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Problematizing Miscegenation: the Fact/Fiction of Race in Contemporary Brazil

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Problematizing Miscegenation: the Fact/Fiction of Race in Contemporary Brazil JASs forum What is race today? Scientific, legal, and Journal of Anthropological Sciences social appraisals from around the globe Vol. 96 (2018), pp. 247-254 doi 10.4436/JASS.96013 Problematizing miscegenation: the fact/fiction of race in contemporary Brazil Elena Calvo-González1 & Ricardo Ventura Santos2 1) Departamento de Sociologia and Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Sociais, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] 2) Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública/ Fundação Oswaldo Cruz and Museu Nacional/ Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro “Miscegenation is also genocide” popular culture, such as internationally recognised Banner held by protesters during the 2017 Black soap-operas. Conscience March in São Paulo, Brazil. In this “explosion” of race, one thing that has caught our attention is how miscegenation1, while The “World Conference against Racism, still being heralded as a “natural” characteristic Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related of Brazil’s population and history, is becoming Intolerance”, held in 2001 in Durban, South increasingly considered as a “problem.” This can Africa, was a turning point for Brazil. The coun- take the shape of explicit, discursive questioning try’s representatives released during this conference by sectors of organised Black Social Movements, an official recognition of the existence of racism or of State practices that aim to identify the right- within Brazil, and the commitment to implement ful beneficiaries of affirmative action policies. policies for the reduction of racial inequality. As a By analysing how miscegenation is presented result, there has been an explosion of debates in as “a problem”, and how this features centrally the country regarding race. From popular media in how race is enacted locally in contemporary outlets to the intellectual arena, discussions about Brazil, we follow M’Charek’s (2013) argument, racial identity, racial inequality and the realities who stated the need to go beyond the dyad of con- of racism have become progressively more com- sidering race either as a fact to be acknowledged mon in the public and academic spheres. At the or as a fiction to be contested. Instead, we should same time, and while in some other countries the consider it as both, a relational object in which past few decades have witnessed concerted efforts the boundary between what is seen as “biological” to remove race as a category from State use and and “social” is neither stable nor given, extend- institutional contexts, often substituting it with ing beyond the somatic body. Similar arguments the category ethnicity, in Brazil the tendency has regarding race that go beyond the somatic body been the opposite, towards an increasingly explicit were put forward by Oracy Nogueira (1955) in his use of race by the State in public policy. Together classic description of Brazil’s system, according to with this, the process of social mobility and the which an individual’s racial classification is based enhanced purchasing power of its population, on a context-dependent evaluation of the absence particularly the emergence of the so-called lower and presence of phenotypical marks deemed to be middle-classes, has also meant an increase in com- of African, Indigenous or European ancestry, as mercial products explicitly targeted at non-whites, such as “black” beauty products and services, 1 The term miscegenation is commonly used in Brazil with an increased “black” aesthetic being more and as a synonym for admixture and mestizaje, without recognised and incorporated into mainstream any negative connotation. the JASs is published by the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia www.isita-org.com 248 JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and social appraisals from around the globe well as other markers of status, such as character- of attaining a whitened country through succes- istics of clothing, educational level, and manners. sive crosses between European immigrants and This system meant that individuals’ racial classifi- the local, already mixed population. While the cation could change depending on the space and minutiae of these arguments is too extensive for contexts in which they spend their lives. this paper2, what interests us at this particular As we will argue, in the case of contemporary moment in history is this latter “redemptive” view Brazil, part of the issue regarding how miscegena- of admixture and its ties with a wider ideology tion features as “problematic” is closely related to that considered a white(ned) future as the goal establishing which individuals could benefit from which Brazil should aim for. certain affirmative action policies. In this process, This whitening process, which for many dec- while there is a need for removing some of the ades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had as ambiguities involved in this racial classification its concrete effect the establishment of policies that and defining what would be “verifiable” criteria promoted the arrival of European immigrants into regarding racial classification, there are still con- the country, resurfaces in contemporary perspec- comitant uses of race as both a social construction tives that view miscegenation as a problem. Take and a biological/physical reality. for example the text in the protesters’ banner we referred to at the beginning of this article, with the saying “Miscegenation is also genocide”. As part Miscegenation as a problem: of the discourse of a radical wing of the organ- whitening and its after-effects ised Black Social Movement, this banner did not go unnoticed by the local and national press. The The history of considering miscegenation as use of the word “genocide” is common in activists’ a problem in Brazil can be traced to the late 19th actions to call attention to the high rates of violent and early 20th century. On the eve of the abolition death suffered by non-whites, particularly young of slavery (in 1888), local intellectuals and politi- males. Not so common in public discourse is the cians worried that the soon to be freed ex-slaves direct association between those violent deaths would be a threat to social order, with inborn and miscegenation, an association that in the ban- tendencies towards crime and vagrancy and ner was linguistically achieved by the use of the unsuited to salaried work. In its early years as an adverb “also”. In a country with a long-standing independent Nation (1889), and under the influ- national narrative of being thoroughly admixed, ence of scientific racism, the existing Brazilian where 46.7% of its population identifies itself as population, mostly of African or admixed origin, was seen as inferior to Europeans and as a hin- 2 At the risk of oversimplifying complex historical and drance to Brazil’s imagined future as a civilized, socio-political processes, we could argue that Brazil has European land. Scientific racist ideas were adapted experienced three moments regarding how miscegena- to local conditions, such as the widespread levels tion was considered. From the late nineteenth century of already existing admixture, to produce several until about the early 1930s, influenced by ideologies alternative courses of action for the country. These of racial determinism, it was perceived as something the nation had to overcome through its “whitening”. In ranged from fully substituting the local popula- the 1930s cultural turn, mestizaje became valued to the tion with European immigrants, a position argued point that it was transformed into a national symbol for by writers such as Nina Rodrigues, who con- of major prominence, as featured in Gilberto Freyre’s sidered that miscegenation resulted in the degen- work, in particular in his book Casa-Grande & Senzala. eration of successive generations, given that the Over the last two decades, it was increasingly portrayed worst traits from both progenitors were inherited by black movement activists and intellectuals as sup- porting notions of “racial democracy” that prevailed in by their offspring, to more optimistic views, such the country throughout most of the twentieth century as those espoused by Sílvio Romero and João (for more detailed and nuanced overviews, see Fry, Batista de Lacerda, who considered the possibility 2000; Guimarães, 2012; Maio & Santos, 2010). JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and 249 social appraisals from around the globe mixed, choosing in census polls the intermedi- Meanwhile Larkin Nascimento, in response to ate category pardo, and where a third of current Riserio’s reading of Abdias do Nascimento’s work, marital unions are between people who classify argued that the phrase in question referred to the themselves in different census categories (Censo effects that the ideology of whitening had on Black Demográfico de 2010), this equation prompted identity. Using Abdias do Nascimento’s own per- a public outcry and clashes over the legitimacy of sonal and family trajectory, she pointed out how such a statement. One such confrontation took the on-the-ground processes of miscegenation in place in the pages of the Brazilian newspaper, Brazil historically involved a high degree of sym- A Folha de São Paulo, between anthropologist, bolic violence, in the shape of white supremacist António Risério, and Elisa Larkin Nascimento, theories that attempted to annihilate Blackness, as widow of the influential Black intellectual and well as physical violence, such as forced non-con- activist, Abdias do Nascimento, and current direc-
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