AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST AND THE CARIBBEAN : ON MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS THROUGHOUT HISTORY

The tumultuous world history regarding racial relations took a new turn in 1492 for marked by the invasion of the Americas by European colonizers. Ever since, the descendants of the enslaved Africans who had been brought to the New World by force were not only taken away from their African roots but also submitted to the horrific racial politics put in place to belittle them even more. The world has since been divided in black or white. The people who belonged to lineages prior to 1492 would thus only become colors. Yet, if most modern black scholars often focus on the brutality experienced by the Africans, little work has been done to situate the place of their mixed white descendants classified as "black". Due to the One Drop Rule, millions of mixed white individuals have been wrongly classified as "black" or "white" when the brutality of colonialism saw the emergence of a new category of people who are neither "white" or "black" but multiracial Whites, who also happen to descend from Africans. This essay based upon history and social studies is an exploration of the perception of whiteness in North Africa, the Caribbean, Africa and the West. It also proves to be an argument in support of the recognition of a white multiracial category. The book also embraces the idea that the appreciation of one's identity can only be efficient if one evaluates identity through lineages before the skin color, the latter not being a valid argument of identity.