ABSTRACT
Race, an ideological imperative that ranks people according to Eurocentric norms, imposes a specific kind of order on the creative chaos of identity. Racial hierarchies were created in the wake of the expansion of capitalism and the political systems required to sustain markets. States competing for scarce resources exerted their control over land and natural resources and the cultural assets of communities. The migrations of peoples between states created multiple narratives of belonging and conflicting visions of identity. Mythologies, facts, theories, scholarly frameworks, fantasies, and desires inflect the history of a place. These competing historical narratives impede our ability to analyze how racial ideologies function in a particular place or historical moment.
