TAXING BLACKNESS
In her book TAXING BLACKNESS, Norah Gharala examines how free blacks in colonial Mexico faced specific tax burdens beginning in 1574, because of their African lineage, in short, paying for their freedom. By 1790, the number of free blacks in Mexico soared to over 300,000, dwarfing the population of free blacks in the United States, and providing a reliable source of revenue to the Spanish colonial government in Mexico.In TAXING BLACKNESS, Gharala shows the profound ambivalence, and often hostility, that free people of African descent faced as they navigated a regime that simultaneously…
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