Ambivalent Stardom and the "Race" for Modernity in El negro que tenía el alma blanca, de Benito Perojo

Eva Woods Peiro is an Assis tant Professor at Vassar Colle-ge in Hispanic Stu dies and Media Studies. Currently, she is finishing the book White "Gypsies": Racing for Modernity in Spanish Folkloric Musical Films, 1923-1954. Along with Susan Larson (Uni versity of Kentucky) she edited a collection of essays entitled, Visualizing Span ish Modernity. She is also involved in the collabora tive book project, Cinema and the Mediation of Ev eryday Life: An Oral His tory of Cinema-Going in 1940s and 1950s Spain led by Jo Labanyi (New York University). Her published articles study Spanish cin ema before the 1960s. In America, when a Negro is accepted, one often says, in order to separate him from the rest of his race, 'He is a Negro, of course, but his soul is white.' (Bastide 315)1