, their job was to perform various domestic tasks, servitude, and other forced labor. In general, the mullatos were very abundant in those regions where the African black population was abundant, such as the areas of Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela and the Caribbean. Currently, finding pure breeds in its entirety is almost impossible, which is caused by the fact that the different races have at some point had to contact with other ethnic groups, an example of this is the large number of descendants of Africans that exist in the United States, which could be considered as mulattoes even though they are considered Afro-descendants. When we ask ourselves how many human races there are in the world, we find the answers very linked to the five continents: that of America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Others also add Antarctica as the sixth continent. There we find white, black, Indian and yellow races. Although other groups have also emerged that are subdivided or classified in the impure races. For these people, there are no defined races and from now on, that situation would group them in a new racial model that would constitute a significant majority in the world. When speaking of race, it refers to people belonging to the same caste. That is, there is no room for those that are the result of the union of two lineages. Based on that definition, there are three major groups of races: yellow race, black race, and white race. The yellow race is one whose individuals have yellowish skin color, short or medium height, brachycephalic skull, straight black hair, crushed face and oblique eyes.

White or Caucasian race, composed of individuals with light skin, eyes between light blue and dark brown, hair from light blond to black, fine and straight or wavy, medium or high stature and abundant body hair. Black race, composed of people who have skin color between very dark black and black ebony, sparse body hair, frizzy hair and very curly, medium or tall stature, dolichocephalic skull, wide and flattened nose and very thick lips. Finally, within the intermediate category is the Mongols, they are neither white, nor black, nor yellow. Originating from high Asia scattered by different countries, mainly Mongolia, China, and Russia. This group completes the racial-ethnic groups or the main races or castes known in the world

The need to group the descendants of those races that are the result of the crossing between them has not been raised. Those who are neither white, nor black, nor Indian, nor yellow, nor Mongolian. Those men and women, the fruit of the crossing of two and even three lineages, occurred in the Americas colonized and exploited by the Europeans. It is the fruit of that exploitation that the mulatto is born, which has to be considered as the birth of a new race and declared as such by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) to the group in it the descendants of the crossing of whites, blacks, and Indians. But we also consider the need to define in which racial group the descendants of the mixture of a white with a yellow or vice versa would fall, since being the fruit of a mixture, they would also be mulattoes. In general, the mulatto noun is used to designate the individual born of the union of a white person and a black person, or a person of white and black descent, it is also necessary to add that children born of the union of the whites with the natives that took place in Spain and later with the other natives of the American Continent, at the beginning of the colonization, before the almost total extermination of the primitive inhabitants that at least in Spain was absolute.

Miscegenation, word of Latin origin, of "mixticius" (mixture) arises from the cross of two different races of living beings (animals or plants) that gives rise to a new one, with characteristics of both. It is applied many times to dogs that crossbreed between breeds, and no longer belong to a pure breed, having lower economic market value. Miscegenation is the biological and cultural crossing of individuals from different ethnic groups. In the past, miscegenation used to be related to the idea of racial mixture, that is, the union between individuals of different races; however, at present, the concept of race has been discarded by science. For this reason, today we speak more about miscegenation when a combination occurs at a biological (genetic material) and cultural (customs, traditions, beliefs, etc.) level among individuals belonging to different ethnic groups. From this mixture results in a new individual called mullato. Thus, the combination of different ethnic groups gives rise to a new mestizo ethnic group, which is identified with elements of one ethnic group and another, although sometimes one of them predominates over the other. Miscegenation processes have taken place at different times in the history of humanity, either by migration, by the movement and exchange that gives rise to trade, religious reasons or political and military domination of one people by another. America is an important example of miscegenation because due to the process of domination and colonization of the continent, indigenous, European and African produced different cultural and social realities, a product of the unions that proliferated among these three groups.

Cultural miscegenation is a phenomenon product of the encounter, interaction, exchange and appropriation of the different traditions, customs, practices, beliefs, and behaviors of different ethnic groups. An example of cultural miscegenation is the current Latin America, in which individuals from different ethnic groups (Native Americans, Spaniards, black Africans), with customs, traditions, beliefs and markedly different physical characteristics, made possible a new cultural reality that is recognized and it reflects, in different degrees and forms, in those human groups where they come from. Thus, in cultural miscegenation, the characteristics of the cultural particularities of the different ethnic groups are fused, which can be expressed in music, clothing, food, values, religion or speech. This process is also known as syncretism.

Miscegenation has resulted in the splitting of identities, more so national identity and racial identities. It is well known that, in colonial times, racism was strife. The interest of this period, says Franz Fanon, is that the oppressor will no longer be content with the objective non-existence of the oppressed nation and culture; every effort is made to lead the colonized to confess their inferiority, to recognize the irregularity of their nation and, ultimately, the disorganized and untrained character of their own anthropological structure. But regardless of the political will, within the people had begun to consummate the miscegenation not only racial but cultural miscegenation as synonymous with innovation and creativity. Fanon undertook his fight for the consciousness of the alienation of black and white, the lobotomization of spirits or the depersonalization of colonized peoples as of the relationship between racism and colonization.

Fanon's first important contribution is exactly his reflections on alienation. This theme continues to deepen in all his work showing that the alienation of black and white is a stage prior to slavery and colonialism, necessary for the maintenance of economic exploitation. To understand their awareness of the alienation process, it is necessary to resort to their experiences lived in black, to their personal history. Fanon perceives in that pyramidal structure of colonialism legal racial discrimination that translates into different material conditions with unequal salaries and unequal conditions of comfort, depending on whether it is metropolitan, Antillean or African. He perceives in the army that soldiers are not treated in the same way. Under the influence of institutional psychiatry, Fanon thinks of alienation, psychic illness and psychic suffering in its relation to the social environment in which the patient is inserted. Fanon goes on to theorize the alienation by color produced by slavery and colonialism from his earliest writings. In 1952, he published his first article "Le syndrome Nord-Africain" in the Esprit Magazine. Fanon observes the similarity of the pathologies "without injury" of the immigrants from the Maghreb. Denounces the frequent culturalist explanations of doctors for these diseases and presents a "materialist explanation that locates the symptoms observed in the life of oppression" showing that the true cause of the psychic disease is not in an objective injury, but in the domination suffered.

From his theory, Fanon focused his efforts on understanding on the colonial alienation, his identity translations and on the resistance he raises. Fanon presents the alienation as a previous step to slavery and colonialism to maintain economic exploitation and analyzes the identity behaviors of "self-shame" as a result of colonial domination. Fanon analyzes the impact of racism and colonialism and its destructive effects, particularly the mechanisms of alienation that determine the relationship between blacks and whites and reproduce the hierarchies that govern these racial relations. Fanon accurately describes the impact of racism on the black. He makes a meticulous and detailed analysis of all the pathologies that arise from the internalization of racism by blacks as self-shame, inferiority complexes and fascination with white.

Fanon wanted to know how the black could become a man, since "[...] the black is not a man." There is a non-being area where black is found. Black is not a man because he is a black man, that is, he was established inside a universe from a series of "effective aberrations" that define him from the outside first but are introjected by him. From the inside of that universe, it would be good to make him leave, that is why Fanon says that his intention is not something else, but "to free the man of color from himself".

Fanon explains that there is a "complex building" where there are effective abnormalities that make "Black wants to be white" and that "white passionately seeks to realize a man's condition". That is to say that, "(...) for the black there is only one destiny. And this destiny is white "(1973, p.10) because the condition of the human being is in the existence of the target.

Fanon then considers that the understanding of the black-white relationship goes through the understanding...

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Research Paper on Mullattoes. (2022, Jun 05). Retrieved from https://proessays.net/essays/research-paper-on-mullattoes

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