The multiple dimensions of racial mixture in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: from whitening to Brazilian negritude

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Social Science on 2011-08-15 03:43Z by Steven

The multiple dimensions of racial mixture in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: from whitening to Brazilian negritude

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Available online: 2011-08-01
18 pages
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.589524

Graziella Moraes D. Silva
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Elisa P. Reis, Professor of Political Sociology
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

The notion that racial mixture is a central feature of Latin American societies has been interpreted in different, if not strictly opposite, ways. On the one hand, scholars have presented it as evidence of weaker racial boundaries. On the other, it has been denounced as an expression of the illusion of harmonic racial relations. Relying on 160 interviews with black Brazilians, we argue that the valorization of racial mixture is an important response to stigmatization, but one that has multiple dimensions and different consequences for the maintenance of racial boundaries. We map out these different dimensions—namely, ‘whitening’, ‘Brazilian negritude’, ‘national identification’ and ‘non-essentialist racialism’—and discuss how these dimensions are combined in different ways by our interviewees according to various circumstances. Exploring these multiple dimensions, we question any simplistic understanding of racial mixture as the blessing or the curse of Latin American racial dynamics.

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