Mestizaje shifted from degeneracy stigma into an idealized national identity

Evidence

More or less until abolition, mixed offspring were taken by Europeans largely as the source of degeneracy, in keeping with prevailing racial views. This view gave way slowly and awkwardly as mixed sexual intercourse and the resultant offspring multiplied, as social intercourse to some degree ameliorated fixed ideas of inferiority, and as mestizaje was increasingly elevated as acceptable, then appealing, and at last as a form – even the prevailing form – of national identity. While whites, blacks, and Indians were conceived as non-mixed, as not mestizo in the more generic meaning of the term, members of the latter two groups could be mobilized as materials for mestizaje, for mixing. Ultimately, blacks – like Indians – were projected to disappear into the general population. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1086

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the trajectory of race-mixing discourse across colonial Latin America; also relates to contemporaneous US debates that never embraced mestizaje as positive national identity — a useful hemispheric contrast.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to ‘On Sacrifice’ insofar as both trace the projection of a group to disappear into the general population as a form of social management.