Race as a social question in BrazilPosted in Anthropology, Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive on 2011-11-15 04:13Z by Steven |
Race as a social question in Brazil
The Rice Institute Pamphlet
Volume 27, Number 4 (October 1940)
pages 218-241
Carlos M. Delgado de Carvalho (1884-1990)
I. ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF THE BRAZILIAN POPULATION
At first sight, it seems that race could be considered as the capital element of the biological aspect of society. Race is a very common and vague term, freely used in human affairs, but with no precise meaning at all. It stands probably for zoological comparisons, but its chief virtue is to be a powerful appeal to feelings and passion; its value, therefore, is pseudo-scientific.
The only proof that race exists is that we find, nearly everywhere, racial problems, race questions, racial minorities, and so on. It is especially the revision of the European political map in the nineteenth century on the lines of nationality politics and in the twentieth century by the ethnic realities of the Treaties of 1919-1920, that has impressed on our minds the concept of race.
Some people are satisfied with races as major divisions of mankind: black, yellow, brown, white. Others have in view a nation or a country. Some mystics believe in a hypothetical pure race,” that has existed according to a subjective ideal of which they are possibly the prototype. An isolated group with uniform and stable physical aspects is sometimes called a “race.” It happens also that race is mistaken for language; for instance, we hear that South America has populations of the Latin race…
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