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Post-Emancipation Race Relations: Some Caribbean and American Perspectives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David Lowenthal
David Lowenthal*
Affiliation:
American Geographical Society, New York City
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Extract

To compare race relations is even harder than to compare systems of slavery. However variously slavery may be defined, it is at least systematized—that is, slave trading, labor, provisioning, punishment, rebellion, and manumission are viewed as clear-cut categories, often formally codified and self-consciously compared with conditions elsewhere.

In race relations none of this is true. Race itself may refer to anything from a linguistic community to a genealogically isolated population, and contexts shift through time as well as across cultures. In the narrower sense, races, as distinct from ethnic elements, are not even groups; individual behavior and self-images are not congruent with external identifications. Relationships considered “racial” may be limited to certain public or legal institutions in one society, but in another may include psychological responses in most realms of life. In short, race relations can be compared only in the context of entire social systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 13 , Issue 3-4 , October 1971 , pp. 367 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1971

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Footnotes

*

Revised from a paper read in a symposium on comparative race relations at the Southern Historical Association meeting, Louisville, Kentucky, 13 November 1970.

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