Racism, especially in the U.S., is a real social vice that has attracted noteworthy attention for many years. Different people living in America during different periods, especially from the nineteenth century, viewed racism as a social threat that needs concerted efforts to come to an end. Frederick Douglass and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento are some of the earliest scholars to write about racism to advocate for equality. Dr. King Jr. is famous for publicly declaring his dream of a U.S. free of racism in the future. However, the dreams of Dr. King Jr. and several other leaders wishing for a fair America remain a mere dream to date. Arguably, racism remains a critical issue in America because of the significant division and contradiction among its scholars and parties pushing to alleviate the vice in the U.S. communities. The present work uses Hooker’s book to correct the notion that real differences exist between racial accounts between Mexican and African American scholars.
Reading different scholarly accounts on racism often makes one perceive the issue as subjective. For example, there is a mistaken notion that racial reports from Mexican scholars and authors differ from those provided by African American authors. This aspect often leads to wars and further divisions among parties fighting against racism, thus, creating room for the vice to continue (Lopez and Candis). Such divisions, however, stand to decline or end courtesy of literary works like that of Juliet Hooker. Hooker is a political science scholar in the U.S. who is highly concerned with racial issues. The author’s 2017 book, for instance, seeks to shed light on the commonality and thematic similarities among four racist scholars and writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Hooker juxtaposes the works of two Africa-America and two Mexican race scholars to show their similarities in anti-racial concepts. Among the four scholars are Douglass and Vasconcelos, the first persons to write influential accounts on races. Douglass was African American, a former slave, and a brilliant individual who fought to become a powerful public figure and author. On the other hand, Vasconcelos was a witty Mexican politician, revolutionist, and philosopher with a deep interest in race and racial issues, just like Douglass. These racial scholars lived during different times, but their works exhibit noteworthy similarities. By covering the two scholars and others, Hooker succeeds in showing that the perceived differences between racism as viewed by Mexicans and African Americans are erroneous. He instead, proves that Douglass and Vasconcelos’ works on racism inform each other (Hooker 196). Consequently, the author insists that racism scholars and policymakers must understand the connections between the two seemingly antagonizing hemispheres of racism scholars, Mexicans, and African Americans, to work together.
Additionally, Hooker’s work discussion of Mexican racial accounts or experiences as exceptional is wrong and leads to mistaken thematic divisions that are not warranted. Using the example of Douglass and Vasconcelos, for instance, Hooker insists that both Mexicans and the African American scholars’ arguments target similar plights of racial minorities in the U.S. Hooker juxtaposition Vasconcelos’ ‘Cosmic Race’ theory to Douglass’s account of ethnicity-based segregation in the U.S. as a way of showing the similarities between the racial versions of the two Americas. Vasconcelos’ theory is a twentieth-century concept that finds its basis in Douglass’s ninetieth-century work on America’s racial disintegration (Hooker 37). Therefore, the two scholars’ works do a great work of informing each other for a clearer understanding of racism.
In Vasconcelos’ work, the scholar provides Latin America’s mestizaje communities with a lasting solution to America’s issues due to racism. Describing mestizaje’s effectiveness in providing social stability in the U.S. further makes Vasconcelos term America’s democracy as a weak one (Hooker 167). Despite their perceived differences, both Douglass and Vasconcelos’ works serve a similar purpose of challenging America’s racial policies to change to include all races. The similarities in the two scholars’ accounts, thus, prove Hookers’ correctness in making her argument. To clear the air, Hooker accepts that Latin Americans’ version of racism often tries to present the region’s account as superior to African Americans, leading to contradictions. Despite such a revelation, however, a deeper look into the arguments of both Mexican and African American authors on racism depicts noteworthy similarities.
Addressing the issue of hemispherical stands on racism also makes Hooker’s account genuine. The writer notes that the various dissimilarities between the two Americas concerning the subject matter (racial treatments and relations) are understandable by appreciating each writer’s experiences and period. According to Hooker, it is significantly impossible for Mexican scholars to have the same thoughts about racism as African Americans living in the U.S. due to their differences. Vasconcelos, for example, was a Mexican politician and revolutionist with significantly minimum exposure to U.S. racism. The author, therefore, wrote about the subject by simply relating the past racial accounts regarding the U.S. situation to the happenings in Latin America.
The ‘Cosmic Race’ model, for example, came to be through Vasconcelos’s study of the U.S. civil war and comparing it to the peace realized in the Latin American region where people appreciated their bi-racial origins. Hooker employs the hemispherical concept to argue that being in the U.S. or Latin America gave one a different experience of racism (45). The writer utilizes the examples of the various prolific writers on the racial subject to make her work more compelling. By utilizing the hemispherical argument, Hooker justifies her account that managing racial issues can only become a reality if different hemispheres choose to work together instead of contracting each other.
The present work agrees with Hooker’s account of racism significantly based on several elements. Hooker’s primary purpose is to show that divisions among African American and Latin Americans versions of racism are unnecessary. That is because the works of elite scholars from the two hemispheres relate significantly. Hooker provides real examples of how Douglass, an African American scholar covering the issue of racism in the U.S., relates and informs Vasconcelos, a twentieth-century Mexican scholar on racism. Better still, he compares the works of Douglass and Faustino Sarmiento to show their relationship as nineteenth-century accounts of racism. Comparing real works by prolific authors from the two divides gives his argument a significant holding. Based on her work, African American scholars handling the issue of racism must learn from the advances realized by Latin Americans for synergy. However, Hooker maintains that separation and contradiction in handling racial concerns make managing the social vice hard.
In conclusion, Hooker’s argument regarding the need to end philosophical wars between Latin Americans and African Americans on racism is compelling. The author refers to the two groups as ‘two’ Americas that oppose each other. To prove the need to end the unwanted rift and fights, Hooker uses accounts of Douglass, Vasconcelos, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos to show the outstanding similarities in concepts and ideas. As such, Hooker maintains that analyzing the various scholars’ accounts in conjunction instead of comparing them forms the beginning of getting their similarities.
Works Cited
Hooker, Juliet. Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Lopez, Bunyasi T, and Candis Smith W. Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter. New York University Press, 2019.