Liberal, Libertario, Libertino

Talvez um dos casos mais emblemáticos da importância cultural de raça e dos problemas da identificação racial.

In 1982-83, Susie Guillory Phipps unsuccessfully sued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records to change her racial classification from black to white. The descendant of an eighteenth-century white planter and a black slave, Phipps was designated as "black" in her birth certificate in accordance with a 1970 state law which declared anyone with at least one-thirty-second "Negro blood" to be black. The legal battle raised intriguing questions about the concept of race, its meaning in contemporary society, and its use (and abuse) in public policy. Assistant Attorney General Ron Davis defended the law by pointing out that some type of racial classification was necessary to comply with federal record-keeping requirements and to facilitate programs for the prevention of genetic diseases. Phipp's attorney, Brian Begue, argued that the assignment of racial categories on birth certificates was unconstitutional and that the one-thirty-second designation was inaccurate. He called on a retired Tulane University professor who cited research indicating that most whites have one-twentieth "Negro" ancestry. In the end, Phipps lost. The court upheld a state law which quantified racial identity, and in so doing affirmed the legality of assigning individuals to specific racial groupings.

Fonte: Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s, de Michael Omi and Howard Winant (NY: Routledge, 1986)

O texto continua abaixo da publicidade

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In what was perhaps the most ridiculous example of racial pigeonholing, Louisiana ordained that anyone with a "trace" of black ancestry would be classified as black. Then, in an ostensibly "humane" 1970 reform, it enacted the "one thirty-second rule," by which anyone with a single black great-great-great-great-grandparent and 31 white great-great-great-great-grandparents was legally black. That regulation went unchallenged until Susie Guillory Phipps, the wife of a wealthy seafood importer who had always considered herself white, got a look at her birth certificate when applying for a passport and discovered that according to the state, she was black. In 1982 she sued the state, which hired a genealogist to delve into Phipps' ancestry. He dug up, among other ancestors, Phipps' great-great-great-great- grandmother--the black mistress of an Alabama plantation owner back in 1760--and concluded that Phipps was precisely three thirty-seconds black. The preposterous law stayed on the books until 1983.

Fonte: Revista Time, Race: I'm Just Who I Am

Em uma nota tão curta, não é interessante que tenham feito questão de mencionar que ela era esposa de um rico importador de frutos do mar? Se morasse em um conjunto habitacional, a notícia seria outra, não?

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A história completa, em cada detalhe, pode ser encontrada no site French Creoles e vale muito a pena ser lida com cuidado: The Susie Guillory Phipps Case

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E eu pergunto: o que é mais chocante?

1 - Que Phipps tenha insistido tanto para mudar uma palavrinha em sua certidão de nascimento - palavra essa que não fazia, nem nunca tinha feito, nenhuma diferença na sua vida?

2 - Que o Estado da Louisiana tenha ativamente lutado contra ela na justiça - ao invés de simplesmente mudar a palavrinha-que-não-fazia-diferença e pronto?

3 - Que, depois de tudo isso, Phipps tenha perdido?

Eu, por exemplo, cresci me auto-identificando e sendo identificado como branco entre a elite do Rio de Janeiro. Mas cheguei nos EUA e, subitamente, virei hispânico. Além disso, sempre que toco no assunto, me aparece um curitibano pra dizer que sou preto.

Olha minhas rugas de preocupação.

(Para quem não conhece, eis aqui minha cara. Você decide o que eu sou. Faça questão de mandar um email me contando sua opinião. Eu quero MUITO saber, hein!)

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Alguns livros sobre Nova Orleans e o furacão Katrina: Zeitoun // Why New Orleans Matters // Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New Orleans