Afro-Brazilian
Encyclopedia
In Brazil, the term "preto" (black) is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco
" (White), "pardo
" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo
" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena
" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".
In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests.
According to Edward Telles, in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto". The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno" (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion"). The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial). More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%. Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion
, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) This looks more similar to the American racial perception, but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black, and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms. According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas
, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color
and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc. This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes
are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.
The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman
refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed
and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy
, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre
has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry
, with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian
rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE
resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action
policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses. Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African American
s has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness
.
or pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. According to IBGE
this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups". In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.
In Brazil, the term "preto" (black) is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco
" (White), "pardo
" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo
" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena
" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".
In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests.
According to Edward Telles, in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto". The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno" (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion"). The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial). More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%. Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion
, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) This looks more similar to the American racial perception, but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black, and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms. According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas
, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color
and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc. This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes
are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.
The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman
refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed
and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy
, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre
has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry
, with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian
rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE
resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action
policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses. Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African American
s has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness
.
or pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. According to IBGE
this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups". In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.
In Brazil, the term "preto" (black) is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco
" (White), "pardo
" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo
" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena
" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".
In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests.
According to Edward Telles, in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto". The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno" (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion"). The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial). More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%. Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion
, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) This looks more similar to the American racial perception, but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black, and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms. According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas
, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color
and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc. This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes
are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.
The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman
refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed
and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy
, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre
has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry
, with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian
rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE
resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action
policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses. Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African American
s has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness
.
or pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. According to IBGE
this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups". In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.
White Brazilian
White Brazilians make up 48.4% of Brazil's population, or around 92 million people, according to the IBGE's 2008 PNAD . Whites are present in the entire territory of Brazil, although the main concentrations are found in the South and Southeastern parts of the country...
" (White), "pardo
Pardo
In Brazil, Pardo is a race/colour category used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in Brazilian censuses. It is a Portuguese word that encompasses various shades of brown, but is usually translated as "grayish-brown"...
" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo
Asian Brazilian
An Asian Brazilian is is a Brazilian citizen of full or partial Asian ancestry, who remains culturally connected to Asia, or an Asian-born person permanently residing in Brazil. Brazil received many immigrants from Asia, both from Middle East and East Asia...
" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".
In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests.
According to Edward Telles, in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto". The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno" (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion"). The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial). More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
Brazilian race/colour categories
The first system referred by Telles is that of the IBGE. In the Census, respondents choose their race or color in five categories: branca (white), parda (brown), preta (black), amarela (yellow) or indígena (indigenous). The term "parda" needs further explanation; it has been systematically used since Census of 1940. In that Census, people were asked for their "colour or race"; if the answer was not "White", "preta" (black), or "Yellow", interviewers were instructed to fill the "colour or race" box with a slash. These slashes were later summed up in the category "pardo". In practice this means answers such as "pardo", "moreno", "mulato", "caboclo", etc. In the following Censuses, "pardo" became a category on its own, and included Amerindians, which became a separate category only in 1991. So it is a term that describes people who have a skin darker than Whites and lighter than Blacks, but not necessarily implies a White-Black mixture.Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%. Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion
Olive skin
Olive skin describes a skin color range of some indigenous individuals who are from the Mediterranean and some other parts of Europe, Middle East and regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It may often be skin type 3 and 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale. However, this scale measures...
, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) This looks more similar to the American racial perception, but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black, and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms. According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas
Rio de Contas
Rio de Contas is a municipality in the Bahia state, in the eastern part of Brazil. Its estimated population in was 13,710.Rio de Contas has its origins in the 18th century. In 1718 the town of "Santo Antônio de Mato Grosso" was founded...
, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.
| Self-reported ancestry of people from Rio de Janeiro, by race or skin color (2000 survey) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancestry | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| European only | 48% | 6% | |
| African only | – | 12% | 25% |
| Amerindian only | – | 2% | |
| African and European | 23% | 34% | 31% |
| Amerindian and European | 14% | 6% | |
| African and Amerindian | – | 4% | 9% |
| African, Amerindian and European | 15% | 36% | 35% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Any African | 38% | 86% | 100% |
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color
Human skin color
Human skin color is primarily due to the presence of melanin in the skin. Skin color ranges from almost black to white with a pinkish tinge due to blood vessels underneath. Variation in natural skin color is mainly due to genetics, although the evolutionary causes are not completely certain...
and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc. This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes
Gênes
Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.
Conception of Black and prejudice
In Brazil, a person's "race" is based primarily on physical appearance, unlike in the United States, where ancestry is more important. In Brazil it is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who were born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European. With no strict criteria for racial classifications, lighter-skinned mulattoes were easily integrated into the white population, introducing a large proportion of African blood in the white Brazilian population, as well as a large proportion of European blood in the black population. This system is very different from that found in the United States, which had defined concepts of race due to the one drop rule so that people with any known African ancestry were automatically classified as Black, regardless of their skin color. Thus, many Black Americans have some degree of European ancestry, while few white Americans have African ancestry.The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman
Simon Schwartzman
Simon Schwartzman is a Brazilian social scientist. He has published extensively, with many books, book chapters and academic articles in the areas of comparative politics, sociology of science, social policy, and education...
refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed
Underemployment
Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the...
and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.
| Self-reported race in Brazil in 1872, 1940, 2000 and 2008 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| 1872 | 38.1% | 42.2% | 19.7% |
| 1940 | 64% | 21% | 14% |
| 2000 | 53.7% | 38.5% | 6.2% |
| 2008 | 48.8% | 43.8% | 6.5% |
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...
has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry
African diaspora
The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...
, with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE , is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil...
resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses. Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness
Black pride
Black pride is a slogan indicating pride in being black. Related movements include black nationalism and Afrocentrism.The slogan has been used in the United States by African Americans to celebrate heritage and personal pride. The black pride movement is closely linked with the developments of the...
.
The revaluation of Black identity
In the last years, Brazil has been undergoing a process of redemption of its Black identity. This process was also reflected in national censuses. Each year the percentage of Brazilians who self-report to be non-Whites (pretosor pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. According to IBGE
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE , is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil...
this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups". In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.
In Brazil, the term "preto" (black) is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco
White Brazilian
White Brazilians make up 48.4% of Brazil's population, or around 92 million people, according to the IBGE's 2008 PNAD . Whites are present in the entire territory of Brazil, although the main concentrations are found in the South and Southeastern parts of the country...
" (White), "pardo
Pardo
In Brazil, Pardo is a race/colour category used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in Brazilian censuses. It is a Portuguese word that encompasses various shades of brown, but is usually translated as "grayish-brown"...
" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo
Asian Brazilian
An Asian Brazilian is is a Brazilian citizen of full or partial Asian ancestry, who remains culturally connected to Asia, or an Asian-born person permanently residing in Brazil. Brazil received many immigrants from Asia, both from Middle East and East Asia...
" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".
In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests.
According to Edward Telles, in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto". The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno" (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion"). The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial). More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
Brazilian race/colour categories
The first system referred by Telles is that of the IBGE. In the Census, respondents choose their race or color in five categories: branca (white), parda (brown), preta (black), amarela (yellow) or indígena (indigenous). The term "parda" needs further explanation; it has been systematically used since Census of 1940. In that Census, people were asked for their "colour or race"; if the answer was not "White", "preta" (black), or "Yellow", interviewers were instructed to fill the "colour or race" box with a slash. These slashes were later summed up in the category "pardo". In practice this means answers such as "pardo", "moreno", "mulato", "caboclo", etc. In the following Censuses, "pardo" became a category on its own, and included Amerindians, which became a separate category only in 1991. So it is a term that describes people who have a skin darker than Whites and lighter than Blacks, but not necessarily implies a White-Black mixture.Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%. Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion
Olive skin
Olive skin describes a skin color range of some indigenous individuals who are from the Mediterranean and some other parts of Europe, Middle East and regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It may often be skin type 3 and 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale. However, this scale measures...
, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) This looks more similar to the American racial perception, but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black, and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms. According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas
Rio de Contas
Rio de Contas is a municipality in the Bahia state, in the eastern part of Brazil. Its estimated population in was 13,710.Rio de Contas has its origins in the 18th century. In 1718 the town of "Santo Antônio de Mato Grosso" was founded...
, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.
| Self-reported ancestry of people from Rio de Janeiro, by race or skin color (2000 survey) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancestry | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| European only | 48% | 6% | |
| African only | – | 12% | 25% |
| Amerindian only | – | 2% | |
| African and European | 23% | 34% | 31% |
| Amerindian and European | 14% | 6% | |
| African and Amerindian | – | 4% | 9% |
| African, Amerindian and European | 15% | 36% | 35% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Any African | 38% | 86% | 100% |
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color
Human skin color
Human skin color is primarily due to the presence of melanin in the skin. Skin color ranges from almost black to white with a pinkish tinge due to blood vessels underneath. Variation in natural skin color is mainly due to genetics, although the evolutionary causes are not completely certain...
and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc. This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes
Gênes
Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.
Conception of Black and prejudice
In Brazil, a person's "race" is based primarily on physical appearance, unlike in the United States, where ancestry is more important. In Brazil it is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who were born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European. With no strict criteria for racial classifications, lighter-skinned mulattoes were easily integrated into the white population, introducing a large proportion of African blood in the white Brazilian population, as well as a large proportion of European blood in the black population. This system is very different from that found in the United States, which had defined concepts of race due to the one drop rule so that people with any known African ancestry were automatically classified as Black, regardless of their skin color. Thus, many Black Americans have some degree of European ancestry, while few white Americans have African ancestry.The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman
Simon Schwartzman
Simon Schwartzman is a Brazilian social scientist. He has published extensively, with many books, book chapters and academic articles in the areas of comparative politics, sociology of science, social policy, and education...
refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed
Underemployment
Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the...
and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.
| Self-reported race in Brazil in 1872, 1940, 2000 and 2008 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| 1872 | 38.1% | 42.2% | 19.7% |
| 1940 | 64% | 21% | 14% |
| 2000 | 53.7% | 38.5% | 6.2% |
| 2008 | 48.8% | 43.8% | 6.5% |
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...
has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry
African diaspora
The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...
, with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE , is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil...
resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses. Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness
Black pride
Black pride is a slogan indicating pride in being black. Related movements include black nationalism and Afrocentrism.The slogan has been used in the United States by African Americans to celebrate heritage and personal pride. The black pride movement is closely linked with the developments of the...
.
The revaluation of Black identity
In the last years, Brazil has been undergoing a process of redemption of its Black identity. This process was also reflected in national censuses. Each year the percentage of Brazilians who self-report to be non-Whites (pretosor pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. According to IBGE
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE , is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil...
this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups". In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.
In Brazil, the term "preto" (black) is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco
White Brazilian
White Brazilians make up 48.4% of Brazil's population, or around 92 million people, according to the IBGE's 2008 PNAD . Whites are present in the entire territory of Brazil, although the main concentrations are found in the South and Southeastern parts of the country...
" (White), "pardo
Pardo
In Brazil, Pardo is a race/colour category used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in Brazilian censuses. It is a Portuguese word that encompasses various shades of brown, but is usually translated as "grayish-brown"...
" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo
Asian Brazilian
An Asian Brazilian is is a Brazilian citizen of full or partial Asian ancestry, who remains culturally connected to Asia, or an Asian-born person permanently residing in Brazil. Brazil received many immigrants from Asia, both from Middle East and East Asia...
" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".
In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests.
According to Edward Telles, in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto". The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno" (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion"). The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial). More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
Brazilian race/colour categories
The first system referred by Telles is that of the IBGE. In the Census, respondents choose their race or color in five categories: branca (white), parda (brown), preta (black), amarela (yellow) or indígena (indigenous). The term "parda" needs further explanation; it has been systematically used since Census of 1940. In that Census, people were asked for their "colour or race"; if the answer was not "White", "preta" (black), or "Yellow", interviewers were instructed to fill the "colour or race" box with a slash. These slashes were later summed up in the category "pardo". In practice this means answers such as "pardo", "moreno", "mulato", "caboclo", etc. In the following Censuses, "pardo" became a category on its own, and included Amerindians, which became a separate category only in 1991. So it is a term that describes people who have a skin darker than Whites and lighter than Blacks, but not necessarily implies a White-Black mixture.Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%. Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion
Olive skin
Olive skin describes a skin color range of some indigenous individuals who are from the Mediterranean and some other parts of Europe, Middle East and regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It may often be skin type 3 and 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale. However, this scale measures...
, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) This looks more similar to the American racial perception, but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black, and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms. According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas
Rio de Contas
Rio de Contas is a municipality in the Bahia state, in the eastern part of Brazil. Its estimated population in was 13,710.Rio de Contas has its origins in the 18th century. In 1718 the town of "Santo Antônio de Mato Grosso" was founded...
, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.
| Self-reported ancestry of people from Rio de Janeiro, by race or skin color (2000 survey) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancestry | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| European only | 48% | 6% | |
| African only | – | 12% | 25% |
| Amerindian only | – | 2% | |
| African and European | 23% | 34% | 31% |
| Amerindian and European | 14% | 6% | |
| African and Amerindian | – | 4% | 9% |
| African, Amerindian and European | 15% | 36% | 35% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Any African | 38% | 86% | 100% |
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color
Human skin color
Human skin color is primarily due to the presence of melanin in the skin. Skin color ranges from almost black to white with a pinkish tinge due to blood vessels underneath. Variation in natural skin color is mainly due to genetics, although the evolutionary causes are not completely certain...
and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc. This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes
Gênes
Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.
Conception of Black and prejudice
In Brazil, a person's "race" is based primarily on physical appearance, unlike in the United States, where ancestry is more important. In Brazil it is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who were born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European. With no strict criteria for racial classifications, lighter-skinned mulattoes were easily integrated into the white population, introducing a large proportion of African blood in the white Brazilian population, as well as a large proportion of European blood in the black population. This system is very different from that found in the United States, which had defined concepts of race due to the one drop rule so that people with any known African ancestry were automatically classified as Black, regardless of their skin color. Thus, many Black Americans have some degree of European ancestry, while few white Americans have African ancestry.The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman
Simon Schwartzman
Simon Schwartzman is a Brazilian social scientist. He has published extensively, with many books, book chapters and academic articles in the areas of comparative politics, sociology of science, social policy, and education...
refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed
Underemployment
Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the...
and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.
| Self-reported race in Brazil in 1872, 1940, 2000 and 2008 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| 1872 | 38.1% | 42.2% | 19.7% |
| 1940 | 64% | 21% | 14% |
| 2000 | 53.7% | 38.5% | 6.2% |
| 2008 | 48.8% | 43.8% | 6.5% |
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...
has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry
African diaspora
The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...
, with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE , is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil...
resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses. Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness
Black pride
Black pride is a slogan indicating pride in being black. Related movements include black nationalism and Afrocentrism.The slogan has been used in the United States by African Americans to celebrate heritage and personal pride. The black pride movement is closely linked with the developments of the...
.
The revaluation of Black identity
In the last years, Brazil has been undergoing a process of redemption of its Black identity. This process was also reflected in national censuses. Each year the percentage of Brazilians who self-report to be non-Whites (pretosor pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. According to IBGE
IBGE
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE , is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil...
this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups". In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.