I’m white, just not the kind of white ur thinking of.
This isn’t a “Help Me With My Identity” post. I just find my country’s social-economical-ethnic history really interesting and wanted to share it with the rest of the world, who (in their most part) have a very Black-And-White (pun intended) view of “race” and ethnicity.
Brazil is a really, REALLY mixed country. And I mean it in the most literal way possible. We’ve had an insane amount of people immigrating here from all parts of the globe. We got the biggest Japanese community outside of Japan, the largest Arab community outside of the Middle East, the largest African community outside of Africa, and a bunch of other “largest community outside of”graphs that I forgot about. Also, back in the 60’s the government started a “whitening campaign” where they encouraged the formation of mixed race couples to end black people. They kinda succeeded AND failed at the same time, cause they just created a whole new ethnicity, the Pardos (who, you guessed it, are not white).
“Race” as most of you call it, is mostly Colorist-Based around here. Long story short, if you look white enough, you’re white. Your parents “races” don’t matter, neither do your grandparents, and so on. The “Blacker” you are, the bigger are your chances of suffering discrimination. That is because the MOMENT Europeans invaded here (1500s), they started fucking and raping everybody, so Brazil as a country started mixed already. Since white people apparently can’t live without privilege, they started using Colorism as a system. The Portuguese held more privilege over their Brazilian children, who held more privilege over indigenous people, etc etc.
I’ll use my family as an example of your usual Brazilian: My mom is a mix of Portuguese/South African/Swiss Ashkenazi, and that’s only counting what affects her physical features. She has light olive skin, a shit ton of body hair, green eyes, big downturned nose, gigantic ears (like alfafa), freckles and dark melanated palm lines that came from her black grandma. My dad is a pardo but i got no idea of what his specific ethnic background looks like. All I know is he has a big flat nose, dark reddish skin, slanted eyes, straight hair, and a weird fixation with rocks. I’m a pretty homogeneous mix of them both, and since I’m so used to my own appearance idk how other people see me thru an ethnic lens. I’ve had friends tell me weird stuff sometimes though, like “you look really Indian in that picture” or “you looked like a cute Chinese baby” or “HOLY SHIT how the fuck do you change your skin color like Michael Jackson??”.
If you ask me, I’m white. Child of a White woman and an Indigenous man. My background will never affect how Brazilian society percieves me, cause I look mostly Eastern European. I’ve never suffered racism or ethnic discrimination of any kind, and if I don’t travel to Europe or North America I’ll probably never deal with it. If I ever find myself there, I’ll just say I’m Brazilian and hope they get it. I do wonder about other mixed people that are ethnically ambiguous and what their background/heritage/experiences look like. Ngl, it’s kinda funny when ppl call me “Default Woman”.