IV

Black and Spaniard Produce a Mulatto

General Comments

This combination marks the beginning of a new problem. Just as the Spaniard and Indian combination marks a return to racial purity, and an advance up the social ladder, this hybrid marks the beginning of a serious decline in genetic social status. For processes such as this one, we must be able to separate race and ethnicity. If race is presented as a variable independent of ethnicity, we can perhaps leave this problematic narrative behind us. Race could then be presented as a purely aesthetic choice, subject only to fashion trends. The market research here will study the potential of various aesthetic trajectories for race fashions. One tactical possibility are the traditional "color me beautiful" approach, matching skin color to the environment, or highlighting complimentary relationships of color among familial or friendship groups (i.e., community fashion). To maintain this possibility for constructing consumer markets, boundaries between the micro-markets will have to be hard and firm. A study of the relationship between skin pigment and fashion color coding is forthcoming.