The Changing Duality of Race, Martha Hodes

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Recommended: Social constructions of race

This week’s articles carry a couple related, if not common, themes of imagined, if not artificial, constructs of race and identity. Martha Hodes’ article, “The mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” offers a narrative based examination of the malleable terms on which race was defined. To accomplish this she examines the story of Eunice Connolly and her family and social life as a window into understanding the changing dimensions of race in nineteenth-century America and the Caribbean, specifically New England and Grand Cayman. While Hodes’ article examines the construction of race in the Americas, Ali A. Mazrui’s piece, “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Sai, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond,” looks at the construction of African identity. Although different in geographic loci, the two articles similarly examine the shaping influences of race and identity and the power held in ‘the Other’ to those ends. Hodes article places itself in the theoretical framing of Fields, Holt, and Stoler to argue “the scrutiny of day-to-day lives demonstrates not only the mutability of race but also, and with equal force, the abiding power of race in local settings.” By examining Eunice’s day-to-day experience, Hodes seeks to show how even though the identifiability of race may change from place-to-place and period-to-period, the power of race to effect lives is not challenged. Eunice’s story is an interesting one to highlight the changing nature of race construction. After the death of Eunice’s first husband, she found herself forced to do work she previously saw as work of black women. This helps strengthen Hodes’ argument of the power of race because just as Eunice was forced to work these jobs to survive, so... ... middle of paper ... ...mean to belittle the lasting legacy of racism, but given these examples of 'Other,' beyond the black/white dichotomy, that still hold lasting legacies, perhaps race is simply another form of identity creation that has had long lasting consequences. I believe these comments would be accepted by the author read this week with the caveat that there are never really “two sides of a coin,” but multiple three dimensional sides. It is however, the construction of dichotomies like these that Hodes would argue holds the power within the descriptions. Works Cited Hodes, Martha. "The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story." The American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (February 2003): 84-118. Mazrui, Ali A. "The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond." Research in African Literatures 36, no. 3 (Autumn 2005): 68-82.

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