Racial Thought and Modernity

With the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500, Brazil began to develop a multiracial system with a very important middle category, “mestiço.” This category was not present in strictly biracial systems, such as that of the United States, where anyone of African descent was automatically deemed black. Racial categories in Brazil were largely based on phenotype, or visible physical characteristics, and, to a lesser extent, wealth and ancestry?hence the saying “Money whitens.” The general consensus was that Brazil consisted of three “racial streams”?white European, black African, and indigenous “Indian”?but it was possible to move between races based on physical appearance, wealth, and property ownership.

By the 1870s, Brazil was one of the last Western nations holding on to slavery. While the British push for an end to the institution had stalled out after the abolition of the slave trade in the 1850s, new doctrines carried over from Europe began to hold sway in Brazil in the 1860s and 1870s, as the country worried about presenting itself as a viable, modern, and “civilized” nation. Even though at this point the government of Great Britain was no longer engaged in a political campaign to end Brazilian slavery, abolitionism had left its mark on politicians within Brazil.

Many Brazilian intellectuals believed that the American Civil War and abolition in the United States made slavery anachronistic. They began to worry about their nation being left behind in the great drive for progress that spurred national development in the second half of the 19^th century. Louis Agassiz and his wife wrote about the condition of blacks and the effects of slavery on their voyage to Brazil in the late 1860s:

It was nearly dark when we returned to the boat, but the negroes were continuing their dance under the glow of a bonfire. From time to time, as the dance reached its culminating point, they stirred their fire, and lighted up the wild group with its vivid blaze. The dance and the song had, like the amusements of the negroes in all lands, an endless monotonous repetition. Looking at their half-naked figures and unintelligent faces, the question arose, so constantly suggested when we come in contact with this race, “What will they do with this great gift of freedom?” The only corrective for the half doubt is to consider the whites side by side with them: whatever one may think of the condition of slavery for the blacks, there can be no question as to its evil effects on their masters. Captain Bradbury asked the proprietor of the island whether he hired or owned his slaves. “Own them, ? a hundred and more; but it will finish soon,” he answered in his broken English. “Finish soon! How do you mean?” “It finish with you; and when it finish with you, it finish here, it finish everywhere.” He said it not with any tone of regret or complaint, but as an inevitable fact. The death-note of slavery in the United States was its death-note everywhere. We thought this significant and cheering (Agassiz 49).

• What did the Agassiz mean by the “evil effects” of slaveholding on masters? What, according to them, were the dangers to whites?
• What did they believe was the future of slavery in Brazil, and how did slaveholders respond?

As anti-slavery sentiment grew in strength in Brazil, racial theories from England and the rest of Europe had seeped into Brazilian discourse. Herbert Spencer’s view of the progression of societies via evolution and natural selection ? which argued that physical traits indicated the level of evolution of humans as well as of animals, plants and minerals ? held that all the physical markings of progress were “stronger in the European than in the savage.” Thus, simultaneously, Brazilian intellectuals and others pushed for an end to slavery and adopted the idea that this would allow the country to welcome European immigrants, who would “improve” the overall racial composition of the country.

Race After Abolition

Brazil eliminated slavery with the total emancipation law of 1888, leaving the country with an enormous population of free people of color. Brazilian intellectuals had to contend with a predominantly North Atlantic discourse on race. Throughout the nineteenth century, three schools of racist theory emerged: the ethnological-biological school, the historical school, and the school of Social Darwinism. All three worked off of the general premise that Aryans, or northern Europeans, were the superior race, but these theories varied as to the origins and futures of different races.

In the years around the final abolition of Brazilian slavery, a new theory arose that was informed by Spencer’s views on progress and Darwin’s survival of the fittest but that was nevertheless completely Brazilian. The theory of “whitening” held that whites, being naturally stronger?as Spencer had posited?would naturally conquer inferior species. Even at a genetic level, Brazilians believed that white genes would dominate. Thus, as opposed to the United States, where having any African ancestors made someone black, in Brazil continued miscegenation would lead to a whiter population as “white” blood triumphed over the genes of other races.

Novelist Afrânio Peixoto wrote a fictionalized vision of a whitened Brazil that, while noting the contributions of Indians and Africans to the development of Brazilian identity, forecasted that these races would soon die out in favor of the white race, in his 1911 novel A Esfinge [The Sphinx]:

The slow fusion of still imperfect mixtures, the repeated cultural selection, the forced discipline of social organization will make this mass into a strong, happy, and healthy population because the dominant traits are good. Today’s promising beginning will produce a strong-willed, sensitive, and intelligent people worthy of this land and the time in which they live ? In another three hundred years, we will all be white. I don’t know what will happen to the United States, if their Saxon intolerance allows the compact nucleus of their twelve million Negroes to grow in isolation (209-10).

Justification for the whitening thesis was based on three assumptions. First, the white race was considered superior to all others. Second, the supporters of this theory believed that inevitably the black race would disappear due to a lower birth rate, a higher disease rate, and an alleged lack of social organization. Finally, it was thought that miscegenation was already yielding a lighter-skinned population because of stronger white genes and a tendency for people to choose lighter-skinned partners. As Skidmore explains, “the whitening thesis offered Brazilians a rationale for what they believed was already happening,” i.e., miscegenation (77). Eventually, the black race would be bred out of existence. Scientists and racial theorists estimated how long the whitening process would take. João Batista de Lacerda attracted considerable criticism for his prediction of one hundred years, while Sílvio Romero predicted anywhere from four to eight centuries.

Determinism

Speculation about Brazil’s future racial composition was frequently informed by one popular tenet of race theory?geographical determinism, the idea that the climate of a race’s origin determined key aspects of the capacity for learning and the ethics of members of that race.

Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões [Rebellion in the Backlands] and Graça Aranha’s Canaã [Cannan], both published in 1902, prompted elites to reflect on the connection between miscegenation and nation-building and ask themselves the enduring question of whether the tropical nation could become a civilized modern nation through European immigration. They highlighted two factors that handicapped Brazil’s development: its large nonwhite population and its tropical climate. In recounting the history of European colonization, da Cunha noted, “All this admirably reflects the influence of environmental conditions.”

Da Cunha made theorists’ concerns over Brazil’s development toward civilization explicit:

The Brazilian, posed as an abstract type in process of formation, can arise only as the result of a more than ordinarily complex intermingling of races. Theoretically, he would be the pardo [brown-skinned] type, toward which the successive cross-breedings of the mulatto, the curiboca  [mixed Indian-European-black], and the cafuso [mixed Indian and black] converge . . .

It is our belief that all this happened for the reason that the essential scope of the investigations had been reduced to the search for a single ethnic type, when, the truth is, there are many of them. We do not possess unity of race, and it is possible we shall never possess it. We are predestined to form a historic race in the future, providing the autonomy of our national life endures long enough to permit it. In this respect we are inverting the natural order of events. Our biological evolution demands the guaranty of social evolution.

We are condemned to civilization. Either we shall progress or we shall perish. So much is certain, and our choice is clear (52?54).

• How does Euclides da Cunha present Brazilian racial theory and practice as unique?
• What does he see as the future of Brazilian racial identity? What must be done to achieve it, and by whom?

Rejecting Racial Determinism

Few intellectuals diverged from the racist/determinist theoretical framework, but some did. Manoel Bonfim rejected assumptions of racial inferiority altogether and attacked the three schools of racial theory?ethno-biological, historical, and social Darwinist. He argued that the so-called scientists who judged races by their present circumstances were using an inherently flawed method, and that the answer to Brazil’s problems lay in reforming the education system more than anything else:

They unhesitatingly translate this present inequality and the historical conditions of the moment into an expression of the absolute value of races and peoples?the proof of their aptitude or inaptitude for progress. The argumentation?the scientific demonstration?fails to reach even the level of deceit because it is so foolish. Yet it suffices to earn the title of “The Scientific theory of the value of races,” so that the exploiters, the strongmen of the hour, can take over (280?81).

Alberto Tôrres also rejected racist theory, encouraging Brazilians to break free from their blind adoration of all things European and instead craft native solutions to the problems facing the country. Both relied heavily on historical evidence to refute racist theories. Their arguments would lay the groundwork for anti-racist theorists to come, including Basílio de Magalhães, who believed strengthening Brazil’s education system would solve the country’s problems.

An Outsider’s View

Theodore Roosevelt returned from a visit to Brazil in 1913 intrigued by the racial composition of the country. He published his observations in a series of articles in the magazine Outlook not long after his return to the United States. One article was translated and proudly published in the daily Rio paper Correio da Manhã.

In Brazil? .the idea looked forward to is the disappearance of the Negro question through the disappearance of the Negro himself?that is, through his gradual absorption into the white race (Roosevelt, “Brazil and the Negro”).

Despite Brazil’s focus on whitening, Roosevelt noted with approval the presence of individuals with indigenous blood in the upper eschelons in Brazilian politics.

The great majority of the members of the administration and of the Supreme Court and of the men of the highest rank in all departments of life in Brazil are of pure white blood. A percentage, however, have some Indian blood in their veins, and are very proud of the fact?as they ought to be, and as is now the case in Oklahoma, for instance. One delightful Senator whom I met, General Pinheiro Machado, a man of power, both physical and intellectual, a ranchman from the southernmost province of Brazil, came in this category. This man was a fine fellow, lithe, sinewy, eagle-faced, who had in the past shown himself to be a formidable fighting soldier, and who, I was told, was now one of the two or three most influential statesmen and politicians in Brazil. He had never been out of Brazil, and, although a rich ranch-owner, had in his youth led the life of the gauchos?the wild cattle-herders, the cowboys of South America. These gauchos made a somewhat wild and lawless type, and I was genuinely sorry to learn that the breed was tending to die out?the statesman in question informing me that he himself was almost “the last of the gauchos.” The President likewise has Indian blood in his veins?precisely as has been the case within my own knowledge with three or four of the members of the United States Senate (Roosevelt, “In Rio de Janeiro”).

From Whitening to Racial Democracy

From its publication in 1933, Gilberto Freyre’s Casa Grande e Senzala dominated cultural historical discussions of Brazil’s early colonial period. The book presented a utopian vision of the early years of colonization in the regions of Bahía, Pernambuco, and Paraiba.

Freyre’s book marked a turning point in perceptions of racial differences in the nation. While earlier thinkers had favored miscegenation as a way to create a whiter population, the book caused much of the Brazilian populace to view itself as either racially or culturally mixed-race, with less anxiety about what that would mean for the country’s international status.

As to their miscibility [the ability of a group to mix with another], no colonizing people in modern times has exceeded or so much as equaled the Portuguese in this regard. From their first contact with women of color, they mingled with them and procreated mestizo sons; and the result was that a few thousand daring males succeeded in establishing themselves firmly in possession of a vast territory and were able to compete with great and numerous peoples in the extension of their colonial domain and in the efficiency of their colonizing activity (Freyre, 11).

But Freyre’s view of early interethnic relations distorted the nature of interactions between groups in order to encourage racial harmony. His portrayals of colonization and slavery were frequently overly optimistic, presenting the colonizers as enlightened overlords with benevolent motives and the indigenous and African residents of the colony as underlings in their subservient position:

The Portuguese here made himself master of lands more vast and men more numerous than any other American colonizer. Had he been essentially plebeian, he would have failed in that aristocratic sphere in which his colonial dominion in Brazil was to develop. He did not fail, but instead founded the most modern civilization in the tropics.

Freyre’s ideas had a therapeutic influence on views of Brazilian identity, leading to an increased feeling of satisfaction with the nation’s heterogeneous nature. Yet while the Brazilian public widely acknowledged its multiracial identity, the effort to present that identity in the most positive light possible would, throughout the twentieth century, make acknowledging racial inequality or persecution difficult.

Further Reading

• Thomas Skidmore’s Black Into White connects scientific theories in Europe and the United States to their reception in Brazil and explains how Brazilian racial theory, shaped by these earlier ideas, developed over time.

Sources

• Agassiz, Louis J.R. and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. A Journey in Brazil. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868.
• Bastos, Aureliano Cândido Tavares. “Proposals for Gradually Abolishing Slavery (1865).” Excerpt in Conrad, Children of God’s Fire, 434-436.
• Da Cunha, Euclides. Rebellion in the Backlands. Trans. by Samuel Putnam. Chicago: Phoenix Press, 1944.
• Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves. Trans. by Samuel Putnam. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1946). Print.
• Roosevelt, Theodore. “Brazil and the Negro” and “In Rio de Janeiro.” Outlook Magazine, December 1913.
• Spencer, Herbert. “Progress: Its Law and Cause” http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/23352/.
• Skidmore, Thomas. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.