The Brazilian population profile has developed from the indigenous people, enslaved Africans and the Europeans. Brazil has the largest population of Black people outside of Africa; however, since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the White minority has continued implementing policies that ensure the whitening of the indigenous and African-descendant population to eliminate the Black group of people from the country. Beginning in 1880, the Society for the Promotion of Immigration in San Paulo, the Rio de Janeiro Central immigration Society and Brazil’s government consciously invited only White Christians to the country, offering them free land. From 1889 to 1934, over 4 million immigrants entered Brazil, with mainly Italy and other countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, Russia, and Poland. Moreover, on January 6, 1921, the Brazilian Congress passed Article 5 of the Federal Decree No. 4247, a Whites Only Policy that prohibited Black immigrants, or anyone deemed African, from entering Brazil. This was effective by denying them visas. The idea was that a Whitened population would emerge naturally after generations of racial mixture between White European immigrants and darker-skinned Brazilians. This is represented in Modesto Broco’s late 19th-century painting entitled The Redemption of Ham https://images.app.goo.gl/976YHm1tBr7nScL5A.
According to Fish (2013), marriages between Blacks and Whites are pretty standard in Brazil, with a third of the marriages in the 2017 census being along inter-racial lines, 47% of the total population identified as mixed race and 8% as Black. On examining the multi-ethnic population of Brazil, Fish found that people are categorised based on their physical features using the Portuguese words tipo or cor, meaning type or color in English, respectively. There are a lot of tipos in Brazil because physical features differ significantly from person to person and region to region. For example, the North Eastern part of Brazil, an epicenter of slavery and Portuguese colonialism, has varying tipos. The tipo tells you what one looks like but not their parent; therefore, two parents of intermediate appearance can have children of many tipos. The spectrum runs from White, European to Black African features.
Loura or blond is Whiter-than-White with straight blond hair, blue or green eyes, light skin color, a narrow nose, and thin lips. In the West, blond refers to hair color, whereas in Brazil, blond refers to one’s race. Then we have branca who are White; these people are categorised as having light skin color, eyes of any color, hair of any color except tight curls, a nose that is not broad, and lips that are not thick. The brancas, especially those from the elite circles, are dismayed that they are not categorised as White in the West but somewhat Hispanic or Latina/o, even though they speak Portuguese. Then comes the morena; these have brown or black hair that is curly but not tight curly, tan skin, a nose that is not narrow and lips that are not thin. Morenas that venture out to the West consider themselves at par with brunettes; however, to Westerners, brunettes are not Black. These top three categories are what I call Contours of Whiteness (COW). Then comes the mulata, who look very much like the morenas except that they have tight-curly hair and a slightly darker range of hair and skin color and then comes the preto, who look like mulatas but have dark brown skin, a broad nose, and thick lips. In the West, both the mulatas and pretos are categorised as Black; in fact, in Britain, the morenas, mulatas and pretos are categorized as BAME or Black. Another form of categorisation is that of people that are neither White nor Black. A sarard has tight-curly blond or red hair, light skin, blue or green eyes, a broad nose, and thick lips. Whereas those with straight black hair, dark skin, brown eyes, narrow nose, and thin lips are categorised as cabo verde.
According to the New York times (2018), in an interview by the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, Neymar was asked if he had ever experienced racism and his response been, “never, not in the field or outside of it, it is not like I am Black you know”.
Similarly, when Fish interviewed his American daughter and her Brazilian boyfriend, they were asked if they were Black, and his daughter replied she was Black because her mother was Black even though her father was White. This is based on the North American one-drop rule, which states that one drop of Black blood makes one Black. However, in Brazil, she would be a Morena. Just like Neymar, the boyfriend said he was not Black since, in Brazilian tipo terms, he is a multi and not a preto. However, in the West, he would be considered Black. This may seem bizarre since Neymar is the son of a Black father and a White mother; however, it shows how complex the issue of the taxonomy of race is and how inconsistent this is across the globe.
Brazil was the last country in South America to abolish slave trade and since 1888, the country has not taken any constructive action to integrate any of the millions of Black Brazilians into society. Instead, they have continued to deny the existence of racism and racial inequalities and baselessly declared Brazil a racial democracy where everyone is colour-blind and living in harmony. This echoes the recent UK Government report that denies racism.
Black people in Brazil remain mainly working class and under, suffer the worst of police violence, have limited access to education, make up a disproportionate percentage of the unemployed or work in low-income manual labor jobs, have limited representation in decision-making bodies, live in urban slums called favelas, are almost three times as likely to be victims of homicide leave alone die from Covid. On the other hand, the upper tiers of most professions in Brazil, such as medicine, media, business, entertainment, or government, are occupied by Whites.
References
Fish, J, M. (2013) The Myth of Race, Argo-Navis, pp.107-153.
Meade, A, T. (2010) A Brief History of Brazil, Facts on File.
Oliveira, C. (2018) Is Neymar Black? Brazil and the Painful Relativity of Race.
Tomas, M, C. (2012) Interracial Marriage in Brazil: a discussion about local marriage market, parents’ characteristics, and household chores.
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Who is Black: The Definition of a People in North America?
I found this a very interesting piece, Wasuk. Quite shocking too.