Racial Identity in Brazil

Racial Identity in Brazil

Luso-Brazilian Review
Volume 1, Number 2 (Winter, 1964)
pages 21-28

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

According to the 1950 census, the population of Brazil consisted of 61.66% brancos, 26.54% pardos, and 10.6% pretos. In the I.B.G.E.’s 1961 review of these facts, the following caution is registered:

In order to avoid erroneous interpretation, it must be remembered that there is no barrier of racial prejudices in Brazil which divides whites from non-whites as in the United States and that in Rio the label “white” is bestowed with a liberality that would be inconceivable in Washington. One must presume that a study made in conformity with objective criteria would show the proportion of whites to be inferior to that indicated by the census. However, it would be extremely difficult to clearly separate brancos morenos from pardos de matiz claro and pardos de matiz escuro from pretos. (IBGE 1961:169).

The unreliability of Brazilian racial statistics has nothing to do with the alleged absence of “barriers of racial prejudice.” The myth that Brazilians have no racial prejudices has been exposed by numerous studies carried out in both northeastern and southern portions of the country (Bastide and Fernandes 1959; Costa Pinto 1953; Wagley 1951; Harris 1956; Hutchinson 1958, etc.). It has by now been convincingly demonstrated that Negroes throughout Brazil are abstractly regarded as innately inferior in intelligence, honesty and dependability; that negroid features are universally (even by Negroes themselves) believed to be less desirable, less handsome or beautiful than caucasoid features; that in most of their evaluations of the Negro as an abstract type, the whites are inclined to deride and slander; and that prejudiced stereotyped opinions about people of intermediate physical appearance are also common. One may speak in other words of an ideal or abstract racial ranking gradient in Brazil in which the white physical type occupies the favorable extreme, the Negro type the unfavorable extreme, and the mulatto type the various intermediate positions…

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