Racial whitening, or "whitening" ( branqueamento ), is an ideology that was widely accepted in Brazil between 1889 and 1914, [1] as the solution to the "Negro problem". [2] [3] Whitening in Brazil is a sociological term to explain the change in perception of one's race, from darker to lighter identifiers, as a person rises in the class structure of Brazil. [4] Racial mixing in Brazilian society entailed that minority races ought to adopt the characteristics of the white race, with the goal of creating a singular Brazilian race that emulates the white race, striving to create a society best emulating that of Europe. [5]
Racial whitening became a social concept that was developed through governmental policy. [6] Similar to that of the United States, Brazil experienced colonization by Europeans and importation of African slaves in the 18th and 19th century. [6]
As a way of making Brazil seem like a modernized country comparable with European nations, Brazil encouraged the immigration of white Europeans with the goal of racial whitening through miscegenation. Once they arrived, European immigrants dominated high-skilled jobs, and libertos (freed slaves) were relegated to service or seasonal jobs. Additionally, whitening led to the formulation of the Brazilian idea of "racial democracy", the idea that Brazil lacks racial prejudice and discrimination, allowing equal opportunities for blacks and whites alike, effectively creating a race-blind society. [5]
The myth of racial democracy arose from the lack of a strict segregationist culture and the frequency of interracial marriage. Thus, it was argued that Brazil was not bound by racial lines, but issues caused by racism festered under the surface. [5] This inattention to race implied that all Brazilians had an equal opportunity to attain social mobility. [5]
However, this masked the true goal of whitening as a means to nullify the identities of black and indigenous identities. In Brazil, race is considered a spectrum upon which one's identity is subject to change based on a variety of factors, such as social class and educational attainment. [6] Governmental policies like affirmative action seek to mediate identity problems associated with racial democracy.
Prior to the abolition of slavery, plantation owners feared a post-emancipatory society of freed slaves who had, "deficiencies such as indolence and immorality" that needed to be wiped out. [7] Brazil's export-based economy was largely reliant on slave labor, and slaveholders felt the freedmen would hinder the country's development because of their inferior characteristics. [7] After the emancipation of slaves, Brazilians theorized about the ideal phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of future laborers. Initially, Brazil saw the success of Chinese immigrants in the United States and other nations, but the risk of introducing another purportedly degenerate race like the Africans was too high. Arthur de Gobineau, a French diplomat sent to Brazil by Napoleon, felt introducing the Europeans was an ideal solution because it would purify elements of Brazil's 'inferior race' through interbreeding. [7] This solution would return the white race to their superior place. Brazilian writers and politicians blamed Portuguese colonials for importing a large slave population. [7]
Apart from its racial justification, Brazilian farmers argued that the post-emancipation labor market in Brazil would be controlled by supply and demand. Thus, incentivization of foreign immigrants would create a situation where laborers searched for employers at cheap prices instead of employers looking for a small pool of laborers at a high wage. This governmental stance is based upon three principles, which scholar Marcus Eugenio Oliveira Lima describes as "institutional relations towards 'national eugenics;' social perceptions and inter-group relations; and self-perception and interpersonal relations." [8]
Working with the São Paulo Province, Brazil officially began incentivizing European immigration in 1884 when it created the semi-private Society for the Promotion of Immigration. [9] The program was "responsible for informing European workers of employment opportunities available in São Paulo, paying their passage, overseeing their arrival in Brazil, and dispatching them to the coffee groves". [10] By 1895, the State Department of Agriculture had taken control of the operation because São Paulo province was officially transformed into a state. Until the abolition of slavery in 1888, Europeans were hesitant to emigrate because they believed that Brazilian farmers would treat them like slaves. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, Brazil was flooded with European immigrants. Statistics demonstrate that, "compared to 195,000 immigrants who arrived in Brazil between 1870 and 1889, immigration between 1890 and 1909 totaled 1,100,000". [10] There was a constant decline in the Afro-Brazilian population between the censuses of 1872 and 1990, decreasing from 19.2% to under 5%, although the rate recovered to 6.2% at the 2000 census. [11] [ verification needed ] Once the European immigrants arrived in the late 19th century, most São Paulo immigrants worked as colonos (tenant farmers) which "received a fixed monetary income for maintaining a certain number of coffee trees plus a variable payment depending on the volume of the harvest". [10] Apart from São Paulo, there was no subsidized immigration program in Brazil. In these areas, the libertos' experience varied: in Sergipe, vagrancy laws were implemented to force the free black population back onto the plantation, but some libertos stayed with their former employers or emigrated elsewhere. [10] However, Afro-Brazilians' status improved with labor laws enacted during the Great Depression that required two thirds of businesses' new hires to be Brazilian-born. [5]
The arrival of European immigrants created a two-tiered labor market wherein immigrants dominated factory, commerce, industrial, and artisanal jobs, and Afro-Brazilians were relegated to seasonal or service jobs. [12] Many freed slaves lacked the skill to compete with European immigrants in the technical jobs and may have preferred the variety of the service jobs. However, other historians like Florestan Fernandes attribute these labor market differences to a pre-emancipation mentality that avoided work during slavery and a lack of marketable skills to offer when the slaves were freed. [13] Employed Afro-Brazilians demanded better working conditions after emancipation, but European immigrants, especially Italians, largely accepted lower pay and harsher treatment to secure a higher social position. [14] Apart from their willingness, the source of the immigrants' vulnerabilities in the labor force was two fold: Brazil was populated with low-skilled immigrants who didn't have bargaining power with their employers, and most immigrants valued their spouse or child over joining a labor union that could get them fired. In one area of Brazil, "Eighty percent of the people who passed through the immigrant hostel in São Paulo city came as families". [15] In São Paulo, child-labor was common because of the little pay that their parents received. [16]
As a result of whitening-induced interracial marriage in the late 19th century and a lack of segregation laws, race in modern Brazil is defined by the concept of "racial democracy". This inattention to race implies that all Brazilians have an equal opportunity to attain social mobility. [5]
Such identity problems and inequities caused by racial democracy led Afro-Brazilians to take measures to identify closer to the white race in order to place them on a level playing field. In a 1995 national survey, Brazilian citizens were asked to consistently classify race on an overall and contextual basis. This study found that persons of lighter color tended to be consistently classified, while those of a darker skin tone tended to be classified more ambiguously. [17] Factors that impacted consistency by 20% to 100% included education, age, sex, and local racial composition, trending in the direction of either "whitening" or "darkening". [17] To combat this, the Campanha Censo of 1990 sought to combat the trend of self-whitening, the false identification of oneself as white, in Brazil. [5]
Furthermore, there is a widespread difficulty in admitting that racism exists in Brazil. Because many do not consciously identify as black, many instances of prejudice are not recognized as racism, which becomes a cycle, and racism continues to exist in Brazil. Moreover, Brazil almost prides itself as having somehow moved past racial discrimination because it was built on the mixing of Amerindian, African and European ethnic groups. [18] However, racism in Brazil exists and can take on a variety of forms of prejudices and stereotypes. A 2022 study found that disparities in employment, income, education, access to justice, and vulnerability to violent death are heavily influenced by race, and in fact found that blacks are more exposed to homicides and physical assaults than whites, and 40% of this difference is evidence of racial discrimination. [19]
Employment disparities found in this study are supported by inadequate incentives for minority-owned businesses in Brazil, creating an every-man-for-himself survivalist environment for black businesspeople. [20] This is consistent with the increase in workplace discrimination indicated by the Brazilian censuses of the 1960s and 70s, despite the passage of federal non-discrimination legislation in 1953. [5]
While black workers maintain sizeable numbers in the workforce, especially in small and midsize retailers and restaurants, they still struggle to break into high-paying corporate landscapes such as the accounting and tech industries. [17] Based on a recent survey, 94% of top executives in Brazil's top corporations are white, which translates into minuscule opportunities for black Brazilians to gain the experience of going into business independently. Non-whites make up 45.3% of the Brazilian population, yet they make up only 17.8% of all registered entrepreneurs. [21] Much of this is related to the educational and economic roots of many black businesspeople in the country. While black business leaders are younger, they have spent less time in the classroom than whites, with nearly half of all black leaders dropping out of school by the eighth grade and only 15.8% completing twelve years of schooling. This is in contrast to the 35.8% of white leaders who have completed twelve years of schooling. [21] Further evidence of the arduous path to black success in the private sector is the statistic that more than a third of black business leaders hail from poor rural or blue-collar urban families, compared to just a quarter of white business leaders. Such hardships within the business landscape for black Brazilians has led them to take measures to identify closer to the white race in order to place them on a level playing field.
An aspect that influences the upward mobility of individuals is education. [22] The education deficit between black and white entrepreneurs is better explained by a much higher illiteracy rate. In 1980, the number of illiterate black Brazilians was double that of whites, with blacks also being seven times less likely to graduate college. [5]
Several political, cultural, and social groups have emerged in Brazil in an attempt to gain equal rights and a positive Afro-Brazilian image for and among black Brazilians. This trend identifies blackness as a separate and significant identity, in contrast to it being traditionally erased. These initiatives have been implemented in the twenty-first century thanks to the adoption of affirmative action policies by a number of educational institutions and the federal government, which are meant to assist Afro-Brazilian students in obtaining a higher education and pursuing better opportunities similar to those available to Brazilians who are not black. [23]
The University of Brasilia (UnB), the first university in Brazil to implement a racial quota in 2004, served as the "guinea pig" for such initiatives. After the quota was implemented, UnB's white population fell by 4.3%, while mixed and black both grew by 1.4% and 3% respectively. [24] Therefore, a panel of Brazilian reviewers were employed for the semester both before and after the quota was put into effect. They were told to grade the subjects' skin tones on a scale of 1 (lightest) to 7 (darkest). The data indicates that after just one year of affirmative action at UnB, there is a noticeable increase in the number of black students or students who are generally of darker skin tone. In fact, a significant increase in the average skin tone indicates that the policy was successful in attracting more brown and black students to the university, particularly in the first semester following its introduction. The university's experiences with the policy and its consequences on the students, however, provide important information for the broader study of racial disparity in institutional settings for higher education and the workplace.[ citation needed ]
Although there is a blueprint, it is already evident that affirmative action has proven to be an uncomfortable fit for Brazil as a strategy for racial equality. Burnt white, brown, dark nut, light nut, black, and copper are just a few of the 136 categories the census department discovered Brazilians use for self-identification according to a 1976 research. [23] Almost 50 years later, today, Brazilians still regard themselves as falling across a spectrum of skin hues with a range of names. The realization that a person's appearance matters, particularly in terms of social mobility and job opportunities, is what ties these categories together. To address inequalities in higher education, the federal government established the Law of Social Quotas in 2012. [23]
Regardless of color, the legislation guarantees public high school graduates half of all openings at institutions receiving federal funding. (Public universities, unlike high schools, are more prestigious in Brazil than private ones.) Half of those reserved seats go to students whose families make less than 1.5 minimum wage, or $443 per month, on average. [23] According to the proportion of white to non-white residents in each state, a share of the openings in both categories are therefore reserved for black, brown, and indigenous students. Despite the fact that this is trying to address certain racial challenges, it is actually causing brand-new ones. In 2014, a statute was passed by the federal government allocating 20% of public sector positions to people of color. [23] Where individuals don't cleanly fit into black-and-white classifications, it becomes difficult to label those eligible for affirmative action. "If you look at a photograph of the incoming medical class of 2015, only one of the students looks black," said Georgina Lima, a professor and head of UFPel's Center for Affirmative Action and Diversity, "[a]nd he's not even Brazilian. He's from Africa." [23]
After it became obvious that the law allowed for fraud, the government instructed all departments to set up verification committees in August 2016. [23] However, it did not offer any guidance to the agencies. Verification committees attempt to fulfill this mandate mostly through checklists on physical appearance. Does the job applicant have a short, wide, and flat nose? How thick are their lips? Are their gums a deep enough purple color? Does their jaw protrude forward? Questions like these set up precise criteria. Some critics argued that these "desired" traits were too reminiscent of the slave trade, in which buyers would spin slaves around to look for specific traits. Others believed that these moves were regrettably essential to achieve true equity in Brazil. [23] But according to Rogerio Reis, chair of the committee at UFPel, people attempted to improve their chances at eligibility by presenting as blacker through, for example, style or tanning. [23] Tactics like these exemplify how the system is being taken advantage of. While racial whitening was pursued to create a unified Brazilian identity, the policy led to contemporary socioeconomic and political divides through racial democracy.
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Afro-Brazilians are Brazilians who have predominantly sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most members of another group of people, multiracial Brazilians or pardos, may also have a range of degree of African ancestry. Depending on the circumstances, the ones whose African features are more evident are always or frequently seen by others as "Africans" – consequently identifying themselves as such, while the ones for whom this evidence is lesser may not be seen as such as regularly. It is important to note that the term pardo, such as preto, is rarely used outside the census spectrum. Brazilian society has a range of words, including negro itself, to describe multiracial people.
Chinese Brazilians are Brazilians of Chinese ancestry or birth. The ethnic Chinese population in Brazil was estimated to be approximately 250,000 in 2007.
Anti-Black sentiment, also called anti-Black racism, anti-Blackness, colourphobia or Negrophobia, is characterised by prejudice, collective hatred, and discrimination or extreme aversion towards people who are racialised as Black people, especially those people from sub-Saharan Africa and its diasporas, as well as a loathing of Black culture worldwide. Such sentiment includes, but is not limited to: the attribution of negative characteristics to Black people; the fear, strong dislike or dehumanization of Black men; and the objectification of Black women.
The term social apartheid has been used to describe various aspects of economic inequality in Brazil, drawing a parallel with the legally enforced separation of whites and blacks in South African society for several decades during the 20th-century apartheid regime.
Afro-Argentines, also known as Black Argentines, are Argentines who have predominantly or total Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The Afro-Argentine population is the result of people being brought over during the transatlantic slave trade during the centuries of Spanish domination in the region and immigration.
Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement. Later, colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions of bandeirantes. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries. Europeans and Chinese were also enslaved.
Brazilians are the citizens of Brazil. A Brazilian can also be a person born abroad to a Brazilian parent or legal guardian as well as a person who acquired Brazilian citizenship. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many ethnic origins, and there is no correlation between one's stock and their Brazilian identity.
Racial democracy is a concept that denies the existence of racism in Brazil. Some scholars of race relations in Brazil argue that the country has escaped racism and racial discrimination. Those researchers cite the fact that most Brazilians claim not to view others through the lens of race, and thus the idea of racial discrimination is irrelevant.
The continent of South America is culturally and racially diverse. This article examines by country and region the current and historical trends in race relations and racism within South America. Racism of various forms is to be found worldwide. Racism is widely condemned throughout the world, with 170 states signatories of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by August 8, 2006. In different countries, the forms that racism takes may be different for historic, cultural, religious, economic or demographic reasons.
Brazilian society is made up of a confluence of people of Indigenous, Portuguese, and African descent. Other major significant groups include Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Lebanese, and Japanese.
Afro-Brazilian literature has existed in Brazil since the mid-19th century with the publication of Maria Firmina dos Reis's novel Ursula in 1859. Other writers from the late 19th century and early 20th century include Machado de Assis, Cruz e Sousa and Lima Barreto. Yet, Afro-Brazilian literature as a genre that recognized the ethnic and cultural origins of the writer did not gain national prominence in Brazil until the 1970s with the revival of Black Consciousness politics known as the Movimento Negro.
Movimento Negro is a generic name given to the diverse Afro-Brazilian social movements that occurred in 20th-century Brazil, particularly those movements that appeared in post-World War II Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Racism in Cuba refers to racial discrimination in Cuba. In Cuba, dark skinned Afro-Cubans are the only group on the island referred to as black while lighter skinned, mixed race, Afro-Cuban mulattos are often not characterized as fully black or fully white. Race conceptions in Cuba are unique because of its long history of racial mixing and appeals to a "raceless" society. The Cuban census reports that 65% of the population is white while foreign figures report an estimate of the number of whites at anywhere from 40 to 45 percent. This is likely due to the self-identifying mulattos who are sometimes designated officially as white. A common myth in Cuba is that every Cuban has at least some African ancestry, influenced by historical mestizaje nationalism. Given the high number of immigrants from Europe in the 20th century, this is far from true. Several pivotal events have impacted race relations on the island. Using the historic race-blind nationalism first established around the time of independence, Cuba has navigated the abolition of slavery, the suppression of black clubs and political parties, the revolution and its aftermath, and the special period.
The history of Afro-Brazilian people spans over five centuries of racial interaction between Africans imported, involved or descended from the effects of the Atlantic slave trade.
Blanqueamiento in Spanish, or branqueamento in Portuguese, is a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.
Racism has been present in Brazil since its colonial period and is pointed as one of the major and most widespread types of discrimination, if not the most, in the country by several anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, historians and others. The myth of a racial democracy, a term originally coined by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre in his 1933 work Casa-Grande & Senzala, is used by many people in the country to deny or downplay the existence and the broad extension of racism in Brazil.
The word Nagos refers to all Brazilian Yoruba people, their African descendants, Yoruba myth, ritual, and cosmological patterns. Nagos derives from the word anago, a term Fon-speaking people used to describe Yoruba-speaking people from the kingdom of Ketu, Toward the end of the slave trade in the 1880s, the Nagos stood out as the African group most often shipped to Brazil. The Nagos were important to the history of the slave trade at that time in the 19th century, as Brazil requested more enslaved persons as demand for products from this region grew and harsh conditions on plantations entailed a high turnover.
Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil is a book by anthropologist France Winddance Twine published by Rutgers University Press in 1997.
Michael Hanchard, often published as Michael G. Hanchard, is an American political scientist, currently the Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of the Marginalized Populations Project there. He studies comparative politics and political theory, focusing on understanding the causes and consequences of nationalism and xenophobia, particularly within democracies.
Children of metis have been found, in the third generation, to present all the physical characters of the white race, although some of them retain a few traces of their black ancestry through the influence of atavism. The influence of sexual selection, however, tends to neutralise that of atavism, and removes from the descendants of the metis all the characteristic features of the black race. In virtue of this process of ethnic reduction, it is logical to expect that in the course of another century the metis will have disappeared from Brazil.
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