The road to pigmentocracy

August 2, 2015 3:05 PM

“It was ‘invisibilization’. The discourse was that we don’t have race in Brazil, so you don’t have race problems in Brazil...”
Brazil is combating many kinds of inequality. But one of the world’s most diverse nations is still just beginning to talk about race.
posted by adamvasco (6 comments total)

( Just a reminder that this is about Brazil and not N. America ).
posted by adamvasco at 3:06 PM on August 2, 2015 [9 favorites]

I cannot recommend enough Henry Louis Gates' PBS series Black in Latin America. If your assumptions about race in the New World are based on being raised in the United States (and even if you have a little knowledge of how other nations in the hemisphere talk about themselves to others) then you'll just have to throw them all out. Extraordinarily mind-opening.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:35 PM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

chile doesn't have the same historical connection with africa, but does share (as does most of south + central america, afaik) the correlation between "whiteness" and wealth. it's usually discussed here (in political contexts) in economic terms, but you get the same nicknames that focus on skin colour, and the same assumptions. not so long ago, for example, it was finally made illegal for companies to request photos with CVs (which were used to pre-select whiter candidates).

there's also an "indigenous people problem" that is going absolutely nowhere, except providing an excuse for anti-terrorism legislation... but that's largely separate - they are more about having their own land and rights, separate from chileans (of any colour).

i haven't seen any indication of any shift towards a more explicit politics based on skin colour. it's an interesting idea though, because the general consensus is that (after various political scandals) the electorate is pretty tired of the status quo.

but i just suggested the idea to my chilean partner and she didn't seem to think it very likely...

ps nice example of the attitude that might make sense to american readers. ana tijoux, a chilean rapper / musician who lives in the states, performed here and someone called out from the audience "cara de nana" (face of a maid).
posted by andrewcooke at 3:47 PM on August 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Expanding on what andrewcooke says, a lot of Chileans fantasize that it's a classless, raceless society because 'we all look the same', which is ridiculous bullshit, as the correlation between skin color and social standing/income has an R-squared of like 99%.
The thing in Chile, and other parts of LA, is that since there has been a lot of race-mixing (historically, by white landowner-class men having bastard children with indian servant class women), there's not a clear division between races, but rather a continuum of discrimination, where you might be 'white' enough to be a bank teller but not enough to be a branch manager at said bank, for example, and want ads ask for 'buena presencia', literally 'good presence', translation 'light skinned'.
The thing is, as a native chilean, if you showed me head shots of chileans with no context, jewelry, clothes, etc., I could probably sort them into income groups with close to 100% accuracy, just based on how european or native they look.
There's no general conversation, or laws, or policies on racism, because it's not really publicly acknowledged to happen. It's subtle, not explicitly recognized and more fucked up because of this.
posted by signal at 6:08 PM on August 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Very thorough and interesting (if heartbreaking) article--thanks, adamvasco. I particularly liked the contrast of the story of Sarah Ashley's family and Dr Icaro.

I have several mixed-race friends who have found traveling in LatAm to be problematic because of the legacy inherent in this article so I'm glad to be able to share it with them and others.
posted by librarylis at 8:05 PM on August 2, 2015

He's kind of alluded to with the notion of a "racial democracy," but I'm surprised the article didn't name check Gilberto Freyre directly. He, and Jose Vasconcelos in Mexico, are the two individuals most responsible for formulating and promoting the idea. Vasconcelos coined the term "la raza cosmica," to describe the idea that the combination of European, African, and American races had formed a new race of people, distinct and greater than its sundry parts. Freyre was less biological, so to speak, in his approach, but also posited that combination of cultures had created a unique and universal Brazilian identity.

The irony of their approaches was that, particularly with Vasconcelos, they were reacting to the racialized ideas of the later 19th/early 20th centuries which saw Latin American countries as mongrel nations. The diversity of races and cultures in these countries, was, to the armchair eugenicists of Europe and the United States, their biggest flaw. The creation of a unified mestizaje identity was a way of countering that criticism by saying that Brazil, Mexico, etc. weren't actually diverse, but that they were a new breed of people. A twist on "I don't see race" in a way.

Regardless, from the beginning Black and Indigenous people were basically excluded from this grand vision, because they were distinctly Black and Indigenous, not "mixed." White people faced this same problem, but since they were already at the top of the society, it wasn't exactly a problem for them.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:49 AM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]