Cervantes’ sympathetic morisca shows racialization without inherent-inferiority claims

Evidence

One thinks of the way that in Don Quixote Cervantes showed Sancho Panza as very sympathetic to his old Morisco neighbor Ricote. Cervantes had Ricote reenter the country under the guise of being a German pilgrim. One rather gathers that Ricote was going to leave again to join his wife and daughter, who were in Algiers. But these womenfolk are represented as being fundamentally Christian, so that one wonders about his real intentions. The name Ricote, which in Don Quixote is a personal name, must surely have been intended to recall the place name of the Ricote Valley, Val de Ricote. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1535 (#expands, via linked claim)

Rather, it is best to see race as always a medium by which difference is represented and otherness produced, so that contingent attributes such as skin color are transformed into supposedly essential bases for identities, group belonging and exclusion, social privileges and burdens, political rights and disenfranchisements. … We are pointing to the fact that race is fabricated, socially made and politically manipulated (Giroux, 1993; Sears, Sidanius, and Bobo, 2000). Blackness and whiteness, “colored” or “mestizaje” accordingly are not essential characteristics of human beings but defined by sociohistorical conditions and political struggles over their valence and meaning, referents and extension. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 106 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cervantes portrayed expelled moriscos sympathetically during mass expulsion; Cervantes could sympathize with an expelled morisca while denouncing Muslim lands; Cervantes encoded sympathy for expelled Moriscos into Don Quixote — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1535 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Cervantes encoded sympathy for expelled Moriscos into Don Quixote #expands (0.92) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1535
• Race is a medium that transforms contingent attributes into supposed essences #complicates (0.76) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 106