“Não passou por branco é preto,” she often says, often tells their teenagers: If you’re not white, you’re black.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2015-08-05 01:30Z by Steven

When she fills out the census, Ms. de Lucena ticks the box for “negra.” Her husband, Joacinei Araújo de Lucena, 48, has a black parent and a white one, just like she does, but identifies himself as “pardo,” or brown. He insists that he, Ms. de Lucena and their two children are mixed – not one, not the other – and that mixed is a race of its own. Ms. de Lucena doesn’t buy it. “Não passou por branco é preto,” she often says, often tells their teenagers: If you’re not white, you’re black.

Stephanie Nolen, “Brazil’s colour bind,” The Globe and Mail, July 31, 2015. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazils-colour-bind/article25779474/.

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