Prelims
ISBN: 978-1-83608-447-1, eISBN: 978-1-83608-446-4
Publication date: 22 November 2024
Citation
Tate, S.A. (2024), "Prelims", Decolonising Sambo: Transculturation, Fungibility and Black and People of Colour Futurity, Second Edition (Critical Mixed Race Studies), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xii. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83608-446-420242011
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2025 Shirley Anne Tate
Half Title Page
Decolonising Sambo
SECOND EDITION
Series Page
CRITICAL MIXED RACE STUDIES
Edited by Shirley Anne Tate, University of Alberta, Canada
This series adopts a critical, interdisciplinary perspective to the study of mixed race. It will showcase ground-breaking research in this rapidly emerging field to publish work from early career researchers as well as established scholars. The series will publish short books, monographs and edited collections on a range of topics in relation to critical mixed race studies and include work from disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences including Sociology, History, Anthropology, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Literature, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies and Cultural Studies.
Editorial Board: Suki Ali, LSE, UK; Ginetta Candelario, Smith College, USA; Michele Elam, Stanford University, USA; Jin Haritaworn, University of Toronto, Canada; Rebecca King O’Riain, Maynooth University, Ireland; Ann Phoenix, Institute of Education, University of London, UK; Rhoda Reddock, University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
Previously Published:
Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and ‘Post-racial’ Resilience – Winner of the 2019 BSA Philip Abrams Prize
Jennifer Patrice Sims and Chinelo L. Njaka, Mixed-Race in the US and UK: Comparing the Past, Present and Future – Winner of the 2020 Mid-South Sociological Association Stanford M. Lyman Distinguished Book Award
Mengxi Pang, Family, Identity and Mixedness: Exploring ‘Mixed-Race’ Identities in Scotland
Jillian Paragg, Mixed Race Life Stories: The Multiracializing Gaze in Canada
Forthcoming:
Kavyta Kay, Dougla Poetics: Orientations of Indianness in Trinidad
Title Page
Decolonising Sambo: Transculturation, Fungibility and Black and People of Colour Futurity
SECOND EDITION
BY
SHIRLEY ANNE TATE
University of Alberta, Canada
United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China
Copyright Page
Emerald Publishing Limited
Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21–23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.
First edition 2020
Second edition 2025
Copyright © 2025 Shirley Anne Tate.
Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-83608-447-1 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-83608-446-4 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-83608-448-8 (Epub)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables | vii |
About the Author | ix |
Acknowledgements | xi |
Chapter 1. Introduction: Sambo’s Social Etymology and White European Settler Colonial Transculturation | 1 |
Chapter 2. Naming: The Fungibility of Subjection, Transculturation and Colonial Inferiority | 13 |
Chapter 3. Consuming Sambo and Necropolitical Love/Hate: Humour, Children’s Books and Sweets | 43 |
Chapter 4. Biopolitics and Racialising Assemblages: Australian Colonial Breeding Out/In and the Nation | 83 |
Chapter 5. Contemptible Commemoration: Racial Capitalism and Love/Care for Long-Dead Sambo | 109 |
Chapter 6. ‘Post-Race’ Racial Libidinal Economies: Markets and Contemptible Collectables | 131 |
Chapter 7. Racism’s Affects in Scandal’s Refusals: Transracial Intimacy, ‘Post-Race’ Power and the Love of the American People | 147 |
Chapter 8. Conclusion: Black/People of Colour Futurities – Decolonising Mind, Affect, Being and Power | 163 |
Bibliography | 181 |
Index | 191 |
List of Figures and Tables
Figures | ||
Chapter 2 | ||
Fig. 1. | Zambo-Verner Åkerman. Terracotta bust of Pierre Louis Alexandre. | 15 |
Fig. 2. | German Slave Traders’ Destinations and Numbers from 1641 to 1810. | 18 |
Chapter 3 | ||
Fig. 1. | The Chaperons. | 67 |
Fig. 2. | Little Black Sambo Book Cover. | 70 |
Fig. 3. | Little Black Sambo Animation Cartoon. | 71 |
Chapter 5 | ||
Fig. 1. | Inscription on the Headstone at Sambo’s Grave. | 111 |
Fig. 2. | Sambo’s Grave. | 115 |
Chapter 6 | ||
Fig. 1. | The Octoroon. | 140 |
Tables | ||
Chapter 2 | ||
Table 1. | Name Days and Their English Translations. | 19 |
Table 2. | A Return of Slaves in the Parish of St Ann in the Possession of Hamilton Brown 28 June 1817 (Jamaica SS). | 25 |
Table 3. | Excerpt from a Schedule for Movement of Enslaved People Across the Caribbean. | 28 |
Table 4. | Excerpt of the List of Slaves of York Estate (Jamaica), 1 January 1820. | 29 |
Table 5. | sambo as a Colour Category in the Anglophone Caribbean. | 30 |
Table 6. | The ‘zambo Variety’ Through Racialising Parentage. | 31 |
Chapter 3 | ||
Table 1. | sambo Archive in Prairie Newspapers (Peel’s Prairie Provinces Newspapers – Examples). | 54 |
About the Author
Shirley Anne Tate is Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Feminism and Intersectionality at the University of Alberta, Canada, and Honorary Professor, Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Her research has been published in various journals and she has authored several books, including From Post-Intersectionality to Black Decolonial Feminism: Black Skin Affections (2023), and co-edited several collections, including The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies (2024).
Acknowledgements
Firstly, ‘thank you’ to my family for all of their love and support while I completed this book – Encarna, Damian, Soraya, Jenna, Tevian, Lachlan, Arion and Nolan. I also want to thank my sister QT for caring for our mother which gives me the space to do the work.
I want to thank the students in my 2019 course in the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki for sharing their knowledge on sambo within their contexts. This gave me the impetus I needed to feel that my ideas on sambo as global were ok.
I want to thank Macarena González Ulloa for sharing her photo-text on colonialism in Hamburg with me. This encouraged me to look at Germany’s involvement in the slave trade and white settler colonialism. My thanks also go to Beverley Lemire for the coffee in Edmonton and the tip that I should look at Sweden’s role in enslavement and writing on marble sculptures and racism.
Many thanks to the librarians in the West India Reading Room, Alma Jordan Library, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago, for their help with the archival work on sambo on Caribbean slave plantations. I would also like to thank the archivists in ‘El Archivo de Indias’ in Seville, Spain, for their patience and help in tracking zambo in the Spanish colonial archives. My thanks also go to the library at Nova Southeastern University, Florida, that gave me access for archival work and to Andrea Shaw for enabling this access. My thanks to my graduate research assistant, Manzah-Kyentoh Yankey, for doing the research on blackface in Canada.
My thanks to the Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University, UK, for funding some of my archival work. I really do appreciate this, as without it the book would not have emerged. Thank you to my colleague Heather Paul, who encouraged me to finish the book when she told me that her constant response to anti-Black racism over the years had to be that she was ‘not that little boy in the blue shorts and red shirt with the green umbrella!’
Finally, my thanks to the Canada Research Chair Programme for the funding that made this 2nd edition possible.
- Prelims
- Chapter 1. Introduction: Sambo's Social Etymology and White European Settler Colonial Transculturation
- Chapter 2. Naming: The Fungibility of Subjection, Transculturation and Colonial Inferiority
- Chapter 3. Consuming Sambo and Necropolitical Love/Hate: Humour, Children's Books and Sweets
- Chapter 4. Biopolitics and Racialising Assemblages: Australian Colonial Breeding Out/In and the Nation
- Chapter 5. Contemptible Commemoration: Racial Capitalism and Love/Care for Long-Dead Sambo
- Chapter 6. ‘Post-Race’ Racial Libidinal Economies: Markets and Contemptible Collectables
- Chapter 7. Racism's Affects in Scandal's Refusals: Transracial Intimacy, ‘Post-Race’ Power and the Love of the American People
- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Black/People of Colour Futurities – Decolonising Mind, Affect, Being and Power
- Bibliography
- Index