The Right to Difference: Explaining Colombia’s Shift from Color Blindness to the Law of Black Communities

Race, color, and income inequality across the Americas

“…In the last two decades Latin American policymakers, census bureaus, and scholars of inequality are turning to the more categorical language of race (Santos 2005;Bailey 2008;Paschel 2010;Loveman 2014). At the same time the United States has adopted mixed-race classification and has grown ever more diverse through immigration.…”

The social construction of Afro-descendant rights in Colombia

“…In Latin America, outside of the Brazilian context, the ideology of mestizaje was based on a binary between white European and indigenous peoples, promoting romantic celebration of an indigenous past, while excluding Afro-descendants (Paschel 2010;Wade 1997). This 'indigenous inclusion, black exclusion' (Hooker 2005) translated to a lack of policies and legislation recognising the existence and rights of Afro-descendants.…”

“…2 Some Afro-Colombian civil society organisations point out that presenting a case based on racial discrimination can have little audience, while emphasising cultural difference is more effective (Wade 2009;Paschel 2010).…”

“…However, Restrepo (2013) argues that the lead up to the drafting of the Constitution involved an 'ethnicisation' of Afro-descendant claims in which organisations, mainly from the rural, Pacific region of the country had to emphasise demands for cultural, territorial and identity rights. During the actual drafting of the Constitution no Afro-descendant organisations were included in the Constitutional Committee and their interests were therefore represented by two indigenous participants and a number of anthropologists who also tended to take an ethnic rights approach (Wade 2009;Paschel 2010).…”

“…From a CRT perspective, the ethnic rights focus 'de-racialises' (Paschel 2010) Afro-descendant rights. Law 70 contains only one mention of racism (article 33) and does not specify 'any concrete proposal, sanctioning of racist acts, or clear policies' to address racism (Paschel 2010). Therefore the framework effectively denies the role that structural racism plays in the human rights violations and exclusion of Afro-Colombians.…”