Anthony W. Marx. Making Race and Nation.

A Comparison of the United

States, South Africa and Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1998.

This is comparative study of national racial systems in three different

countries. It wonders about the different levels of identity consolidation and
mobilization, build upon different historical trajectories the book also
intends to explain. It considers the role of the state in identity formation
and/or imposition of official rules of racial exclusion and domination.
Therefore, besides studying black politics, also analyzes white politics since
they are inextricably connected in racial dynamics though they have been
studied in relative isolation. Racial domination serves strategic purposes of
coalition building by those in power. The nation-state and economy were
preserved through exclusion of blacks. States are not monolithic, but
include different actors that evolve throughout the time though. Overall, his
focus is mostly institutional: “I combine a focus on historical institutions,
such as the state, with analysis of the social forces that built, impinged
upon, and divided institutional actors and identities” (p. xiv).

Leading questions: How racial relations were prefigured by earlier history?

How did the recent economic and political process shape divergent racial
orders? How did the challenges from below helped to transform the
impositions from above? By doing a comparative analysis he seeks to answer
these questions.

Argument: why did the states reinforce particular forms of racial relations?
Marx says: “Political and economic elites have consistently been eager to
ensure the stability of their societies by building institutions of coercion and
coordination. By consolidating state power within varying structures, they
sought to preserve their power, to bolster their legitimacy, and to provide
the conditions for economic growth. But such stability was often
undermined by major violent conflict, such as the British-Afrikaner ethnic
conflict in South Africa and the North-South regional conflict in the United
States, dividing prominent loyalties. To diminish these conflicts, elites acted
strongly to strike bargains, selling out blacks and reinforcing prior racial
distinctions and ideology in order to unify whites” (p. 2). These forms of
racial domination persisted until black opposition threatened stability.
Unlike South Africa and the U.S., the lack of intra-white conflict in Brazil
made less pressing to reconcile whites through racial domination, and the
state celebrated “racial democracy” in amid continued discrimination.
After race lost any scientific support, the state assumed the role of setting
racial boundaries. How do the states do it? How does the state functions
accordingly? Marx goes on explaining state’s functions and operation. He
explains they have the duty of establishing proper structure relations
between the state and the civil society, shaping norms and reinforcing social
and political identities accordingly. In shaping the national communities (the
imagined communities as Benedict Anderson named them), the state
specifies who and who are not entitled to be part of them. Inclusion or
exclusion was contingent on the circumstances that made necessary the
racial domination (excluding black to unify whites and create social
stability). Citizenship is a key institutional mechanism for establishing
boundaries of exclusion or inclusion in the nation-state. Either serves to
unify by allocating the same rights, or to exclude by denying some of those
benefits. The latter were turned into objects of domination. That’s why
citizenship has been defined according to race. “The extension of citizenship
rights has been blocked by constructing racial boundaries”(p. 5), he says.
Ironically, the lack of official racial domination, as the Brazilian case proves
it, becomes an obstacle to redress real inequality, since it’s not clear the
role of state in shaping it, and then to target it turns into a problem.

The latter explanation does not say specifically why the state does or does
not enforce a racial cleavage. State is not unitary and responds to global,
national, and local pressures accordingly to time and space. The
comparative study seeks to answer this point, suggesting that the state as
an analytic category, “must be broken down to explain the motives for
particular forms of nation building and for specific official policies and
outcomes” (p. 6). Marx then goes on wondering what historical
circumstances made out the differences between the three countries. He
considers these elements: demographics, labor coercion, slavery, patterns of
colonialism, levels of miscegenation, etc. For him, to focus on specific
historical moments might provide better lights to explain why racial
domination was enforced or not (abolition, wars, etc.). Then he asks: “Was
there something similar about transitional moments in South Africa and the
United States, but different in Brazil, that can account for the pattern of
outcomes?” (p. 11).

Both in South Africa and the U.S. liberals won defeating conservative
factions among whites. And still, instead of having alliances with blacks,
winners made them with those whites defeated. Why? Marx answers:
“Liberal interest in blacks was overshadowed by the stronger imperative to
unify whites within the nation-state, in part because blacks themselves,
divided by ethnicity in South Africa and outnumbered in the United States,
were not seen as comparably violent threat. Earlier images of racial
inferiority, shared by whites across ethnic or regional lines, reinforced the
idea that blacks were not capable of organized and united disruption, and so
could and should be subordinated […] The pragmatic goal of conflict
resolution and nation-state building consistently eclipsed liberal calls for
racial justice” (p. 12). Economic interests were subordinated to white racial
unity. More specific circumstances like demographics or state structure
made racial domination to play out different in the U.S. and South Africa. In
the meanwhile in Brazil: “Brazilian elites found they could maintain their
long-established social order of white privileges without enforcing racial
domination. Having experienced larger slave revolts, the Brazilian ruling
class was more fearful of black than their U.S. or South African
counterparts” (p. 15).

Different trajectories of racial domination caused different trajectories of

black mobilization and/or answers from below, and identities. However, not
only state’s formation of racial orders account for self-identification. They
existed before racial domination was enforced. Mobilization in particular
actually responded to form of domination they were intended to battle.
Previous answers: economic deprivations, resources’ availability, political
opportunities, etc. For him, what’s important is how and when a racial
identity becomes salient. After all, race has been socially constructed,
interpreted, and used. Marx then pays attention to how the state-led racial
domination caused divergent forms of mobilization. In the U.S. and South
Africa segregation encouraged black unity that easily targeted the state as
the source of their tragedies. In Brazil there was no explicit target of state
policy against which racial identity could be shaped. Both strategies and the
aims of struggle were defined by the specific form of racial domination.

Marx says: “The timing of the protest and preferences for integration or
separatism, militancy or accommodation, are connected to shifts in state
policy presenting distinct resources and opportunities. State building not
only creates opportunities for collective action, but the form of such action
also reflects the form of the state”(p. 21). The greater the repression, the
greater the chances of massive mobilization. However, mobilization also
depends of transitions and crises in the state rule.

After all, why race? Why did the elites use race to advance their quests for
unity and stability? Race was one of the most powerful symbolic repertoire.
It was widely accepted, by elite and poor whites, for some time had
scientific support, etc.

Overview of the book: Part 1 explains how the enactment or not of racial
domination during the twentieth century responded to earlier histories of
colonialism, slavery, and miscegenation. He clarifies state actions also freely
reinterpreted historical memory to justify racial domination. The past is not
so constraining. Part 2 goes on by addressing the circumstances that shaped
the particular racial orders and how the past was used accordingly. Marx
goes deeper into the role different state actors played, their debates,
pressures, and consequences. Part 3 focuses on how the state policy shaped
and was shaped by black protest. Instead of taking for granted pre-existing
identities, he argues “that it was shifting state policy that reinforced prior
black solidarity, providing the basis and the target against which protest
emerged. At stake is how codified identity shapes mobilization and forces
institutional change” (p. 24). In the conclusion, he closes explaining why
racial domination was abandoned, and how the nation-state building was not
only integral to race making but to the unmaking of legal racial domination.
Nation-state building was itself a process that needed exclusion to form its
basis. For him, this is a pervasive pattern.

Conclusion:

Racial domination created its own self-destruction. While it preserved white-

unity, on the long term it created black protest which threatened nation
stability. The economic and political coasts of segregation made it
unbearable for the U.S. and South Africa. Marx says: “With white nation-
state consolidation and reconciliation largely achieved, the imperative for
racial domination faded. But racial domination nonetheless remained in
place until black protest eclipsed intrawhite conflict. Again, the need for
stability asserted itself, but this time it forced greater official inclusion.
State power consolidated through racial domination was then turned on its
head to dismantle that same domination” (p. 271). However, the
consequences of racial domination remained, and racial prejudice did not
disappear. Black race-based mobilization decreased, and opened the space
for other channels of class-based mobilization. At the end, “the end of
apartheid and Jim Crow has left South Africa and the United States in a
situation in some ways similar to that of Brazil. In absence of formal
categories used for legal segregation, racial identity is somewhat diluted,
but it endures” (p. 273).