It’s now official: Brazil is more mixed race than white

He first noticed something strange happening there when he was a child at school. A typical Brazilian private school where most people are white. His classmates call the color of the flesh a pinkish beige color. For him, however, the flesh-colored pen was another. “I’ll grab a burnt yellow pencil, kind of mustard, and put it on the inside of my hand to see what I’m talking about,” says Gleason Borges. Once he turned 31, he defined himself as black, but that wasn’t always the case. This graphic designer who signs his urban art as A Coisa Ficou Preta (The thing has turned black) points to the fact that he himself chose the point where the skin is lightest. “I wanted to get as close to the norm (of popular beauty) as I could.”

Like hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Brazilians, Borges found himself black through a long process that is at once individual and collective. Social change, fueled by the myth that Brazil, post-slavery, was a paradise of racial harmony without discrimination, was dismantled. “I was always black, but knowing that it has become something in adult life,” explains the artist in an interview via video call from his home in Maceo (Alagoas).

The latest census data confirmed, at the end of December, a relevant change that will shape Brazilian society in the coming decades. For the first time in a century and a half, those who define themselves as mestizos (45%, 92 million people) have surpassed whites (43%, 88 million) as the largest ethnic group. It assumes that a surprise which resulted in a profound shift in the way Brazilians defined themselves in ethno-racial terms. Here everyone chooses from an official box: mestizo (in Portuguese, pardo), white, black (preto), indigenous, and yellow (of Asian descent).

Anthropologist Lilia Schwarz, 66, who defines herself as white, is one of the great Brazilian historians and has studied racial issues for decades. “The truth is that mestizos were always the majority. I believe that the current classification reflects the self-aggrandizing policies of a society that has long been under the influence of whitewashing policies. She defined herself as white and now she defines herself as mestizo,” she explains. For decades, those who were in limbo were marked white, historically associated with the beautiful, with the positive, from blacklists to vilification. , still against every negativity associated with black. On record, they tended to lighten the child.

Eliazette de Souza, 65 years old. “Parda, I have never considered myself any other color, neither white nor mixed race.”

The struggle of black activism, affirmative action policies, quotas, Afro-Brazilian studies,… “All these created a different understanding on the part of the population,” says this expert. Schwarz in an exchange of messages. He emphasizes that “authorities will have to respond and organize themselves based on this mestizo majority in terms of health, social, institutional representation.”

Change has accelerated over the past two decades due to multiple policies promoted by Workers’ Party governments. And the black movement became somewhat critical when the state adopted its definition of a black person as being of African descent, meaning that it includes blacks and mestizos, who are the majority in Brazil (56%), unlike in the United States, where they are about 14%.

The implementation of quotas, a decade ago, struck a nerve. Countless white families cried out when many more poor, mixed-race and black students entered university; They felt that their children were being discriminated against. Intentionally or not, outraged parents ignored the story.

Five million slaves brought from Africa over 350 years laid the foundations of what would become Brazil, whether in sugar cane plantations or gold mines. No other country in America had slavery for so long. Abolished in 1888, the authorities recruited 3.5 million European immigrants to replace labor—at least not for their—white race. The dream of eugenicists who wanted to perfect the human race with their racist principles, so that no trace of African blood would remain, has not been fulfilled.

Carlos Magno Pires, 60 years old. “I always considered myself a mestizo, my birth certificate says so”

At the beginning of the 20th century, the local elite calculated that in ten generations Brazil would be a white country, with Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Syrians… However, few people have a large skin tone, as cosmetics multinational L’Oreal knows well, always attentive to its customers. Brazil “is an open-air laboratory. From the point of view of the cosmetics industry, we have eight hair types and 55 skin tones, among the 60 listed by our scientists around the world,” Marcelo Zimet, head of its Brazilian subsidiary, explained to the magazine. tax.

There are so many that it’s not uncommon to get confused when filling in the color/race box. To Brazilians who complain that they are never educated on the issue, anti-racist activists respond: “You don’t know if you are black or white? Ask the police, they are clear. And, on suspicion of racial quota abuse, the candidate in question is submitted to a commission that rules whether he meets the requirements.

Already in 1872 the first census asked Brazilians about their color/race; Most people declared themselves mestizos, but then there were always more whites. Marta Antunes, of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and who defines herself as white, details that the organization cannot ascertain to what extent the current advantage of mestizos is due to demographic or anthropological reasons. She points to three factors: demographic issues, such as interracial couples or fertility; A change in the way society thinks about its ethnicity and what is now often asked. Until a decade ago “many didn’t stop to think about it,” he recalls. In the 1940s, in the wake of Japanese immigration – the yellow series was created. In the nineties, there was a revival of the indigenous community. He adds that IBGE perfected its methods with explanatory videos or by contacting indigenous people living off their land, a group that “had a lot of confusion between ethnicity and race.” Due to these innovations, the local population doubled (from 0.4% to 0.8%) within a decade.

Juselia da Silva, 32 years old. “I was always black, but in the registry it says mestiza, I don’t know why. It is the same with my brothers and my children.”

Changing categories throughout life is also not uncommon, as demonstrated by the thousands of politicians who turn white or dark between one election and the next. Singer Caetano Veloso and his colleague Gilberto Gil both considered themselves mestizos in the seventies. And Neymar told the newspaper State in 2010 that he had never “been a victim of racism on or off the field. Because I’m not black, you know? He also revealed that he straightens his hair every 20 days. Scorer hair is a racist insult that knows no bounds.

Brazil turned the misunderstanding into a mark of national identity. And it took advantage of the fact that, unlike the US, there were no racial segregation laws to present itself to the world as a tropical paradise without discrimination or racial tension. It is the so-called myth of ethnic democracy. Philosopher Sully Carneiro, 73, one of the great black intellectuals of contemporary Brazil, defined it in an interview published in 2022 as “a sophisticated and distorted form of racism because it produces a distorted consciousness for all those involved in racial relations.” The idea that there is no racism in society prevails, although statistics often disprove it. Black and mixed-race Brazilians live less, earn less, are poorer and sicker than their white compatriots.

In 1900, 1920, and 1970, the census did not ask about race or color. But in 1976, the authorities raised it in the open, without the box. The answer was the 136 skin tones that anthropologist Schwarz listed in his book Nem Preto nem Branco, muito pelo Contrario (Companhia, das Letras, 2013). It includes terms already banished for being discriminatory, such as very white, very dark, colored brunette, cinnamon-colored brunette, bordered on white, almost black, or multa (which is derived from a mule).

Known as A Coisa Ficou Preta, Borges does not remember exactly the first time he was asked about his color/race. He thinks it was in some census. “It was a shock.” Doubt assailed him: “I knew it was not white, but I did not know that it was black, which is red in color. And I had no idea of ​​being a mestizo. The truth is, I don’t remember what I made.”

Luciano Donizete, 52 years old. “I consider myself black, but my document says mestizo. I think because my mother and father are clear.”

And, as art, especially Emicida’s rap rhymes, helped him rediscover his blackness, the posters he puts up on the streets try to spread the same awareness to others with the slogan: “If the book doesn’t say it, does it? say? So?” What color do you paint the characters?”

Artist and photographer Angelica Das, 44, defines herself as black, grew up in a “very colorful family” in Rio de Janeiro and has lived in Spain for several years. His most famous project is human, a collection of 4,000 portraits taken in 20 countries. Each is matched to your exact skin tone on the Pantone scale. He says that living outside Brazil gave him the distance to highlight this grievance: “There are people who are considered less human because of the color of their skin, who have less rights because of the amount of melanin.” He believes that both she and Human are “fruits of ancestors who were oppressors and oppressors.”

Of his projects, Das chooses 280 chibatada (280 lashes) which best reflects his country of origin. He combines images of a happy childhood in a colorful family with racist tweets. And that includes a survey conducted by the University of São Paulo in 1988 that concluded: “96% affirm that there are no racial prejudices; 99% know someone who has.” Excellent raw material for reflection and discussion.

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