Former attorney Jan French earns doctorate in anthropology to study how law can change identity
Anthropology professor Jan French’s first book Becoming Black or Indian: Legalizing Identities in Brazil’s Northeast is in some ways a far cry from the work she spent the first half of her life doing—litigation for a large law firm where she was well on her way to making partner. But as her story unfolds, the two fields seem so intricately woven that we wonder why it took this long for a lawyer/anthropologist to make her way to the quietest corners of Northeast Brazil.
The Brazilian Northeast is the driest, poorest part of the country. Its coastal history is one of sugar plantations and slavery, which wasn’t abolished in Brazil until 1888; its interior faces such severe droughts that that it’s difficult for residents to procure enough clean water and food to survive, let alone advance. The region has a rich history of mixed ancestry going back to the 1500s when Europeans first came to Brazil.
For many years, Brazil was hailed by ethnographers as a racial democracy, blending ethnic identities as the four primary ethnic groups (Indigenous, African, Portuguese and Dutch) intermarried and had families. The racial utopia was, of course, a myth. Parents hoped their children would marry lighter skinned people and blacks tended to the poorest and most discriminated against ethnic group.
In 1998, French was introduced to two villages struggling with their identities. One village was made up of families who, with the help of a local priest, had advocated for recognition as an indigenous tribe, winning official recognition by the Brazilian government in 1979. A larger neighboring village, made up of about 90 families, all of whom were black, were recognized in 1997 as being descendants of a fugitive slave, or quilombo, community.
When French arrived in Northeast Brazil to study these evolving groups, she realized she was uniquely qualified for the job. Her husband, Duke University historian John D. French, had studied Brazil for years. Their family had traveled to Brazil numerous times; at one point they spent a year living in Brazil where she secured a job with a Brazilian law firm. So in addition to speaking the language, she also knew about Brazilian law. And this was all before she began her graduate degree in anthropology.
In Brazil, communities have much to gain by self-identifying as quilombos. Brazil’s 1988 constitution included a one-line provision that granted land to quilombo.
“I’m interested in the relationship between law and identity,” French said. “As laws change, people enjoy new opportunities to change their ethno-racial self-identification. For instance, in the United States under the Jim Crow laws, you were either black or white. Since that was how the government defined people, that became how people defined themselves. As laws have changed, people can check multiple boxes and they feel comfortable identifying with very specific ethnicities."