Mixed Race Studies

“Having a black great-grandmother made me non-white”: Popular white DJ defined herself as brown to enter college through Brazil’s affirmative action program

Black Women of Brazil
2020-06-11

By Luana Benedito and Juca Guimarães

Larissa Busch defined herself as ‘brown’ in order to get into college through affirmative action

Young woman entered the university in the modality that contemplated “self-declared black, brown or indigenous candidates regardless of income”

24-year-old digital influence Larissa Busch admitted to cheating the racial quota system at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in a long post on her Instagram profile this Tuesday (2). The young woman, who is white, joined the educational institution in the Social Communication course, in the second half of 2014, in the modality that contemplated “self-declared black, brown or indigenous candidates regardless of income”.

“In 2014, six years ago, I made the worst choice of my life and I’m here to talk about it with all the guilt that I carry. I entered the university calling myself ‘parda’ (brown/mixed). Yes, this is horrible and there is not a day that I don’t think about it. I have kept this shame inside me for a long time and as much as I feel sad that the dirtiest episode of my life is becoming public, I always knew that this day would come”, said Larissa in an excerpt of the text…

Read the entire article here.

Court declares one must “look like an African descendant in the eyes of the average man” to qualify for affirmative action, rejecting another case of a white student “passing” for black

Black Women of Brazil
2018-11-12

Marques Travae, Creator and Editor

One of numerous examples of fraud, Vinícius Loures defined himself as black to attain access to a Medicine course at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

Court declares one must “look like an African descendant in the eyes of the average man” to qualify for affirmative action, rejecting another case of a white student “passing” for black

In a recent decision that will have huge repercussions on persons who attempt to obtain access to certain jobs and vacancies in universities, a panel upheld a policy that defined that for anyone wishing to qualify through affirmative action, it is not enough that said person be of African descent, but rather must look like an African descendant in the eyes of the average man. This was an argument I made several months ago. A little background here.

Due to the lack of diversity on Brazil’s college and university campuses, the nation began to experiment with affirmative action policies nearly 20 years ago. The discussion on the policies generated debates on race in the public sphere that had never happened to such a degree in Brazil. Sure, the topic of race in Brazil had been studied in academia for decades, but never had the general public had such public debates on the topic. Since the first half of the 20th century, the belief system in Brazil had been that Brazil was a “racial democracy” in which any person, regardless of their racial appearance had an equal opportunity to attain a middle class lifestyle. In fact, because of widespread miscegenation, it was even difficult to determine what race the average Brazilian was anyway…

Read the entire article here

Eugenics in Brazil: In the early 20th century, elites believed racial improvement was only possible with a project favoring predominance of the white race

Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent
2018-02-27

Tiago Ferreira, Staff
Vix

What was the eugenics movement in Brazil: so absurd that it is difficult to believe

Eugenia is a term that came from the Greek and means ‘well born’. “Eugenics emerged to validate hierarchical segregation,” Pietro Diwan, author of the book Raça Pura: uma história da eugenia no Brasil e no mundo (Pure Race: A History of Eugenics in Brazil and the World), explains to VIX.

How eugenics was born

The idea was disseminated by Francis Galton, responsible for creating the term, in 1883. He imagined that the concept of natural selection of Charles Darwin—who, by the way, was his cousin—also applied to humans.

His project was intended to prove that the intellectual capacity was hereditary, that is, it passed from member to member of the family and, thus, to justify the exclusion of the blacks, Asian immigrants and disabled of all the types…

Read the entire article here.

Brazilians defining themselves as black has grown 15%; while pretos and pardos are considered black, pretos are those defining themselves as simply black

Black Women of Brazil
2017-12-12

Source: Jornal Floripa, Tudo que Preciso Saber “Nº de pessoas que se declara preta ou parda cresce 14,9%”

Note from BW of Brazil: So what does today’s report really mean in plain English? It’s a topic that’s been discussed here since the debut of this blog back in 2011. Depending on how you look at it, Brazil could have as many 112.7 million black people, which would be 54.8% of the country’s total population of 205.5 million people. Or, looking at it from another perspective, the black population could be around 16.8 million people, which would represent about 8.2% of all Brazilians. Why such a huge discrepancy? Well, again, it depends on how you see it. To come to a figure of 112.7 million black people, one has to include the population of people who define themselves as “pardos”, loosely meaning ‘brown’ or ‘mixed’. At almost 96 million people, they make up about 46.7% of the Brazilian population. For decades, due to quality of life and socioeconomic statistics, black activists have defined the country’s população negra (black population) as the combination of self-declared pretos (blacks) and pardos. The question here would be, how many of those pardos have a phenotype that most would consider black? The world may never know.

The number of Brazilians who declare themselves pretos (blacks) has increased 14.9% to 16.825 million people between 2012 and 2016, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which announced on Friday the “Características gerais dos moradores 2012-2016” (General characteristics of residents 2012 -2016), raised by the National Continuous Household Sample Survey (PNAD).

According to the survey, the number of Brazilians who declared themselves pardos (or were declared pardos by the resident interviewed) also grew between 2012 and 2016, by 6.6%, to 95.9 million people. This is the largest group, accounting for 46.7% of the population, a condition it assumed from 2015.

The number of Brazilians declaring themselves brancos (whites) in turn continued to shrink: they were 90.9 million in 2016, 1.8% less than in 2012. Of 46.6% of residents in the country in 2012, the declared white population accounted for 44.2% of the total in 2016. Those declared black were 8.2%.

According to Maria Lucia Vieira, research manager, the data indicate an increasing miscegenation in Brazil. There are basically three possible explanations, according to her: increased self-assertion of pretos e pardos (blacks and browns); marriage growth between races; higher fertility rate among pretos and pardos…

Read the entire article here.

‘Bleach bath’, clothes pins on the nose and ‘black monkey’: Study exposes racism in interracial families debunking one of Brazil’s greatest myths

Black Women of Brazil
2017-06-27

Courtesy of Jornal Floripa

What happens when there is racism in the home? In what way does it manifest? How can interracial marriages generate children who are segregated in their own home environment because of their color? Why do many white people deny the black race of their spouses – chosen by them – and even their children? Some answers to these questions appear in a study by the doctor in social psychology Lia Schucman, who researches racial relations in Brazil.

For her postdoctoral work at USP (University of São Paulo), entitled Famílias Inter-Raciais: Tensões entre Cor e Amor (Inter-Racial Families: Tensions Between Color and Love), she interviewed 13 families who were willing to talk about the subject – often in conversations punctuated by tension and disagreement in relation to the races. In the end, the psychologist used reports from five families with different manifestations of what Lia called “racism of intimacy”…

Read the entire article here.

Research investigates marks of racism in “interracial families”

Black Women of Brazil
Source: FAPESP
2017-05-31

José Tadeu Arantes

The final pillar of the debunked ‘racial democracy’? Post-doctorate research project exposes racism and racial hierarchies within interracial families

One hundred and twenty-nine years after the abolition of slavery, and despite the myth of racial democracy, racial prejudice continues to be widespread in Brazilian society – so widespread that it even manifests itself within “interracial families”. This was the conclusion of a study conducted by social psychologist Lia Vainer Schucman.

The study was the postdoctoral theme carried out at the University of São Paulo (USP) with support from FAPESP, a collaboration of Felipe Fachim and under the supervision of Belinda Mandelbaum, coordinator of the Laboratory of Family Studies at the Institute of Psychology at USP.

“Our objective was to verify if and how the racial hierarchies of society reproduce within families whose members self-classify differently in relation to ‘race’: as ‘brancos’ (whites), ‘negros’ (blacks) or ‘mestiços’ (persons of mixed race). And how these hierarchies coexist and interact with affections,” Schucman told FAPESP…

Read the entire article here.

Race, revolution and interracial relations: Revisiting rapper Emicida’s video ‘Boa Esperança’, the most courageous video of 2015

Black Women of Brazil
2016-04-25

Note from BW of Brazil: Get ready! Today’s piece is one of those long articles in which you must read every word in order to get the full significance. The rapper known as Emicida is perhaps the most popular rapper in Brazil right now and his star continues to rise. Last year, the rapper released the video for his song “Boa Esperança”, one of the most discussed music videos of last year and for good reason and you will no doubt agree.

The video takes on the realities of race and class in modern day Brazilian society that date back all the way to the colonial era; a colonial era in which masses of Brazilian Indians were massacred and millions of imported Africans were forced to endure unthinkable conditions of cruelty, exploitation and death. As we have seen in numerous posts in the past, many black Brazilians still make references to the Casa Grande (big house/slave master’s home) to describe race relations in modern day Brazil, even as the institution of slavery officially ended in 1888, making Brazil the last country in the Western world to abolish this practice…

Read the entire article here.

“When I discovered that I’m black”: How racism is so cruel, that it makes it difficult for black people to recognize themselves as such

Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent
2016-03-04

Jônatas Cordeiro da Silva

Originally “When I discovered that I’m black: “I’ll tell my story, because I also have one.”” from Hey Fala, January 11, 2016.

Today I feel the necessity of telling you how I discovered myself (and I’m still discovering) as black, which I will cover in a brief discussion of miscegenation.

When I see some cases, such as for example, (futebol star) Neymar who says that he’s not preto (black) or Caio (You Tuber Jout Jout’s boyfriend) who declares himself pardo (brown). I remember how difficult it was for me to recognize myself as black. I always knew that I wasn’t white, not only by the color of my skin, hair, and features, but also because of the places that neither I nor my ancestors occupied, however there is a big difference between not being branco (white) and being black.

It’s important to point out that in some way miscegenation in Brazil was historically simple, also one of the factors for miscegenation was the rape of black women enslaved by their colonizers, indigenous women were also violated. Black people were blamed for the backwardness of the Brazilian nation, there was a eugenicist plan, which envisaged that through the “mistura de raças” (melting pot or mixture of the races) the extinction of black people by 2012, so then Brazil would be a developed nation…

Read the entire article here.

‘Myth of racial democracy is part of the education of the Brazilian,” says Congolese anthropologist living in Brazil

Black Women of Brazil
2016-02-16

Thiago de Araújo

The absence of Black nominees at the 2016 Oscars. ‘Black face’ is just a costume. Cotistas (quota students) surpass (scores) of non-cotista students. A black sponge doll on the reality show Big Brother Brazil (BBB) ​​of this year. Recent cases, controversial cases. In all, the discussion of the same topic: racism inside and outside of Brazil.

Historical victims of prejudice, blacks in their majority are outraged with every report of the genre. However, today there are those who deny that there is racism in Brazil. For these people, there is nothing to justify affirmative action policies, such as quotas in education and social sectors. It’s necessary to appreciate equality, crying out in the loudest voice.

Discussions of racism are not surprising to Congolese anthropologist Kabengele Munanga. At 73, the Doctor of Social Sciences and professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP) he always stresses that Brazil has a ‘stark’ framework of discrimination. Do you think it’s an exaggeration? It’s not what the numbers show.

“The data show that, on the eve of apartheid, South Africa had more blacks with college degrees than in Brazil today,” Munanga said in a public hearing organized by the Supreme Court (STF) in 2010. The debate revolved around access to higher education policies. Opponents announced that the country was about to experience a ‘race war’. It was not what we saw.

“There were no riots, racial lynchings anywhere. No Brazilian ‘Ku Klux Klan’ appeared,” said the anthropologist. “What is sought by the policy of quotas for black and the indigenous is not to be entitled to the crumbs, but rather to gain access to the top in all sectors of responsibility and of command in national life where these two segments are not adequately represented, as the true democracy mandates.”

But what about the well-known ‘racial democracy’ born at the hands of Gilberto Freyre?…

Read the entire interview here.

A call for end of the “Globeleza Mulata”: A Manifesto

Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent
2016-02-08

Stephanie Ribeiro and Djamila Ribeiro

Originally, “A Mulata Globeleza: Um Manifesto” from Agora é que são elas (2016-01-29).

The Globeleza Mulata is not a natural cultural event, but a performance that invades the imaginary and the Brazilian televisions during Carnival. A spectacular created by art director Hans Donner to be the symbol of the popular party, which exhibited for 13 years his companion Valéria Valenssa in the super-expositional function of “mulata”. We’re talking about a character that appeared in the nineties and still strictly follows the same script: it is always a black woman that dances the samba as a passista (Carnaval dancer), naked with her body painted with glitter, to the sound of the vignette displayed throughout the daily programming of Rede Globo (TV).

To start the debate on this character, we need to identify the problem contained in the term “mulata”. Besides being a word naturalized by Brazilian society, it is a captive presence in the vocabulary of the hosts, journalists and reporters from the Globo broadcasting. The word of is of Spanish origin comes from “mula” or “mulo” (the masculine and feminine of ‘mule’): that that is a hybrid originating from a cross between species. Mules are animals born crossing donkeys with mares or horses with donkeys. In another sense, they are the result of the mating of the animal considered noble (equus caballus) with the animal deemed second class (donkey). Therefore, it is a derogatory word indicating mestiçagem (racial mixture or crossbreeding), impurity; an improper mixing that should not exist.

Employed since the colonial period, the term was used to designate lighter skinned blacks, fruits of the rape of slaves by masters. Such a nomenclature has sexist and racist nature and was transferred to the Globeleza character, naturalized. The adjective “mulata” is a sad memory of the 354 years (1534-1888) of escravidão negra (black slavery) in Brazil…

Read the entire article here.