It’s More Complex than 'Black' and 'White': Symbolic Boundaries of Mixedness in the Moroccan Context

• Catherine Therrien ^[1]
  1. [1] Al Akhawayn University

     Al Akhawayn University

     Marruecos

     
• Localización: Hesperis Tamuda, ISSN 0018-1005, Nº. 55, 3, 2020, págs. 275-304
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • When an outsider enters a group, social cohesion comes into play and a system of social control is deployed to preserve the group identity. Mixedness corresponds to a transgression of endogamous social norms whether in terms of nationality, ethnicity, race, and/or religion. If social cohesion, in Morocco, is first and foremost linked to the majority religion ‒ Islam – then this article shows that other lines of difference significantly contribute to delimitating the symbolic boundaries of the group identity. Based on 15 years of ethnographic fieldwork among mixed families and migrants in Morocco, this article argues that sharing the same religion is not automatically an element of rapprochement, and that racial categories are difficult symbolic boundaries to overcome in the Moroccan context where “whiteness” is generally perceived as more positive than “blackness.” The narratives collected indicate however, that social perception is more complex than the black/white binary classification and that race is a “contextual phenomenon”that intersects with social class and gender to draw complex lines of difference between “us” and “them.” If the fieldwork reflects unequal North/South power relationships, it also shows that mixed families have the capacity to positively transform their experience of mixedness and thus to reverse these societal power relations.