Delroy Constantine-Simms

Living While Black In Latin America And The Caribbean Delroy Constantine-Simms

This book aims to highlight, how and why people of Afro-descendant living in Latin American and Caribbean, continue to experience greater levels of violent racial discrimination, than their African-American counterparts. Contributing scholars provides a range of perspectives which illuminate and explore the experiences of Afro-descendant people and their responses to institutional racism and state violence.

This volume is organized categories by region and countries, followed by a range of established and ground-breaking perspectives regarding the experiences of the Afro-descendant population in Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection brings together a comparative set of scholarly contributions, which theorize how patterns of past and post recognition racism is experienced by Afro-descendent people through the process of race reformulation, which often takes place after neoliberal states claim to recognize indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples and their rights.

Moreover, scholars and journalists explore the dynamic interplay between racial politics and hegemonic power in the region, and investigate the fluid intersection of social power, racial politics and their impact on the region's indigenous and Afro-descendant identity and culture. Experts collectively discuss both pervasive forms of racism and discrimination under neoliberal recognition and governance, reformulation and even reinforcement of racial projects, 'the process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories' - under so-called progressive governments.

A selection of writers assert that the overarching sentiment is that racial formation is part of a right-wing backlash by the poor of racially dominant groups that are resistant to the social, legal, political advances of Afro-descendant communities, especially in recently left leaning countries. Perceptive authors highlight the hypocrisy of neoliberal multiculturalism, of left-wing governments who proclaim the existence of legal and political rights, while doing little to enforcing them. Instead, choosing racial and cultural essentialisms and stereotypes to justify the subordination and oppression of Afrodescendant and indigenous people.

Conclusively, the scholarly and journalistic and state reaction to the death of George Floyd confirms that Latin America is entering a news stage of racial recalcitrance, which exposes the dangers of post-recognition racism in an era of racist resistance to Black protest and Afro-Descendant protests and progress.