brazil whitening

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The multiple dimensions ofracial mixture in Rio de Janeiro,Brazil: from whitening toBrazilian negritudeGraziella Moraes D. Silva & Elisa P. ReisPublished online: 01 Aug 2011.

To cite this article: Graziella Moraes D. Silva & Elisa P. Reis (2012) Themultiple dimensions of racial mixture in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: from whiteningto Brazilian negritude, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35:3, 382-399, DOI:10.1080/01419870.2011.589524

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The multiple dimensions of racial mixture

in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: from whitening to

Brazilian negritude

Graziella Moraes D. Silva and Elisa P. Reis

(First submission June 2010; First published August 2011)

AbstractThe notion that racial mixture is a central feature of Latin Americansocieties has been interpreted in different, if not strictly opposite, ways.On the one hand, scholars have presented it as evidence of weaker racialboundaries. On the other, it has been denounced as an expression of theillusion of harmonic racial relations. Relying on 160 interviews with blackBrazilians, we argue that the valorization of racial mixture is animportant response to stigmatization, but one that has multiple dimen-sions and different consequences for the maintenance of racial bound-aries. We map out these different dimensions namely, whitening,Brazilian negritude, national identification and non-essentialist raci-alism and discuss how these dimensions are combined in different waysby our interviewees according to various circumstances. Exploring thesemultiple dimensions, we question any simplistic understanding of racialmixture as the blessing or the curse of Latin American racial dynamics.

Keywords: Brazil; racial mixture; multiracialism; racial identification;

destigmatization; racial boundaries.

Introduction

The celebration of racial mixture has been presented as a key featureof race relations in Latin American countries when compared toothers, particularly the USA (Wade 1997; Telles and Sue 2009).1 Fromthe 1920s onwards, the process of nation building in the region haslargely relied on ideas like cosmic race, racial democracy and mestizaje.More recently, the positive evaluation of racial mixture has beenstrongly contested by counter-hegemonic discourses that identify it as

Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 35 No. 3 March 2012 pp. 382399

# 2012 Taylor & FrancisISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 onlinehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.589524

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a tool to reproduce and reinforce racism. Yet both interpretations ofracial mixture in Latin America tend to be one-dimensional in thesense that scholars usually view racial mixture as either good or bad,rather than as a complex framework used to make sense of racialboundaries. Moreover, existing interpretations for racial mixturenearly always take into account only macrohistorical and/or structuralfactors, neglecting peoples beliefs and experiences on such matters(exceptions are Wade 1993, 2005).

By relying on 160 interviews with black Brazilians eighty workingclass and eighty middle class we pursue two complementary tasks.On the one hand, we explore the competing interpretations providedby previous scholarship. On the other, we broaden the focus to includea consideration of the perspectives of actors, their everyday experi-ences and interpretations of racial mixture. Following Boltanski,Darre and Schiltz (1984), instead of viewing actors frames as falseconsciousness (as critics of racial mixture often do), we view theirperception as a crucial dimension of the constitution of social reality.However, we also take into account the perceptions and realities ofracism, often ignored by those who celebrate Latin Americanhybridity.

Our article starts by identifying how racial mixture has beencelebrated and denounced in most of the literature about race relationsin Latin America, and particularly in Brazil the reference point forcomparisons to the USA. Next we lay out the academic debates andmap the contours of contemporary attitudes in Brazil regarding racialmixture. We then present our methods and main results regardingperceptions of racial mixture.

In our interviews, racial mixture appears as a key response tostigmatization (Lamont, Morning and Mooney 2002), albeit one thathas multiple dimensions and diverse consequences for the maintenanceof racial boundaries as well as different interpretations across classgroups. We found four different, but co-existent, cognitive frameworksused by our interviewees to understand racial mixture: whitening,Brazilian negritude, national identificatio, and non-essentialist racial-ism. We also found that these different frameworks vary in salienceamong working-class and middle-class respondents. In particular, weargue that in Brazil the definition of blackness incorporates racialmixture as a key element. In addition, racial mixture serves to de-essentialize or blur understandings of racial boundaries, which arelargely perceived by our interviewees as contextual.2

It is crucial to stress that in this article we make a conceptualdistinction between racial democracy and racial mixture. The notionof racial democracy is a normative position and a political myth thatdownplays racial differences. In contrast, racial mixture is perceived asa taken-for-granted element of interpersonal relations and is not

The multiple dimensions of racial mixture in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 383

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incompatible with the use of racial identification as a tool for collectiveaction to fight discrimination and racial inequalities. Moreover, racialmixture allows for a non-essentialist understanding of race, as wediscuss in detail below.

Racial mixture in Latin America

The celebration of racial mixture was a key nation-building strategy inmost Latin American countries from the mid-twentieth centuryonwards (Andrews 2004). By valuing mixture, intellectual elites inLatin America were addressing the challenge of building nations inregions where mestizos, Indians and Africans were most commonly amajority (Stern 2003).

Initially, racial mixture seemed to be an official governmentalstrategy for whitening the population encouraging Europeanimmigration in order to increase the percentage of white blood inthe population (Viana 1922; Stepan 1991). In opposition to main-stream ideologies that defined race mixture as degrading, the Mexicanphilosopher Jose Vasconcelos (Vasconcelos and Fernandez Macgregor1942) redefined it as the future of humanity. In his influential 1925book La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race), Vasconcelos stated thatbecause people in Latin America carried in themselves the mixture ofpeople from all races white Europeans, black Africans andsupposedly native Indians of Asian descent it would be the bestplace to create a superior civilization.

The celebration of racial mixture rapidly spread throughout LatinAmerica during the mid-early twentieth century under different labels:Raza Cosmica in Mexico, modern Criollismo in Peru, Racial Democ-racy or Democracia Morena in Brazil, Afro-Latin non-racialism inCuba, and national Mestizage in Colombia. Naturally, nationalmovements in favour of mixture prospered differently across contexts,yet all these countries had national projects in which culturaldifferences between whites and non-whites were underplayed in favourof a new and mixed identity.

In recent decades, the positive value of racial mixture has beenstrongly challenged. Scholars have increasingly denounced racialmixture as an illusion or a false ideology, which reinforces the assumedsuperiority of whiteness (Hanchard 1994; Guimaraes and Huntley2000; Sidanius, Pena and Sawyer 2001; Sawyer forthcoming). Thepersistence of racial inequalities is the most compelling evidence ofhow, despite widespread racial mixture, racial hierarchies remainedalmost intact throughout the region, leading several authors to arguethat rather than a racial democracy, Latin America is a racial hell(Patterson 2005).

384 Graziella Moraes D. Silva and Elisa P. Reis

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Racial mixture in Brazil: competing interpretations

A number of authors have historically and currently identifiedracial mixture as a key feature of Brazilian race relations and nationbuilding (Zweig and Stern 1941; Costa 2001; Daniel 2006). Braziliancelebration of racial mixture became commonly associated to the ideaof racial democracy. Attributed to Gilberto Freyres seminal work,Masters and Slaves (Freyre 1933), the idea of racial democracy hasbeen celebrated and denounced in most of the literature aboutBrazilian race relations since the 1930s (Guimaraes 2001). Racialdemocracy has been defined in different ways, but its core idea mightbe summarized as the belief that Brazilian historical racial mixturecreated a society with weaker racial boundaries.

Racial mixture has been empirically analysed in studies on inter-racial relationships (Azevedo 1955; Staley 1959; Moutinho 2004;Telles 2004; Silva and Reis 2011). A recent paper by Ribeiro and Silva(2009) reviews and updates findings about interracial marriage inBrazil. Relying on three waves of census data (19802000), the authorsfound that interracial marriages have grown since 1980, but are stillmuch more common among browns and whites than among blacks.3

Their findings give support to two of the main interpretations of racialmixture in Brazil: while the growth of interracial marriages supportsthe theses of weak racial boundaries, the preference for whites andbrowns over blacks in intimate and marital relationships supports thethesis that racial mixture hides a preference for whitening. Mostanalysts, however, have focused on the implications of racial mixture,rather than its demographical dimension.

Racial mixture and the ideal of integration

Nowadays no scholar would claim that racial democracy is a reality inBrazil. A number of scholars, however, call attention to the benefits ofracial mixture in weakening boundaries between blacks and whites.Fry (2005) develops the idea that due to racial and cultural mixture,the concept of race itself is problematic in the Brazilian context. Whilenot denying that miscegenation was based on power, exploitation andslavery, and acknowledging that there is widespread racial prejudice inthis country, he claims that Brazilian racial divisions are not as rigid asin other places like the USA.

Survey results show that belief in and support for Brazilian racialmixture is pervasive across racial and educational groups. A 2003national survey on Brazilian utopias found that 76 per cent ofrespondents believed that this society is an example of racial andcultural mixture to be followed by other countries.4 Similarly, in a2008 national survey, a large majority (89 per cent) also agreed with


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statements such as a good thing about Brazilian people is racemixture.5

This does not mean Brazilians do not recognize racism in thatsame survey, 90 per cent across race and class believed that whites areprejudiced against negroes. Bailey (2004) argues that the acknowl-edgement of racial inequalities and the belief in racial democracy arenot a contradiction, because Brazilians believe in racial democracy asa goal not as a reality. Using survey data, he shows that mostBrazilians do recognize the reality of racism, and even support race-targeted policies. However, they also believe that race relations inBrazil should be inclusive and policies should rely more often on non-racial criteria (Bailey 2002, 2004). Along the same lines, Reis (1996)discusses how support for racial democracy is part of a universal (andrepublican) understanding of national belonging, rather than sympto-matic of a denial of racism and discrimination.

Other scholars, however, have focused on how the denial of racialdifferences may prevent blacks from organizing and demanding civil,political and social rights. Thus they argue that racial democracy is anillusion rather than an ideal.

Racial mixture as an illusion

Degler (1971) suggests that racial mixture is a central featuredifferentiating Brazil and the USA. However, in contrast to Freyre,he views racial mixture not as a tool of inclusion, but as an individualstrategy of social mobility. Degler cites the example of mulattos: whilein the USA they were defined as blacks, in Brazil, browns were able tobecome white through upward mobility what he called the mulattoescape hatch (Degler 1971, page 225).

Although a number of studies have shown that the socioeconomicprofiles of blacks and browns are actually very similar (Hasenbalg1979; Silva 1979; Telles 2004), the mulatto escape hatch remains anillustration of the assumed desire of whitening among BrazilianAfro-descendents. The celebration of racial mixture has been de-nounced as a mask of Brazilian racism the cornerstone of the racialdemocracy ideology (Munanga 2008). In accordance with suchperspective, people of African descent (those who self-identify asblack and brown on the census) should abandon racially mixedcategories and mobilize around their black identities.

Survey results show that despite a normative commitment to racialequality, most Brazilians have a preference for whites for instance, inquestions that concern preferences for marriage partners. The 2003Social Survey Brazil (PESB) showed respondents different pictures ofwhites, browns and blacks, attributing to them occupations from low(mechanic) to middle (teacher) and high (lawyer) statuses. It asked


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them who they would like to have as a son-in-law.6 Only approximately15 per cent of respondents of all racial backgrounds stated nopreference or non-racial attitudes and whites were consistentlythe most desired sons-in-law, regardless of their occupational status(Almeida 2007).

***

With the recent implementation of racial quotas in public uni-versities, these different views concerning the character of racerelations in Brazil have become more sharply contrasted (Peria2004). While a larger number of scholars take sides in the increasinglyheated debate (e.g. Guimaraes 2006; Fry and Maggie 2007), ourinterviewees borrow elements from both sides when discussing theirracial identities, affirmative action, racial democracy and theirBrazilian-ness. Dismissing the notion that racial mixture is anexpression of false consciousness, interviewees demonstrate greatsophistication in their evaluations of the Brazilian racial order, relyingon local, national and global repertoires of racial identification. Theypoint to important differences in power across racial groups, especiallyin narratives about discrimination, prejudice and inequality. Whilethey often stress the importance of racial mixture, they do notsubscribe to the idea of racial democracy and are also highly awareof racial hierarchies and the need to address them.

Methods

During 2007 and 2008, we conducted 160 in-depth interviews withblack professionals and working-class individuals in Rio de Janeiro,with a team of six interviewers.

Site selection

Rio de Janeiro has a considerable black population as well as a stronghistorical presence of black organizations. Its population is 39.3 percent brown, 12.4 per cent black and 47.4 per cent white. Thisdistribution is very similar to that of Brazil (43.1 per cent brown 7.6per cent black and 47.7 per cent white, according to Brazilian Census2010). The city was the political capital of Brazil until 1960 and it stillhas a high concentration of public offices (with public serviceemployment being one of the most important avenues for mobilityfor blacks in Brazil). Today Rios regional economy is the second mostimportant in the country. Unquestionably, however, race experiencesvary considerably among different local contexts, and focusing on aspecific city raises the issue of the generalizability of our results.


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Sampling

Our sample was intentionally split between working-class and middle-class respondents. We expected that racial mixture would be perceiveddifferently across class groups based on the previous literature, whichshowed that the black working class positively value race relations inBrazil (Sheriff 2001; Sansone 2003), while the black middle class tendsto be more critical of it (Figueiredo 2002).

For the working-class respondents selection, we hired a firm toselect potential participants relying on street recruitment in working-class neighbourhoods. Recruiters did not know it was a study aboutrace. The list of potential participants was created based on ourrequirements: having a high school diploma, being between twenty-five and sixty-five years old, holding a formal job for at least one year,and no previous participation in any type of academic or marketingstudy. The final sample was selected from this list and composed offorty people who identified as brown (pardo) and forty people whoidentified as black (preto), evenly distributed across age and gender.

For the second group, we used another strategy due to the smallnumbers of blacks in middle-class neighbourhoods. Ten respondentswere found through contacts with human resource managers in largecorporations in oil, telecommunication, health and banking. We askedthem connect us with black senior employees. The rest of therespondents were found through snowball sampling beginning withthese initial respondents. Middle-class respondents met the samecriteria as working-class respondents, but for the fact that they haveuniversity degrees and a professional occupation.

More details about methods and sampling strategy can be providedby the authors upon request.

Racial mixture and its multiple cognitive frameworks

Our interview schedule included a few questions directly addressingracial mixture. Consistent with published survey data, in reply to thesequestions, most interviewees stated having experienced interracialintimate relationships and not having a racial preference for whomtheir children should marry. Most references to racial mixture,however, were spontaneous in reference to their family backgrounds,black movements and when describing Brazilian society. Analysingour data we identified four dimensions of racial mixture used in theirnarratives. Table 1 categorizes these dimensions into four groups listedbelow from the least to the most cited a valorization of whitening, asa manifestation of Brazilian negritude, as a crucial component ofnational identification and as an expression of non-essentialistracialism.


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Table 1. The multiple dimensions of racial mixture

Whitening Brazilian negritude National identity Non-essentialist racialism

Frequency 17% (27) 43% (68) 53% (85) 66% (106)

Symbolic boundaries Against blacks Against whites Against racists Blurred and contextual

Class differences MC middle class WC working class

More frequent among WC(25% vs 11% MC)

More frequent among MC(49% vs 36% WC)

More frequent among MC(60% vs 51% WC)

Frequent in both classgroups (69% MC and 64%WC)

Interview questions inwhich it commonlycame up

Family/personal history Racial ID and meaning Description of Brazil,comparison USA,affirmative action

Equality of racial groups,racial ID, family history,description of Brazil

Example White aestheticspreference

Those who are mixed arealso negroes

Racial mixture is the bestthing about Brazil

We are equal because weare all mixed

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While the interviewees widely varied in their evaluations of Brazilianrace relations and experiences of discrimination, nearly all perceivedracial mixture as an everyday experience. Few interviewees consistentlyreferred to only one dimension of racial mixture throughout theinterview. In most interviews, all these dimensions co-existed, but withdifferent frequencies and emphases. Our goal here is not to judge howappropriate or coherent interviewees understandings are, but toexplore the different dimensions respondents mobilize when talkingabout racial mixture.

Racial mixture as whitening

A first dimension of racial mixture is found in descriptions thatexpress a direct or indirect avoidance of blackness, a valuing ofwhiteness, or a celebration of whitening. This is also the meaning givento it by most researchers critical to the celebration of racial mixture inLatin America, who conceive it as the search for whitening in disguise(e.g. Munanga 2008), although they have yet to analyse the meaningsof whitening (but see Hofbauer 2006).

Explicit and normative celebration of whitening was rare amongrespondents and mentions of it were usually made in reference to thepast and older family members. In their personal histories, forexample, a few interviewees mentioned how grandparents expectedtheir children to marry someone lighter. More commonly, a number ofinterviewees mentioned that, when younger, they would avoid signal-ling their blackness by straightening their hair (woman) or cutting itshort (men). Most interviewees, however, saw those situations as aregrettable past, which they now interpret critically. The followingquotation comes from a thirty-year-old female project director at aninternational non-governmental organization (NGO):

My grandmother, who had to deal with the transition from slavery,would classify us, her granddaughters, according to our hair straighter or curlier. The straighter, the better. My sister once dateda really white boy, green eyes. And my grandmother used to say she could have married him, he was a good boy. She did not talk tohim for more than 30 minutes. Maybe what she believed was that bymarrying him my sister would be better placed in society, herchildren would not face the same problems we had.

Among working-class interviewees, references to multi-raciality as therefusal of blackness were more common. Those who chose a mixedidentity (as pardos or morenos) oscillated between aligning themselveswith blacks as underprivileged non-whites and denying personalexperiences of discrimination in referring to blacks as they.


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Most of our interviewees, however, claimed to be proud of theirblackness and refused white standards as the desirable norm. Expres-sing black pride, most middle-class respondents said they preferred tobe called negros rather than morenos or pardos.

Racial mixture as the Brazilian negritude7

The second dimension of racial mixture is that of Brazilian negritude,broadly interpreted as a rejection of white identity. Within such aframework nobody in Brazil is perceived as really white (Sovik 2009)and browns and blacks should celebrate their negritude.

The term negro is the most political term to define racial identities inBrazil. The Brazilian black movement has historically advocated thatall those who identify as black and brown be designated as negro ingovernmental statistics. While negro used to be employed as an insult,it is now used as a valuable marker. A growing number of black andbrown Brazilians choose the term negro to self-define (Silva 2010).This rising racial awareness is criticized as tantamount to theAmericanization, or racialization, of Brazilian society in conflictwith the ideas and practices of racial mixture (Fry and Maggie 2007).

Although more than half of interviewees identified as negro at somepoint in their interviews two-thirds in the professional sample theydid not give up their racially mixed identities and rejected any type ofcategorical racial difference between blacks and whites that is whatdifferentiates the Brazilian negritude from other racial consciousnessmovements like the French negritude or the South African blackconsciousness.

When asked how they self-identify and are perceived racially, in linewith Jenkins (1996), most interviewees described their non-whiteidentity as resulting from (1) imposed social categorization asnon-white when being discriminated against, and (2) chosen self-identification as black in reference to Afro cultural and politicalrepertoires that became more salient with globalization (Gilroy 1993).As one of our male interviewees put it half-jokingly, being negro iscurrently fashionable in Brazil.

Imposed categorization was described by most interviewees astaking place in anonymous interactions in which they were identifiedas low status because of their phenotype. Even interviewees whodeclared themselves brown and rejected a negro identity said they wereunable to avoid experiencing racial stigmatization. Social categoriza-tion, however, can be in tension with self-identification as illustratedby this quotation by a twenty-nine-year-old female dental assistant,who identified as parda:


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Some people say I am negra. Everybody says: if you are not white,you are black (passou de branco, preto e). My husband is preto, hehas straight hair, and I tell him he is my chocolate. People say he isblack, I think he is moreno.People say I am preta because my fatheris preto, but I say I am morena. But if everybody says I am preta. . . Itis because it is true. In my birth certificate I am parda, but. . . I amnot white. I am not negra either. . . But if you compare black towhite, then I am black, not white.

Thus racial mixture makes difficult a consistent racial classification forrespondents as they cross social contexts and situations. This inter-viewee described her identity as relational and situational. Shepreferred to identify as mixed but is often categorized as black andat moments embraced this classification.

This interviewee would commonly be classified by black militants assomeone who lacks racial consciousness as she does not affirm herblack identity as negra. Less discussed in the literature are those ofracially mixed backgrounds who choose the negro identity. Manyinterviewees had mixed-race parents but self-identified as negro. It is inthe identification process that these ethnic choices become clear. Thefollowing quotation comes from a thirty-four-year-old male designer,who identified as negro and preto. He explained why he stated that heis proud to be a negro:

[I am a negro.] It is not the only identity I have, I also havePortuguese origins. But I chose that [of negro] due to a culturalconnection. I think that to be a negro is not more important than tobe white or Asian, or any other origin, I think it is the same. The keydifference to all other [racial groups], is the greater need to affirmitself due to the Brazilian and world history of slavery.

If most interviewees were quick to state their pride in being negro,they were also quick to reject any type of racial exclusion becausethey are members of this group. For example, most were highlycritical of what they see as the black movement strategy ofencouraging intra-racial marriages even if some were pre-emptiveabout bringing a justification for not marrying a black person despitetheir discourse of black pride. Racial mixture was commonly praisedas a key national characteristic. Most interviewees did not simplyidentify as negroes, but as Brazilian negroes who are implicitlydefined as multiracial/multiethnic. This is why the affirmation ofBrazilian negritude has to take into account this defining feature ofBrazilian society: racial mixture.


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Racial mixture as national identification

A third dimension of racial mixture repeatedly emphasized by mostrespondents and particularly by middle-class individuals, is preciselythat racial mixture is intrinsic to Brazilian identity. In their view, racialmixture defines Brazil by creating Brazilians who all share a mixedcultural and racial background. Racial mixture is affirmed byrespondents as a founding myth of the Brazilian nation-state. Whenasked what the good things about Brazil are, a forty-six-year-old male,working as a financial analyst at a hedge fund, who identified as negroand preto said:

Our miscegenation. . . It is funny, there is racial prejudice here, but Ithink it is interesting this thing of having miscegenation and creatinga new people [um povo novo]. Brazil has a lot to teach the worldabout tolerance. I think comparing what I got, in my childhood, towhat my daughters get today. Brazil is evolving a lot on that issue.

Thus, the celebration of racial mixture can be congruent with theacknowledgement of racism and discrimination. But, it is alsoconcomitant with greater tolerance another defining characteristicof Brazil, according to our interviewees. This forty-seven-year-old drilltechnician captures the tensions between acknowledging racism andcelebrating racial mixture:

There are so many [good things in Brazil] . . . But I think it isintegration. Because the original cultures, inherited from Africa, likesamba, the cooking style are well accepted by Brazilians, andtherefore. . . It is contradictory, it is a racist country, the staterecognizes racism, but not the majority of the population. . . You seethe examples in the samba schools, or in a feijoada, you see whiteintegrating, relating to blacks and co-existing in a very special andintimate way. . . I think this is an advantage Brazil has. There is thepossibility of integration, and there is the possibility of stoppingracism because of that. Because it is a minority of whites who wantto keep their privileges, who thinks they are better, who areignorant. The great majority [of whites] do not discriminate, theyintegrate, date, get along, love [other blacks].

It is important to stress that there is a silence about the place of whitesin this national myth. Differently from other national contexts, whitesare not defined as the others or as the oppressors by non-whites.In fact, it is unclear what whiteness means in Brazil (Hofbauer 2006;Sovik 2009).


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In short, for a large number of interviewees, being Brazilian meansbeing racially mixed this is Brazils greatest richness. Even if nearlyall interviewees agreed that Brazil is not a racial democracy, racialmixture was presented as fostering tolerance through blurring racialboundaries as discussed in the next section.

Racial mixture as non-essentialist racialism

A fourth dimension of racial mixture salient in our interviews is whatwe termed non-essentialist racialism or a perception of Brazilianracial boundaries as contextual. This is not the same as claiming thatBrazilian racial boundaries are weak. In line with survey results, nearlyall interviewees acknowledged the existence of racial hierarchies inBrazil, and many also supported the legitimacy of racially targetedpolicies and racialized social movements (Bailey 2004). But theexistence of racialism, defined as the existence of racial boundaries,is recognized but not essentialized as an absolute distinction. Throughtheir insistence on the centrality of racial mixture, as an ideal and as afeature of their society, they perceive these racial boundaries incontextual rather than in absolute terms. Instead of opposing whitesversus blacks, they perceive different racial boundaries depending onthe situation: sometimes these boundaries are grounded in morality(e.g. racists versus non-racists), sometimes in phenotype (e.g. darkerversus lighter), sometimes in discrimination (e.g. those who arediscriminated versus those who are not) and sometimes in identifica-tion (e.g. Brazilians who embrace racial mixture versus those who wantto embrace white-European identities).

We asked a number of questions about perceptions of equality anddifference and the best ways to reduce inequality and discrimination todraw comparisons between stigmatized groups in Brazil, Israel and theUSA (see Fleming, Lamont and Welburn in this issue and Mizrachiand Herzog in this issue). In Brazil, we found that racial mixtureappeared frequently as a key strategy to create equality, tolerance anddialogue. This aspect is illustrated by a twenty-six-year-old male whoworks as a technical assistant in a small business (no universitydegree). He self-identified as negro and preto. When we asked him howhe reacted when he felt someone was treating him in a racist way, hereplied:

I ask: Why are you prejudiced against me if you are also a negro?Look at my color, it is like yours. Look at the roots of my hair, arentthey like yours? If we cut here, the blood will be as red as yours. Sohow can you discriminate against me? We are Brazilians, we live in acountry in which everybody is negro, or ndio, or derived fromwhites. Nobody is white. How can you discriminate against me if


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you are derived from white, negro, and indigeneous? We are allmixed.

As mentioned earlier, most respondents had multiracial parents andmany others were in interracial marriages. Although a few mentionedresistance from the spouses family in the initial phases of therelationship, most reported smoothly overcoming it. And when probedabout whether it would be different to be married to someone from thesame racial group, most responded negatively, stating that we are allequal, that love is colour-blind, and that it would be racist to even asksuch questions.

A number of interviewees, especially working class, also stated thatbeing proud of their racially mixed background automaticallyprevented them from being racist. Among black professionals, awidespread perception was that those who were aware of their raciallymixed backgrounds were in a better position to create racial dialogueand resist racism. Affirming ones identity as racially mixed andchoosing interracial relationships work in their narratives as an anti-racist strategy by questioning the existence of essentialized racialboundaries, even if the existence of racism is still acknowledged.

Concluding remarks

If races are social constructs, then understandings of racial mixture aresimilarly contextual and negotiable (Wade 2005). Consistently, themeaning of racial mixture has changed through time: from the desireof whitening of the nineteenth century to the celebration of hybridityin post-colonial studies (Costa 2001).

In Latin America, most studies about racial mixture have pre-supposed fixed and one-dimensional definitions, rather than allowingfor the complex everyday understandings. By relying on multiplenarratives, we found that in Brazil racial mixture is used to reject negroidentities, but also to support them. It is used to forge a nationalidentity, but also to challenge its homogeneity. But above all racialmixture is the predominant framework through which race relationsare understood.

Class differences have an impact in the understanding of racialmixture. While narratives about racial mixture are salient across classgroups, the reasons for positively evaluating it are very distinctbetween them. Working-class respondents sometimes equated racialmixture to whitening, although this dimension was relatively rare. Bycontrast, middle-class respondents often associated racial mixture witha celebration of negritude, an original framing of racial mixture thatseems to be on the rise. Yet, in both class groups, racial mixtureappeared as a response to stigmatization and an antiracism strategy.


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The most common use of racial mixture was for the affirmation of anational identity and for the understanding of racial boundaries ascontextual.

More than a deliberate strategy, racial mixture appeared as a filterthrough which most respondents evaluated their racial identity. Ifbeing a negro is a chosen ethnicity, being racially mixed is understoodas a fact of life for most interviewees. Racial mixture works partly as aBrazilian brand of multiculturalism: it is through mixture that newforms of identity and culture are created.

Our primary contribution lies in the revelation of the multiplicity offrames used to understand racial mixture, overlooked in previousstudies. Here we presented a map of these different frames andsuggested that they are combined in different ways according todifferent circumstances. The causes and conditions under whichsuch frames are articulated need to be further explored, as does theabsence of other frames, such as, for example, multiculturalism.Future research should explore the distribution and relevance of thesedifferent frames in other regions of Brazil and elsewhere. Thedefinition of whiteness in the context of widespread racial mixture isalso a topic that deserves further research.

We are not arguing that racial mixture is the panacea for racerelations in Latin America. Most of our interviewees stressed howracial discrimination is still alive and strong in Brazil. Stating thatracial boundaries are contextual is not the same as saying that they areweak. In addition, we do not subscribe to the idea that racial mixturemakes organization around collective identities or differences unwork-able. The idea of Brazilian negritude well illustrates that racialidentification can assume original shapes. Yet, even the most militantrespondents acknowledge that mixture plays a key role, though not asufficient one, in the negotiation of racial boundaries in Brazil.

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Weatherhead Center for InternationalAffairs (WCFIA) at Harvard University, the Brazilian NationalResearch Council (CNPq) and the State of Rio de Janeiro ScienceFoundation (FAPERJ). We are grateful to Stan Bailey, Brenna Powelland the editors of this special edition, Miche`le Lamont and NissimMisrachi, for their suggestions. Our thanks also to David Williams,who commented on an earlier draft presented at the Conference onResponses to Discrimination and Racism: Comparative Perspectives.We also received insightful suggestions at the Canadian Institute forAdvanced Research (CIFAR) Successful Societies Program meeting.Finally, we thank the three ERS blind reviewers for their thoughtful


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comments and critiques. Of course, all shortcomings are our respon-sibility.

Notes

1. Our definition of racial mixture follows that of the review provided in Telles and Sue

(2009).

2. We use Albas (2005) definition of blurred versus bright boundaries to convey the idea

that due to racial mixture, racial boundaries in Brazil are perceived as changing their

characteristics contextually. We are not arguing that Brazilian racial boundaries are weaker

or more permeable to individuals, but that their meaning and function can vary.

3. The Brazilian official colour/race census categories are preto (black), pardo (brown),

branco (white), amarelo (yellow) and indgena (indigenous).

4. 2003 Datafolha on Brazilian Utopias, our tabulations.

5. 2008 Racismo Confrontado, tabulations provided by Datafolha.

6. Interestingly, similar questions about racial preferences for having a boss, as an

employee and as a neighbour were not significant and sometimes indicated preferences forblacks over whites and browns.

7. The idea of negritude can be attributed to Senghor (1964) as part of the transnational

black consciousness movement, especially in the French-speaking African and Caribbean

countries.

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