Ron Serko
Not So Black and White
Parsing Opposing Theories of Race in Brazil
T
he debate about race in
Brazil
is the result of
diverse answers to two primary questions: How is race defined in
Brazil? and, more pointedly, What is the significance of Brazil’s
elaborate and wide-ranging racial/identification vocabulary? One
side sees, underneath the variety of terms, an ineluctable racial
dichotomy. The other views race, and the terms, as representing a
broad, vague spectrum of characteristics. Advocates of the former
view, such as Robin Sheriff, hold that race is a bipolar, hypodescentbased system which Brazilians use to classify themselves as
black or white (Sheriff 2001: 30). The latter position, held by
Marvin Harris, suggests that “the most distinctive attribute of
the Brazilian ‘racial’ calculus is its uncertain, indeterminate, and
ambiguous output” (Harris 1970: 1).
The reality of race in Brazil does not precisely fit either of
these theories, however. Rather, I argue that the system of race in
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Brazil follows a roughly bipolar model, and the two poles are white
and nonwhite. The white pole is cohesive while the nonwhite pole
is fluid and contains graded degrees of nonwhiteness. To prove
this thesis, I first explore the degree of referential ambiguity
inherent in Brazilian racial identification. Second, I introduce
evidence for the black-white polar view of race, and contrast
it with anecdotal and numerical data that support a conception
of race which focuses not on blackness, but on nonwhiteness
determined by proximity to white and black characteristics.
Lastly, I address a primary counterargument against the whitenonwhite system - the united opinion of favela residents that an
essentialized white-black system dominates racial categorization.
In the process, I expose methodological shortcomings on both
sides of the debate, and propose further investigation into racial
categorization within my proposed paradigm.
S
ocial scientists have struggled over the unique problem of
race in Brazil for decades – a problem concerned largely with
the hundreds of racial terms that Brazilians use to label fellow
Brazilians, and the degrees of influence these terms exert in
everyday interaction, from subtle marketing techniques to
outright discrimination. The original authorities on race in Brazil
documented an overwhelming number of terms that Brazilians
use when asked about race. In his seminal study of the calculus
of racial identity in Brazil, anthropologist Marvin Harris cites
492 different labels, a sum which greatly exceeded expectations
(Harris 1970: 2). The research employed a straightforward
method of identification: a diverse sample of adults were shown
a series of drawings and asked to classify them by raca, qualidade
or typo, with cor (color) reserved as a question of last resort.
The pictures comprised several variable characteristics that
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were thought to influence the perception of race: different skin
tones, nose shapes and hair textures were all presented in various
combinations. Once these data were collected, analysis revealed
that the patterns of responses were not “totally orderless,” but
exhibited a “pronounced tendency towards ambiguity” (Harris
1970: 3). Harris understood the variegated terms to represent
racial categories, and their profusion and interchangeability to
represent “the maintenance or even maximization of noise and
ambiguity” (Harris 1970: 12).
It is helpful to briefly explore some of the primary racial
terms that Harris documented. Of course, the act of translating
or defining these racial terms is itself highly problematic:
each term’s meaning and usage is dynamic and influenced by
context. But to better frame our understanding of Brazilian race
consciousness, some basic definitions for the labels are helpful.
Two of the more straightforward terms are branca/o, white, and
negra/o, black. Several other labels are used to connote some
intermediate classification, however. These terms are sometimes
understood to overlap in meaning and sometimes identified as
distinct from each other. The most precise meanings are always
context-specific. They include morena/o (brown) parda/o
(mixed, or brown, or neither black nor white), mulata/o (mixed)
and preta/o (the darkest segment of the spectrum, but distinct
from negro).
Despite Harris’ effort to document these terms and
objectively expose nebulous Brazilian racial categorization, there
are some unavoidable shortcomings in Harris’ methodology.
First, for a study that purports to represent the entire nation
of Brazil, the survey’s 100 participants represent a fairly small
sample size. Second, the directive to participants was phrased
differently at different stages, making it unclear which responses
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were elicited by leading words like cor – color, which may or may
nor connote race – rather than words with more explicit ties to
race, like raca. Most importantly, though, when Harris concludes
that Brazilian racial calculus is ambiguous, he does so under the
assumption that the labels applied in the study represent distinct
categories. This is a dangerous assumption because it does not
address the possibility that different linguistic outputs are the
result of the same cognitive identification; in other words, that
several labels may in fact be synonymous and representative of
more direct, specific racial classification.
Robin Sheriff, an anthropologist whose work also focuses on
race in Brazil, attempts to account for this danger by approaching
the problem from a behavioral perspective. She observes the use
of Harris’ labels in three contexts: as evidence of bipolar racial
identification, as description, and as “a way of treating someone”
(Sheriff 2001: 31). She further notes that mixed terms do not
serve as the “taxonomical categories” which Harris and others
thought they did (Sheriff 2001: 56). Through various interviews
and experience, Sheriff encounters both explicit and implicit
acknowledgment that mixed terms like morena serve as physical
identifiers but also as distractions from racial reality (Sheriff
201: 31). In one instance, a man refers to his wife as “Branca,” but
then adds “She isn’t you know, but that’s what we say” (Sheriff
2001: 50). He communicates that his wife is not actually white
and in doing so seems to acknowledge that the alternative is
undesirable. Sheriff argues that this feint of self-delusion is
meant to temper “the fact that blackness is constructed through
the shared experience of discrimination and prejudice and is thus
a product of oppression” (Sheriff 2001: 58). The man does not
want to oppress his wife by applying an accurately dark label, and
so instead refers to her by the more appealing term, branca.
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The primary evidence for these claims emerges from
Sheriff ’s time as a participant observer in Morro do Sangue Bom,
a favela, or shantytown, near Rio de Janeiro. It is one of many
impoverished niches of Brazilian civilization, predominantly
inhabited by nonwhites. Many of these residents explicitly
explain that the “intermediate terms” do not “exist” as distinct
races (Sheriff 2001: 39). Sheriff finds that this conviction goes
nearly unchallenged among residents of the favela. Just as telling
is Brazilians’ tendency toward “hypodescent” – the identification
of “one’s racial membership through the minority parent”
(Sheriff 2001: 43). Sheriff explains that this tendency often
serves to simplify (and restrict) classification, skipping mixture
and confirming blackness.
The author observes several innocuous uses of supposedly
“racial” terms, in joking and as terms of endearment. In these
contexts, they are ostensibly stripped of racial meaning. But
Sheriff argues that their broadest function as an euphemistic
substitute for negro is “offensive because it is what the masters
called the slaves.” It is a word tied inextricably to criticism, anger
and humiliation (Sheriff: 2001: 47). The survey relays tales of
direct discrimination toward people who are described by others
along a nonwhite spectrum of appearance identifiers. In one case,
a woman works as a domestic servant for a man that the woman
identifies as “unabashedly racist” who openly abhorred “her color”
and further denigrated her for it. This woman, Sheriff notes, is
quite light-skinned (Sheriff 2001: 42).
While Sheriff argues compellingly for a dichotomized
racial system along white-black poles, the hard evidence indicates
a slightly different story: the primary distinction that Brazilians
draw in dealing with race lies not in white versus black, but
white versus nonwhite. Indeed, there are great gaps in a range
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of social markers between whites and non-whites (defined for the
purposes of the study as people who self-identify as black and
pardo). Empirical data show that illiteracy is twice as common
among nonwhites as it is among whites; more than a third of
nonwhites lack the ability to read or write. Likewise, only 13.6%
of nonwhites had completed an elementary education in 1987.
Unsurprisingly, “whites have an almost four and a half times
greater probability than do nonwhites of completing collegelevel studies” (Hasenbalg 1999: 155).
Discrepancies in employment and political participation
figures are similarly great between white and non-whites.
Also in 1987, nonwhites could expect to make less than half
(46%) the wages of whites on a per month basis. Whites are
two and a half times more likely than nonwhites to hold bank
accounts. Proportionally fewer nonwhites than whites have Voter
Registration cards, even though they are legally mandated by the
state (Hasenbalg 1999: 158). To make matters worse, racial issues
are frequently marginalized and glossed over in political and
public forums. Despite patterns of stereotyping similar to those
found in the unquestionably bipolar American system, on average
only two-thirds of survey respondents felt that the discrimination
exists in the society (Hasenbalg 1999: 171). Brazil’s founding
myth of a wonderfully mixed culture remains a well-entrenched
notion where these tough questions are concerned.
Even more persuasively, Brazilians appear to draw important
distinctions among nonwhites; at times, the gaps among groups of
nonwhites are greater than those between whites and nonwhites.
In his study Blessed Anastasia, John Burdick presented interesting
data from studies on the employment of women in different
self-identified categories. These data, culled from the work of
previous authors on the subject, show that access to education
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and skilled employment varies more greatly between pretas
and pardas than it does between brancas and the other two, as
Sheriff might have predicted. In fact, among women with a highschool education, whites are ten percent more likely than pardas
to become skilled professionals. Pardas, on the other hand, are a
whopping 210 percent more likely than similarly-prepared pretas
to obtain such positions (Burdick 1998: 45). It appears that there
are significant differences regarding access to employment, even
when education is held constant, along the nonwhite axis.
There are also instances of discrimination perpetrated
by pardas against pretas. In one such scenario from Burdick’s
interviews, a conscientious preta cashier is promoted for her
honesty and work ethic. Her morena co-workers react with
incredulity: “What? A neguinha as head cashier? You should go
back to being a maid” (Burdick 1998: 46). In the end, despite the
support of the manager, the recently promoted woman “couldn’t
take all the gossip” and left the position. In some stories, “good
appearance” is a requisite “skill,” while others “have the unstated
policy of hiring only white girls of morenas,” to the exclusion
of pretas (Burdick 1998: 46). Clearly, there is something beyond
simply white-black antagonism occurring.
Instead, interaction among nonwhite subgroups plays
a significant, yet not well-understood, role in Brazilian race
relations. Burdick and his subjects acknowledge that these racial
distinctions are, in essence, about the perceived degree of one’s
whiteness, based on physical markers. It has also been illustrated
that pretas, mulatas, morenas and brancas are understood to
possess varying behavioral and physical characteristics, and that
certain groups face unique problems and competition in relation
to others in several sectors of Brazilian life. In their racial
calculus, Brazilians seem to make two key judgments. The first
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is a choice between two alternatives: white or nonwhite? The
second involves evaluating the degree of nonwhiteness. Once
both have been discerned, the two traits have a clear influence
on the way people treat other people. This is why pretas classify
themselves as apart from morenas, and describe their competition
with morenas for male partners. This is why men contrast the
mulata’s undeniable sangue negro, evidence with her “sensuality
and natural swingue,” to the morena’s less certain descent and
less effortless seduction (Burdick 1998: 30).
D
espite the extensive evidence for a fluid nonwhite pole, the
narratives of the residents of Morro do Sangue Bom present
intriguing contraindications. Almost all of the favela residents
concluded that racial categories could best be categorized as
following a black-white division – a “rather radical observation”
in the context of conventional (i.e. Harris’) scholarship on race in
Brazil (Sheriff 2001: 30). Sheriff would likely point to the near
unanimous description by residents of a black-white dichotomy
in racial categorization if confronted with my thesis about the
significance of nonwhiteness. In response, though, we should
consider the unique conditions under which Sherrif conducted
her study. The surveys and observations completed in Morro
do Sangue Bom are likely accurate portrayals of the lives of its
residents, and may well be representative of the favela experience
as a whole. However, Sheriff notes that they house a mere 18
percent of the population of Rio de Janeiro (Sheriff 2001: 28).
In essence, the study of what may or may not be a representative
sample of one-fifth of one city’s population is used to extrapolate
the “Brazilian” – that is, national – system of racial classification.
This approach glaringly omits the regional bias documented
by Hasenbalg and Silvam which finds nonwhites inhabiting
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significantly less-developed regions of the country due to
historical migration and the old slave economy (Hasenbalg and
Silva 1999: 155). It moreover fails to address the experience of
all but the poorest, most oppressed Brazilians. It is unsurprising
that those who have suffered worst under the system, whatever
the nature of that system may be, are the most opinionated, and
polarized, regarding its impact.
The possibility of a white-nonwhite, rather than white-black,
racial system presents unique opportunities for further study of
race in Brazil. An expanded, comprehensive and consistentlyworded reproduction of the Harris study might shed further light
on the use of race-color terms. Immersive experiences, like that
of Sheriff, used in other areas of the country should bring scholars
closer to determining whether a unified, national theory of racial
classification is indeed appropriate for Brazil. The nature of a
white-nonwhite system raises important policy issues, specifically
in regards to the institutional response to discrimination. Any
effort to provide legal recourse to pretas who are relegated to
domestic servitude, the women with crespo hair who are excluded
from mainstream sales jobs, should consider both the significant
bias which comes with being nonwhite and the relative detriments
which correlate to the degree of one’s whitneness. Accounting
for these two components of discrimination would create a more
just legal system. It would also draw greater attention to the
multiple forms of racism that transpire in Brazil and perhaps
reduce such biases on an even larger scale over time. There is no
simple solution to these endemic inequities, to be sure. Hopefully,
though, a better understanding of racial categorization in Brazil
can be applied to help those who know that their problems are
not so black and white.
d
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Works Cited
Burdick, John. 1998. Blessed Anastasia:
Women, Race and Popular Christinaity in
Brazil. New York: Routledge.
Harris,
Marvin.
1970
“Referential
Ambiguity in the Calculus of Brazilian
Racial Identity.” Southwestern Journal of
Anthropology 26(1): 1-14.
Hasenbalg, Carlos and Nelson do Valle
Silva. 1999. “Notes on Racial and Political
Inequality in Brazil” in Racial Politics in
Contemporary Brazil, Michael Hanchard,
ed. Durham: Duke University Press,
82-97.
Sheriff, Robin E. 2001. Dreaming Equality:
Color, Race and Racism in Urban Brazil.
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
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