Dystopias are reactionary!

[Travis B.]

countries colonized by the spanish have big chunks of their populations made up of mestizos, whereas there ended up being much less mestizaje north of mexico: i know it's complicated cause a lof of the southern us used to be mexico, but i think the pattern is quite clear. where anglos colonized they seem to have mostly killed and displaced, engaging in a lot of segregation, whereas where iberians colonized there are now populations mostly descended from both enslaved people groups and their enslavers. they seem to have mostly enslaved and interbred.

It's not a matter of nationalities, but of density.

The Spanish
-- exterminated like mofos in the Caribbean and in Patagonia
-- took over large dense native empires in Mexico and Peru

The English
-- exterminated like mofos in the North America
-- took over large dense native kingdoms in India and Africa

In both cases with an asterisk on "exterminated"; many natives survived the guns and germs.

And if anything, the British didn't kill nearly as much of the native population in India or Africa (even though there were many avoidable famines in British India) as Europeans of any sort in the Americas for the simple reason that the populations there were already exposed pre-colonization to the same diseases the British brought with them.

Also disease did kill a very good percentage of the population of Mexico and Peru; it just happens that the population was dense enough pre-colonization that there were still plenty of survivors in terms of absolute numbers such that they didn't get displaced by the colonizers afterwards.

[Torco]

i don't think so: chile, argentina, uruguay, brazil, colombia, venezuela... there wasn't dense empires for the spaniards to conquer in those countries, and still they all ended up with either a big mestizo population, or an overwhelmingly majority mestizo population (basically as mestizo as mexico or peru): meanwhile, in not-mexico-north-america, these mestizos are rare to non-existent and current populations are broadly either descended from white settlers or imported slaves... few are, say, navajo-whites or lakhota-whites the way most chileans are mapuche-spaniard or diaguita-spaniard, the way so many paraguayans are guarani-spaniard, etcetera. exceptions exist, of course, the metis and the cajuns: both, interestingly, in holdings of the french, who are perhaps more like iberians than like anglos. for the most part, you look at the us and canada and you see the result of a process of settling and displacement, not of interbreeding.

it could be that there wasn't enough native americans in the states and canada for mestizaje to occur... but then again, the pampas of argentina are famously barren, and you still got mestizaje. there can't have been many people living in the atacama desert, and you still get mestizaje. for my money, it looks more like anglos were into exterminate-and-replace more than into, well, conquer-and-rape... this isn't a moral case like oh, spaniards were so much more moral than anglo after all.

[zompist]

i don't think so: chile, argentina, uruguay, brazil, colombia, venezuela... there wasn't dense empires for the spaniards to conquer in those countries, and still they all ended up with either a big mestizo population, or an overwhelmingly majority mestizo population (basically as mestizo as mexico or peru): meanwhile, in not-mexico-north-america, these mestizos are rare to non-existent and current populations are broadly either descended from white settlers or imported slaves...

This seems to be a matter of self-image rather than genetics. E.g. if you ask Brazilians their race, as in the 2010 census, you get 48% Europen, 7.6% African, 1%. Asian, 0.4% indigenous, and 43% "pardo", basically multiracial.

But if you look at genetics, you get a very different picture; all these people are mixed, but mostly European. E.g. in Rio de Janeiro:

* "Whites" are 86% European, 7% African, 7% Amerindian
* "Pardos" are 68% European, 24% African, 8% Amerindian
* "Blacks" are 42% European, 51% African, 7% Amerindian

Similar results in other cities (lower down the page), though in Belém, which is actually in the Amazon, the Amerindian percentage is much higher. Yet if you ask the pardos, they think they are 1/3 of each race.

This looks a lot more like the US/Canada than like Mexico/Peru: the racial origins of the people are overwhelmingly white + Black. E.g. about 5% of Canadians are Native. (Much less in the US, though people like to claim Native ancestry when they actually have none.)

[Torco]

fair enough. so would you say most major ethnic self-identification groups in the us and canada are more or less than 7-8% amerindian by genetics? native american is i think the term north of mexico, but still.

also, brazil may be special here: I'm a lot more versed in the hispanic bit of south america than I am about the lusos to the northeast and here in chile estimates of how much indigenous genetics we have generally orbit 0.4, 0.2 for argentinians, 0.3 for colombians, more than 0.5 for peruvians and bolivians.

quantums of blood aside, mestizaje is a broader process than just genetic mixture: one involving cultural and religious syncretism, linguistic admixture and all the rest of it. and as far as I know, it did not happen in the us and canada (mentioned exceptions aside). that's the core point: do you disagree ?

[zompist]

quantums of blood aside, mestizaje is a broader process than just genetic mixture: one involving cultural and religious syncretism, linguistic admixture and all the rest of it. and as far as I know, it did not happen in the us and canada (mentioned exceptions aside). that's the core point: do you disagree ?

I don't know-- I think it depends on the period. Early on there was a lot of cultural interchange-- people knew Native Americans, traded and went to war with them. Graeber & Wengrow maintain, convincing I think, that natives' reactions to Europeans was highly influential on this sudden hankering for freedom and egalitarianism that we find in the 1700s. If you read Mark Twain (1800s), it's clear that he knows plenty of Native Americans, though he doesn't think highly of them. Even in the last century people liked to watch movies about Natives and gave their camps pseudo-Indian names. As I noted, a lot of Americans think they have Native descent when they don't. Today, after new waves of immigration, Natives tend to be almost invisible, except in the West. But they're not forgotten either-- e.g. if you go to Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, you not only meet white people playing settler roles (for tourism/education), but actual Wampanoag explaining their own culture.

This doesn't strike me a very different from Brazil. Outside cuisine and place names, I don't think there's much indigenous culture in the Brazilian mix... far less than African. (Not true of Amazonia itself; I haven't been that far inland.)

Peru is very different, as I don't need to tell you. You had Incas in Chile, so I expect you'd get a much stronger mixing.

[Raphael]

Today, after new waves of immigration, Natives tend to be almost invisible, except in the West.

Hm, I'm kind of curious how partially indigenous* migrants from Latin America and their descendants fit into this. Do they and the "local" indigenous people see each other as having any kinds of special bonds? Do outsiders see those two groups as similar?

*I'm a bit reluctant to use the traditional Spanish term for them because I have no idea whether anyone sees that term as a slur these days.

[Travis B.]

Today, after new waves of immigration, Natives tend to be almost invisible, except in the West.

Hm, I'm kind of curious how partially indigenous* migrants from Latin America and their descendants fit into this. Do they and the "local" indigenous people see each other as having any kinds of special bonds? Do outsiders see those two groups as similar?

*I'm a bit reluctant to use the traditional Spanish term for them because I have no idea whether anyone sees that term as a slur these days.

The standard term for partially indigenous people in Latin America is Mestizos, and no, it is not a slur.

[Torco]

I don't know-- I think it depends on the period. Early on there was a lot of cultural interchange-- people knew Native Americans, traded and went to war with them. Graeber & Wengrow maintain, convincing I think, that natives' reactions to Europeans was highly influential on this sudden hankering for freedom and egalitarianism that we find in the 1700s. If you read Mark Twain (1800s), it's clear that he knows plenty of Native Americans, though he doesn't think highly of them. Even in the last century people liked to watch movies about Natives and gave their camps pseudo-Indian names. As I noted, a lot of Americans think they have Native descent when they don't. Today, after new waves of immigration, Natives tend to be almost invisible, except in the West. But they're not forgotten either-- e.g. if you go to Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, you not only meet white people playing settler roles (for tourism/education), but actual Wampanoag explaining their own culture.

This doesn't strike me a very different from Brazil. Outside cuisine and place names, I don't think there's much indigenous culture in the Brazilian mix... far less than African. (Not true of Amazonia itself; I haven't been that far inland.)

Peru is very different, as I don't need to tell you. You had Incas in Chile, so I expect you'd get a much stronger mixing.

brazil (and moreso the rest of america cismexicana) is interestingly different from the america transmexicana in that in brazil, even if it is particularly less mestizo, there's people who will tell you that they're this new thing, pardo. same as with south africa's coloureds, i think? . this may or may not have a genetic basis, but it almost certainly is underlied by real experiences of ethnic intermingling... like, even if someone is only 5% indigenous by genes, if they're the son of whites who grew up in a majority pardo town and they feel pardo on account of that, well, that means that there's whites living near indians, or the mixed descendents of indians, and dancing indian songs and food with a reasonably strong indian taste and whatnot. even if spaniards contributed more genes to the mestizos of today, these people sing music that's influenced by native cultures, worship their catholic sains in ways influenced by native religiosity, speak spanish with a lot of terms borrowed from native languages... the cultural blend was very real. And peru is not that weird in latin america.... bolivia is probably even more indigenous, but the norm for latin americans is being mixed, not white. maybe with few indian gran-gran-grampas, like me, maybe with a lot of indian gran-gran-grampas.

and chile only got incas for a short time and not that far south. a lot of our dialect comes from quechua, sure, but another lot (maybe about as much of it) comes from mapuche. core lexicon too, body parts, forms of political resistence, names for foods... the kind of thing your mother tells you about (the kind of thing your dad tells you about we tend to refer to with more spanish words, as can be imagined). as I understand it, this is also normal in the spanish speaking bit of latin america.

[jcb]

i don't think so: chile, argentina, uruguay, brazil, colombia, venezuela... there wasn't dense empires for the spaniards to conquer in those countries, and still they all ended up with either a big mestizo population, or an overwhelmingly majority mestizo population (basically as mestizo as mexico or peru): meanwhile, in not-mexico-north-america, these mestizos are rare to non-existent and current populations are broadly either descended from white settlers or imported slaves... few are, say, navajo-whites or lakhota-whites the way most chileans are mapuche-spaniard or diaguita-spaniard, the way so many paraguayans are guarani-spaniard, etcetera. exceptions exist, of course, the metis and the cajuns: both, interestingly, in holdings of the french, who are perhaps more like iberians than like anglos. for the most part, you look at the us and canada and you see the result of a process of settling and displacement, not of interbreeding.

Note that in not-Mexico North America, few people that call themselves Native (Americans) are actually 100% Native. Most are actually what you would call "mestizos" that have both Native and White blood. But yes, most people that call themselves "White" lack Native blood.

[Torco]

with almost all ethnic groups it is true that people who are that group are not genetically 100% that group. but just like a person can be fully spanish while having some moor, some french, some sephardic jew and some colombian in their family tree, so can a person be mapuche even if they have a couple of spanish grampas.

for most of the world, ethnicity is not about quanta of blood, or at least not only or mainly about it (though we had a system of that in colonial times, distinguishing between half-indian half-black, half-indian half-peninsular, and whetever else). sure, physical traits are a part of it, but no, if one-grandma-from-seville-jorgito grows up speaking nahuatl in a nahuatl village, raised by nahuatl old ladies, speaks spanish as a second language etcetera he's not very meaningfully "mestizo", except inasmuch as nahuatl culture itself has been extensively influenced by colonization etcetera. a person can be mapuche while having some ancestry from spain or from peru, they're not "partially mapuche" (or at least not on account of that, again, if they grow up in a lof and blabla). I don't think many native people treat ethnicity with this focus on racial purity.

[zompist]

for most of the world, ethnicity is not about quanta of blood, or at least not only or mainly about it (though we had a system of that in colonial times, distinguishing between half-indian half-black, half-indian half-peninsular, and whetever else). sure, physical traits are a part of it, but no, if one-grandma-from-seville-jorgito grows up speaking nahuatl in a nahuatl village, raised by nahuatl old ladies, speaks spanish as a second language etcetera he's not very meaningfully "mestizo", except inasmuch as nahuatl culture itself has been extensively influenced by colonization etcetera. a person can be mapuche while having some ancestry from spain or from peru, they're not "partially mapuche" (or at least not on account of that, again, if they grow up in a lof and blabla). I don't think many native people treat ethnicity with this focus on racial purity.

I think you'd be interested in the complicated history of the Black Seminoles and the Cherokee Freedmen. In the US and Canada, each tribe has its own membership rules, and some of them are very much based on racial purity.

Race is a social construct, but that inevitably means a lot of weird edge cases and social positioning. Or to be more blunt, the boundaries of a race are themselves affected by racism, and that's just as true in Latin America as in the US/Canada.

[Raphael]

I think you'd be interested in the complicated history of the Black Seminoles and the Cherokee Freedmen.

Editing note: you accidentally linked twice to the Black Seminoles. The article on the Cherokee Freedmen is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Freedmen

[zompist]

Thanks! Fixed in the original post too.

[WeepingElf]

Race is a social construct, but that inevitably means a lot of weird edge cases and social positioning. Or to be more blunt, the boundaries of a race are themselves affected by racism, and that's just as true in Latin America as in the US/Canada.

Yep. It cannot be said often enough: Race is a social construct. I am going to address this matter, among other things, in my ongoing novel-writing project about my main conculture, the Elves. Those people have been in hiding for centuries, which includes a policy of not mixing with other people, and are now heavily inbred, to the point that there are frequent miscarriages and other health problems. There is a faction among them who opine that now in the 21st century, the Elves should come out of the Hiding. One reason, among others (such as the realization that they could do more about the current crisis in the open than in the Hiding), is that the "race" needs fresh DNA from the outside world in order to avoid further degeneration.

[jcb]

for most of the world, ethnicity is not about quanta of blood, or at least not only or mainly about it (though we had a system of that in colonial times, distinguishing between half-indian half-black, half-indian half-peninsular, and whetever else). sure, physical traits are a part of it, but no, if one-grandma-from-seville-jorgito grows up speaking nahuatl in a nahuatl village, raised by nahuatl old ladies, speaks spanish as a second language etcetera he's not very meaningfully "mestizo", except inasmuch as nahuatl culture itself has been extensively influenced by colonization etcetera. a person can be mapuche while having some ancestry from spain or from peru, they're not "partially mapuche" (or at least not on account of that, again, if they grow up in a lof and blabla). I don't think many native people treat ethnicity with this focus on racial purity.

Indeed. To give an example from America, I know two men, both of whom are part Native and part White, and both pass for White. One grew up in poverty on a reservation surrounded by Natives (and still has family there), and the other grew up in comfort in a suburb surrounded by Whites. The former identifies as Native, the latter as White.

[WeepingElf]

To get back to the original topic, writing dystopias is easy in these times - just extrapolate current trends linearly, and you get fascist dictatorships in Western Europe, a new world war, and climate chaos, the first two of these likely within 10 years from now. Writing a plausible future history in which all that doesn't happen seems more difficult, but I don't think it doesn't work. History doesn't proceed linearly, bad developments usually invoke counter-action, and there are indeed signs of hope in these dark times. There is a growing number of people who feel that something can and should be done about all this. And one thing one can do is write a plausible future history which shows how we can overcome the crisis! Solutions exist!

[rotting bones]

To get back to the original topic, writing dystopias is easy in these times - just extrapolate current trends linearly, and you get fascist dictatorships in Western Europe, a new world war, and climate chaos, the first two of these likely within 10 years from now. Writing a plausible future history in which all that doesn't happen seems more difficult, but I don't think it doesn't work. History doesn't proceed linearly, bad developments usually invoke counter-action, and there are indeed signs of hope in these dark times. There is a growing number of people who feel that something can and should be done about all this. And one thing one can do is write a plausible future history which shows how we can overcome the crisis! Solutions exist!

What do you think of Ministry for the Future? It shows a dark reality to create a sense of urgency, but discusses many responses to it.

[WeepingElf]

To get back to the original topic, writing dystopias is easy in these times - just extrapolate current trends linearly, and you get fascist dictatorships in Western Europe, a new world war, and climate chaos, the first two of these likely within 10 years from now. Writing a plausible future history in which all that doesn't happen seems more difficult, but I don't think it doesn't work. History doesn't proceed linearly, bad developments usually invoke counter-action, and there are indeed signs of hope in these dark times. There is a growing number of people who feel that something can and should be done about all this. And one thing one can do is write a plausible future history which shows how we can overcome the crisis! Solutions exist!

What do you think of Ministry for the Future? It shows a dark reality to create a sense of urgency, but discusses many responses to it.

It is one of the better novels I know. Indeed, I like it.

[rotting bones]

It is one of the better novels I know. Indeed, I like it.

Of the novels you've seen, which one is the best for the future in your opinion?

[WeepingElf]

It is one of the better novels I know. Indeed, I like it.

Of the novels you've seen, which one is the best for the future in your opinion?

Indeed, Ministry for the Future is IMHO the best.