{"id":30680,"date":"2013-04-27T05:16:12","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T05:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=30680"},"modified":"2013-04-27T05:16:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-27T05:16:12","slug":"affirmative-action-in-brazil-slaverys-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=30680","title":{"rendered":"Affirmative Action in Brazil: Slavery’s Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Affirmative Action in Brazil: Slavery’s Legacy<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Economist<\/a>
\nAmericas View: The Americas<\/a>
\n2013-04-26<\/p>\n

H.J.
\n<\/strong>S\u00e3o Paulo<\/em><\/p>\n

TO SUM up recent research predicting a mixed-race future for humanity, biologist Stephen Stearns<\/a> of Yale University turns to an already intermingled nation. In a few centuries, he says, we will all “look like Brazilians”. Brazil shares with the United States a population built from European immigrants, their African slaves and the remnants of the Amerindian population they displaced. But with many more free blacks during the era of slavery, no “Jim Crow” laws<\/a> or segregation after it ended in 1888 and no taboo on interracial romance, colour in Brazil became not a binary variable but a spectrum.<\/p>\n

Even so, it still codes for health, wealth and status. Light-skinned women strut S\u00e3o Paulo’s<\/a> upmarket shopping malls in designer clothes; dark-skinned maids in uniform walk behind with the bags and babies. Black and mixed-race Brazilians earn three-fifths as much as white ones. They are twice as likely to be illiterate or in prison, and less than half as likely to go to university. They die six years younger\u2014and the cause of death is more than twice as likely to be murder…<\/p>\n

…Brazilians’ notions of race are indeed changing, but only partly because of quotas, and more subtly than the doom-mongers fear. The unthinking prejudice expressed in common phrases such as “good appearance” (meaning pale-skinned) and “good hair” (not frizzy) means many light-skinned Brazilians have long preferred to think of themselves as “white”, whatever their parentage. But between 2000 and 2010 the self-described “white” population fell by six percentage points, while the “black” and “mixed-race” groups grew.<\/p>\n

Researchers think a growing pride in African ancestry is behind much of the shift. But quotas also seem to affect how people label themselves. Andrew Francis<\/a> of Emory University and Maria Tannuri-Pianto<\/a> of the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB) found that some light-skinned mixed-race applicants to UnB, which started using racial preferences in 2004, thought of themselves as white but described themselves as mixed-race to increase their chances of getting in<\/a>. Some later reverted to a white identity. But for quite a few the change was permanent…<\/p>\n

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

Affirmative Action in Brazil: Slavery’s Legacy The Economist Americas View: The Americas 2013-04-26 H.J. S\u00e3o Paulo TO SUM up recent research predicting a mixed-race future for humanity, biologist Stephen Stearns of Yale University turns to an already intermingled nation. In a few centuries, he says, we will all “look like Brazilians”. Brazil shares with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,83,21,1467,13,26,394],"tags":[3419,6366],"class_list":["post-30680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-law","category-liveevents","category-politics","category-socialscience","tag-andrew-m-francis","tag-the-economist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30680","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=30680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}