811616

book-review2019
FER0010.1177/0141778918811616Feminist Reviewbook review

book review

Feminist Review

the color of love: racial

Issue 121, 94­–95
© 2019 The Author(s)
Article reuse guidelines:

features, stigma, and sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0141778918811616
https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778918811616
www.feministreview.com

socialization in black
Brazilian families

Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2015, 328pp., ISBN: 978-1-4773-0788-5, $29.95 (Pbk)

Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman explores how Afro-Brazilian families in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil enact practices that
resist and reproduce racism and racial hierarchies. Hordge-Freeman uses data gathered through 116 in-depth
interviews and participant observation over a 14-month period with poor and working-class black families to make
her argument that, ‘all resources, even love and affection, are symbolic and are unequally distributed, most often
(though not always) in ways that benefit family members who most closely approximate whiteness’ (p. 5). To the field
of study on race and racism in Brazil, Hordge-Freeman contributes a nuanced understanding of the role of the family
and kinship relations in socialising Brazilians about race.

Afro-Brazilians must navigate a racially unequal social terrain. Black Brazilians earn less money, have unequal access
to education and live amidst more precarious and marginal conditions than the white population. They also contend
with aesthetic hierarchies that deem features associated with blackness, such as wide noses, coarse hair and full lips,
as less attractive and less desirable. Hordge-Freeman attends very closely to the gendered dynamics of how racial
appearance affects the distribution of love, affection and emotion within families. Black families can be comprised
of family members that vary in colour and facial features. Black mothers are held accountable for producing racially
desirable babies, or babies who appear as close to whiteness as possible. For example, if women continue to give birth
to dark-skinned babies, they are said to have a ‘dirty womb’, ‘particularly for women who are perceived to have the
possibility of having a lighter child because one person in the couple is lighter’ (p. 39). If mothers do not give birth to
racially desirable babies, some turn to an array of ‘racial rituals’ to produce ‘whiter’ features. Hordge-Freeman
contributes the term ‘racial rituals’ to describe ‘the practices that families use to police and modify one’s racial
appearance’ (p. 7). She documents practices such as pinching babies’ noses in the hopes of thinning them amidst an
array of other actions to which mothers may turn to change their children’s appearance.

Black women also face unequal opportunities in the marriage market. Again, aesthetics come into play where, ‘black
women with afro-textured hair and African features, are not considered marriageable partners unless they can
compensate for this with other characteristics, such as Americanness or wealth’ (p. 57). Generally, family members
are encouraged to marry someone lighter than themselves, which reflects ideals of ‘advancing or cleaning the race’ by
achieving a phenotype closer to white.
 book review    121  95

While some black families perpetuate racial hierarchies, others challenge them. Hordge-Freeman includes stories of
transgressive families who teach their children about racism and instill in them feelings of pride in being black. Some
of them use humour to confront the racially unequal terrain, while others engage in social activism to bring resources
to their communities. One wonders how these families were able to produce this perspective in an environment that
devalues blackness. Hordge-Freeman does not address how these families were able to break from the practices of
devaluing blackness that other families perpetuate, which would have been an interesting addition.

This differential treatment within black families has real stakes for people’s lives. A concept that will stay with me is
Hordge-Freeman’s idea of affective capital. She explains that ‘positive emotions generated from affirming social
interactions within and outside families can generate personal resources linked to greater creativity, resilience, and
emotional well-being’ (p. 5). Yet, because love and affection can be distributed along racial lines, those family
members who are phenotypically closer to black may have experiences in their families that can be detrimental to their
sense of self and their feelings of belonging. In recounting experiences of parents abandoning their darker children and
treating them worse than their lighter children, Hordge-Freeman finds that, ‘Unequal access to these positive emotions
and experiences decreases self-confidence, increases personal insecurity, and engenders emotional boundaries that
can hinder one’s life’ (p. 131). This is another locus through which racism can detrimentally affect a black person’s
ability to advance through life and which presents another, previously unacknowledged, form of inequality.

Hordge-Freeman’s book is ethnographically rich and her concepts and examples are grounded in the statements of her
research subjects. The extensive use of stories and narratives makes the book well-suited for the undergraduate
classroom. Additionally, the book would be of interest to scholars of family studies, African diaspora studies and
women’s and gender studies. The Color of Love is an important addition to studies on race, blackness and inequality in
Brazil, as well as to studies on black families. Research on black families has focused on the United States, and
Hordge-Freeman offers a transnational perspective that brings Afro-Brazilians into the picture.

Reighan Gillam
University of Southern California