{"id":218,"date":"2009-07-02T21:21:28","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T21:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=218"},"modified":"2017-11-25T02:36:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-25T02:36:39","slug":"white-but-not-quite-tones-and-overtones-of-whiteness-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=218","title":{"rendered":"White but Not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

White but Not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism<\/a>
\nVolume 13, Number 2<\/a> (July 2009)
\npages 39-56
\nDOI: 10.1215\/02705346-2009-005<\/a><\/p>\n

Patricia de Santana Pinho<\/a><\/strong>
\nState Univiersity of New York, Albany<\/em><\/p>\n

This article analyzes anecdotes, jokes, standards of beauty, color categories, and media representations of “mixed-race” individuals to assess the junctions and disjunctions of whiteness and blackness in Brazil<\/a>.\u00a0 While the multiple and contradictory meanings of “racial” mixture stimulates a preference for whiteness, thus reducing the access to power by those deemed black, it simultaneously fuels a rejection for “pure” forms of whiteness as witnessed in the country’s celebration of morenidade<\/em> (brownness). \u00a0Not all forms of miscegenation<\/a> are valued in Brazil’s myth of racial democracy, and some “types of mixture” are clearly preferred in detriment of others. I argue that anti-black racism in Brazil is expressed not only against dark-skinned individuals, but it also operates in the devaluing of physical traits “deemed black” even in those who have lighter skin complexion, thus creating “degrees of whiteness.”\u00a0 One’s “measure of whiteness,” therefore, is not defined only by skin color, but requires a much wider economy of signs where, together with other bodily features, hair texture is almost as important as epidermal tone. In any given context, the definition of whiteness is also, necessarily, shaped by the contours of gender and class affiliation.<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

White but Not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism Volume 13, Number 2 (July 2009) pages 39-56 DOI: 10.1215\/02705346-2009-005 Patricia de Santana Pinho State Univiersity of New York, Albany This article analyzes anecdotes, jokes, standards of beauty, color categories, and media representations of “mixed-race” individuals to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,83,21,125,1196,8],"tags":[240,239,3320,7423],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-colorism","tag-patricia-de-santana-pinho","tag-small-axe","tag-small-axe-a-caribbean-journal-of-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55250,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/55250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}