Mixed Race Studies

Identity and Public Policy: Redefining the Concept of Racial Democracy in Brazil

Harvard Journal of African American Policy
2011 Edition

Krystle Norman

Krystle Norman is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received her master’s degree in public policy. In 2008, she received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in Spanish language and literature and a certificate in African American studies. Her research interests include conflict areas, social policy, identity issues, human rights, foreign policy, and parallels between communities within the African diaspora.

In Brazil, the notion that raced-based inequalities have crippled the social, economic, and political progress of Afro-Brazilians is one that is quickly denied by those who are committed to Gilberto Freyre’s concept of racial democracy. However, when disparities between “White” and “Black” Brazilians are noted, it is difficult to attribute them solely to class and not race. By analyzing important concepts coined by two distinguished sociologists, W.E.B. Du Bois and Gilberto Freyre, this article explores the way in which identity affects the ability of public policy to address inequalities in Brazil. From that dialogue, this article develops a normative view of racial democracy and puts forth recommendations that will help facilitate its expansion.

While physically the presence of Afro-Latinos throughout the Latin American diaspora cannot be denied, access to resources, equal protection under the law, and political representation continue to be restricted and, in some countries, justified by law (Cottrol 2007). Essentially, the continuing struggle of Afro-Latinos to obtain these basic rights can be seen as a major pitfall of society, but more generally, it illustrates the degree to which inequality in Latin America still persists today. Since the census is used to determine the allocation of federal funding, provide social services, and guide the creation of infrastructure projects, it serves as a means to not only address inequalities but also understand the implications of identity on public policy. Simply stated, recognition of identity is critical to effective policy making, especially within the context of a country as racially diverse as Brazil.

History of Afro-Latinos

While many Americans have learned about the history of slavery and racial inequality that lies at the very core of the African American struggle in the United States, the experience of Afro-Latinos and their plight for racial equality has not received nearly as much attention (Cottrol 2007). Considering the fact that Latin America is home to the largest population of Africans living outside of Africa itself (Andrews 2004), it is a tragedy that their struggle has been seemingly overlooked…

…Identity Issues in Brazil

Afro-Latinos have struggled to mitigate the tensions that have emerged surrounding their mixed racial heritage. For instance, in the early 1900s Latin America’s response to European pressures to“civilize” was to suppress and/or hide its African heritage, encourage White migration into the region, undergo a “modern European-style” transformation of its urban landscapes, and promote European values and culture in order to “Europeanize Latin American societies” (Andrews 2004, 119).

This strong desire for all the societal gains that were thought to accompany “blanqueamiento” (a term used to describe the Whitening of a region through the settlement of large groups of Europeans) ultimately exacerbated the rate at which Afro-Latinos were marginalized (Cottrol 2007). Psychological remnants from the slavery paradigm continued to perpetuate the problematic notion that, among other things, lighter skin was synonymous with economic and social mobility. This ideology was reinforced when European settlement was encouraged and the White elite began to solidify its influence over the political, economic, and social sectors of society (Andrews 2004). As stated by Robert Cottrol, “If the national ethos dictated that the nation was white, it was all the more prudent, particularly for those of mixed ancestry, not to declare an African heritage. Thus mestizaje [racial mixing] and blanqueamiento [Whitening] both contributed to the pronounced unwillingness of many Afro-Latinos to identify as such, even when phenotype made such identification and the resulting discrimination inescapable” (2007, 4).

Since the combination of Europeans, Native Americans, Spaniards, and Africans created such a hugely multiethnic citizenry in Latin America, this grouping made it all the more difficult to rigidly define class and political status (Andrews 2004). According to Andrews, the Afro-Latino population experienced both “Whitening”and “Blackening” phases because it lacked an appreciation and understanding for its own racial identity (2004, 10). Due to societal pressures, Afro-Latinos were forced to create an identity that was both acceptable to themselves and the larger European diaspora. As a result, social status and economic privilege were determined by one’s light skin color and closeness to a European phenotype. Society would systematically devalue Blackness, which encouraged individuals to disassociate with their African ancestry, even when their phenotype would suggest otherwise (Cottrol 2007). In this way, Brazil was able to maintain a “rigid, racial hierarchy” that reinforced the supremacy of White Brazilians (Telles 2004, 230)…

Read the entire article here.

Race in Brazil: Out of Eden

The Economist
2003-07-03

Brazil used to think it could be colour-blind. Alas, no longer

JOANA, an actress and student, is white, or at least that is what her birth certificate says. She has a white father, a mixed-race mother and skin the colour of cappuccino. But she considers herself to be “more or less black”. Joana’s ambiguity about her race is quintessentially Brazilian. Brazil had slavery, but never apartheid or the formal segregation of the American south. Centuries of interracial coupling have produced a population that is 40% pardo (mixed). But Joana’s description of herself as “black”, or negra, belongs to a new era in Brazil’s racial politics. It implies that racial mixing has done nothing to correct racism, that pardos and pretos (the census term for blacks) are in the same boat and that the solution is not to ignore race but to plant it at the centre of policies to overcome vast social and economic inequalities. Though most people are only dimly aware of it, their idea of what it means to be Brazilian is about to be challenged.

The challenge is coming through racial quotas, which black leaders see as an indispensable corrective to discrimination. They are not widely used yet, but they are spreading. Three federal ministries recently introduced quotas of 20% for blacks in senior jobs. A handful of cities in São Paulo, the industrial heartland, have introduced racial quotas in the past two years. Most contentiously, so have a few public universities, the institutions that decide who will be admitted to Brazil’s elite. Congress is considering a “statute of racial equality” that would give quotas a big extra push. These and other affirmative actions add up to a “revolution” that is “much bigger than people imagine,” says Ivair dos Santos, advisor to the federal secretary for human rights…

Read the entire article here.

The increasing, uncritical media attention that both [Heidi] Durrow’s work and mixed-race identity have received lately gives me pause. Accepting and embracing a mixed-race identity hardly reveals racial progress. As it is currently constructed, mixed-race identity does not dismantle racial hierarchies. Rather, it reiterates white supremacy by attempting to etch a space for itself somewhere under whiteness–which it knows it can never access–and definitely above blackness. Even claiming a mixed-race identity requires enough skin privilege to compel the (unscrupulous) gazer to ask, “What are you?”

Summer McDonald, “Canon Fodder: ‘The Girl Who Fell From the Sky’ and the Problem of Mixed-Race Identity,” Specter Magazine: Ghost+Blog, August 18, 2011.

The presence of Eurasian images in fashion representations and their absence from finance representations draw attention to the historical origins, cultural trajectories and ambivalence of meaning associated with ‘raced’ and sexed representations. Although the inclusion of Asian and Eurasian women may be intended to offset their previous absence and secure a wider multicultural appeal, they inadvertently replay processes of racialisation and sexualization. This is because they incite desires for, and identifications with, White/Western/Anglo identities authorised by essentialist and quasi-biological discourses of racialisation and sexualization.

Julie Matthews, “Deconstructing the Visual: The Diasporic Hybridity of Asian and Eurasian Female Images,” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 8, October 2002.

Is the high value placed on the beauty of mulatas in Brazil an example of Brazil’s racial democracy or, in fact, an instance of its profound racism?

IDEATE The Undergraduate Journal of Sociology
University of Essex
Volume 6, Summer 2011
8 pages

Bethan Rafferty
SC386 Anthropology of Latin America: Race, Gender and Identity

The role of mulatas in Brazilian society is one filled with social, political and historical significance. Mulatas are not seen as ordinary women, but as a living biological embodiment of the Brazilian nation. Indeed the Brazilian tourist board uses Brazilian miscegenation to sell Brazil as a potential holiday destination to tourists:

‘The mixture of races has made Brazil a culturally rich and at the same time unique country. This miscegenation began with the Indian, the African and the Portuguese, but soon after, immigrants from around the world began to arrive: Europeans, Asians, Jews and Arabs. The result is a happy people, open to everything new, a people one can only find in Brazil. Because of this massive diversity, Brazil is one of the last places on Earth where no one is a foreigner, where one can change one’s destiny without losing one’s identity and where each and every Brazilian has a little of the entire world in his or her blood. This may be the reason why Brazilians welcome people from another land so openly.’ (Brazil Ministério do Turismo. http://www.braziltour.com/. Accessed: 22/6/2011.)

Although the strong connection between Brazil and the African continent is acknowledged by some Brazilians, and embraced in some cultural practices such as Capoeira, Black Brazilians continue to be one of the poorest social groups in the country: ‘Although 32 percent of whites are poor, more than 62 percent of African Brazilians are impoverished’ (Daniel, 2006: 190.). While some claim that the high admiration for the mulatas’ physical beauty is proof of a racial democracy (See Freyre, 1946 and the theme of erotic democracy in Goldstein, 2003.), the persistence of negative connotations regarding blackness points to a more painful reality, in which the traces of slavery and discrimination are still alive and active.

In this paper I will argue that although the high value placed on the beauty of mulatas at a micro-level may not be an indicator of personally racist views, at the macro-level it demonstrates Brazilian prejudice against blackness and is an example of racism due to the racebased sexualisation of mulatas.

In the first section of the essay I will talk about the idea of ‘whitening’ Brazilian traditions and people, in the second section I will explore the power balance in relationships between White men and women of colour, thirdly I will consider the sexualisation of mulatas, the fourth part of the essay will examine mulata beauty and interracial sexual relations at a personal or microlevel and the fifth section will analyse the sexism inherent in the objectification of mulatas…

Read the entire article here.

Blonde Beauties and Black Booties: Racial Hierarchies in Brazil

Ms. Magazine Blog
2010-06-11

Erica Williams, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia

Model scouts strategically target towns in Southern Brazil to “find the right genetic cocktail of German and Italian ancestry, perhaps with some Russian or other Slavic blood thrown in,” explains Alexei Barrionuevo in a recentNew York Times article, “Off Runway, Brazilian Beauty Goes Beyond Blonde. The fact that a European standard of beauty still dominates the modeling industry should come as no surprise. But why go to Brazil in search of models with European features instead of going directly to Europe? This racial preference is deeply connected to Brazil’s complex history of race relations.

In the early 20th century, Brazil embarked on a national project of embranquecimento–whitening. Influenced by European scientific racism, state officials wanted to “breed the [black] blood out” of the national population. To do so, they encouraged Europeans to settle and hopefully, intermarry with the descendants of enslaved Africans. Despite this attempt to “dilute” the black population, many have upheld Brazil as a “racial democracy” where harmonious race relations and intermixing reined supreme, and where racism is not an issue…

…Walk to any newsstand in Salvador da Bahia and you will find dozens of postcards that use images of black women scantily clad in bikinis to “sell” the area to the rest of the world. This is nothing new. The figure of the mulata, or mixed-race woman of African descent, has long been represented in Brazilian popular culture as the epitome of sexiness. Exported abroad as early as the 1970s in Oswaldo Sargentelli’s world tour of samba shows featuring mulata women, now the term has become synonymous with “prostitute” for many European men who travel to Brazil for sex…

Read the entire article here.