In spite of the fluidity of the social structure on the frontier, mestizos remained behind peninsulares and criollos in access to power. Oakah L. Jones, ed. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style , 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry. Joan E. All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U. As we have seen so far, each country's "technologies of mestizaje ," to paraphrase Foucault, where built on different axes.
In Mexico the control of the indigenous population was foreseen through their cultural assimilation, thus the racial mixture was built around a 'preoccupation' with cultural differences Hooker, Hooker, Juliet.
These differences may lead to distinct impacts on ethnoracial inequalities. For example, the color continuum in Brazil has been presented as having a beneficial effect, by allowing racially-mixed individuals to be upwardly mobile.
The idea that mixed-race individuals would be more successful and upwardly mobile was explicitly propounded in Brazilian academia at least until the early s as the 'mulatto escape hatch' thesis Degler, Degler, Carl N. Neither black nor white: slavery and race relations in Brazil and the United States. New York: Macmillan. In fact, they found nearly no significant difference in socioeconomic status of blacks and browns in Brazil. Since then, a number of studies have confirmed that the socioeconomic status of brown and black populations was very similar in Brazil throughout the twentieth century, and much worse than that of white people Telles, Telles, Edward Eric.
Race in another America: the significance of skin color in Brazil. Nevertheless, a comparison with Mexico may indicate that the socioeconomic boundaries between white and non-white in Brazil are weaker than those between indigenous and non-indigenous, since the cultural difference argument may leave indigenous people further excluded and blame them for their own situation. On the other hand, the lack of emphasis on skin color in Mexico may create a color-blind environment in which skin color is not relevant to socioeconomic outcomes, since ethnoracial identifications do not rely on them.
As a consequence, schooling and learning Spanish have been the most favored strategies to combat exclusion. The underlying assumption is that once you acquire the mestizo identity, your well-being will increase. If this assumption is correct, there should be no difference in SES between mestizo and white populations, for example. As mentioned, in Brazil a number of studies based on census and larger national household surveys have already confirmed the significant effect of ethnoracial categories, even after controlling by class.
In the case of Mexico, the significance of ethnoracial categories for inequality is more contested, even if recently accepted in policy and academic circles. To enable a more straightforward comparison, we divided the interviewer skin color rating based on the color palette into three groups: rated light , rated medium , rated 6 or higher dark. We use average years of schooling as a proxy for socioeconomic attainment.
Because income measures are not typically reliable, especially in smaller survey samples like ours, and because the occupational structure of these two countries is very different, years of schooling would seem to be a more straightforward source of comparison.
Nevertheless, differences in national averages have to be taken into account. Figure 4 summarizes our results, presenting the average years of schooling for those who identified as white, brown and black in Brazil and white, mestizo and indigenous in Mexico.
In both countries we also compared the average years of schooling of those classified as light, medium and dark, according to the color palette. Regarding inequalities based on ethnoracial identification, Figure 4 generally confirms previous findings on the Brazilian case. Those who identified as white have a substantial advantage one more year of schooling, on average compared to those who did not identify as white, either as pardo brown or preto black.
In short, contrary to Brazil, those identified as mestizo have an advantage in terms of years of schooling. At first glance, this finding would seem to confirm the assumption that, in Mexico, a racially mixed identity is an advantage, since those who identified as white have, on average, one less year of education. These results indicate that while white advantage exists in Brazil, there is indigenous disadvantage in Mexico. However, the schooling gap between those who identified as indigenous and those who identified as mestizo in Mexico is much larger than the gap between those identifying as white in Brazil and those who do not.
This partly confirms the additional burden of the reification of cultural difference in creating stronger socioeconomic inequalities.
When we turn to the comparison based on the color palette, the first striking find is the similar distribution in the two countries, with lightest skinned people having the highest average of schooling and darkest, the lowest. Despite the different scales used in the two graphs due to the higher average years of schooling of Mexicans , the difference between lightest and darkest is similar in both countries: about two years.
In Brazil, it was possible to verify the partial existence of a color continuum. Those whose skin color was ranked medium had an average of 7. But only the differences between the light and dark groups were statistically significant.
Moreover, the difference between medium and dark is stronger than between medium and light. Interestingly, those ranked medium had an average schooling 0. In contrast, those whose skin color was ranked as dark had an average of 5.
This suggests that a number of higher achieving respondents, who were ranked as medium or light, opted to identify as black - which may indicate a growing racial awareness.
The fact that inequalities appear to increase when we use classifications based on the interviewer's skin-color rating provides further evidence that skin color is an independent variable in this correlation, rather than a product of an endogeneity issue i. While in Brazil the group classified as dark had the lowest average years of schooling, in Mexico the most disadvantaged group were those who identified as indigenous. This partly confirms the role of skin color in Brazil and the role of cultural exclusion in Mexico.
Nevertheless, even though we could not find a strong correlation between skin color and identity in Mexico Figure 3 , skin color seems to influence educational attainment Figure 4. As mentioned earlier, the gap between darker and lighter skin is statistically significant and similar to the Brazilian case.
Given that the correlation between skin color and self-ascription is not high in Mexico, but skin color does play a role in educational attainment, in the following figure we explore variations in average of years of schooling according to skin color classification, controlling for ethnoracial identification. In Figure 5 we can see how skin color affects years of schooling within groups. While dark-skinned mestizo and indigenous people remain relatively the same compared to the national average of their groups 5.
But where skin color matters most is for those with light skin: in all the groups, light-skinned people had between 1. This indicates that although dark skin does not seem determinant, with the exception of white people, when it comes to years of schooling, light skin considerably increases the possibility of completing more years. Figure 5 Average years of schooling by skin color categorization and ethnoracial classification in Mexico. It is almost universally accepted today that Brazil and Mexico, like most Latin American countries, have tended to underplay the role of racism in their historical formation through discourses of racial mixture.
Although we generally agree with this statement, in this paper we have argued that it is important to move beyond it, exploring the different ways in which these countries have mobilized racial mixtures discourses in their racial formation projects. A comparative approach to the region is crucial to move away from normative descriptions and better understand the persistence of racial hierarchies in contexts of widespread racial mixture.
In both countries we found the persistent centrality of racial differences in socioeconomic outcomes, albeit through different national boundaries: white versus non-white in Brazil and indigenous versus non-indigenous in Mexico.
But we also found striking differences in the correlation between skin color rating and racial identification, much stronger in Brazil than in Mexico. The latter finding is related to the salience of cultural differences in Mexico, which seem to play a role in the exclusion of indigenous people. Nevertheless, when looking at skin color differences within each identity group in Mexico, it is clear that skin color plays an important role in stratification.
These differences may help explain the different consequences of racial mixture in Brazil and Mexico today. While in Brazil affirmative action policies for brown and black populations have been implemented and some authors have identified trends of racial 'unmixing' Bailey, Bailey, Stanley.
Legacies of race: identities, attitudes and politics in Brazil. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Since the gradual return to democracy in the s, Brazilian black movements have denounced the myth of racial democracy by evidencing the persistence of racism in the country.
Since the s they have found a growing echo in the State. Backed by statistical data and international agreements, affirmative action policies have been implemented for black people preto and pardo in public universities, which have become mandatory in all federal universities the most selective in the country since Quotas for black and brown candidates to federal public offices have also recently been approved. Simultaneously, Brazil has increasingly collected data on racial identification in different realms in order to measure racial inequality.
In , for the first time since , Brazil was a country with a majority non-white population - a clear rejection of the 'whitening' aspiration that historically seemed to guide identification in the country. Nevertheless, racial mixture has important consequences for the implementation of these policies. Rio de Janeiro: Iesp-Uerj. Recognition is not seen as an important aspect of fighting racial inequality.
Instead, people commonly claim that if poor sectors are targeted, racial inequality will also be solved an idea implicit even in affirmative action policies, which increasingly focus on poor and black populations. Even though most people recognize racial inequality and even discrimination, they have a harder time seeing any difference in being black.
In addition, while racial inequality places black and brown populations together at the lower end of the socioeconomic hierarchy, racism and discrimination are only seen to impact those who are black. Racism is recognized as a historical residue or an attitude shared by a few ignorant people, not as a structural mechanism of present-day discrimination Moraes Silva, Moraes Silva, Graziella.
Folk conceptualizations of racism and antiracism in Brazil and South Africa. This is why cultural assimilation is the non-spoken assumption and there is little space to discuss white privilege. In Mexico, recent indigenous mobilizations and increasing international pressure have also had consequences in terms of a growing acknowledgement of ethnoracial inequalities. But if, as in Brazil, the mestizaje project has been contested, its focus on cultural differences has remained largely untouched.
The consequence has been the creation of recognition policies but little redistribution. Nothing similar to Brazilian affirmative action is currently debated. Finally, similarly to Brazil, the focus on indigenous rights has failed to address a central aspect of racial inequalities: the existence of racial hierarchies and privilege Saldivar, Saldivar, Emiko.
How have different Latin American mestizaje projects been translated into modern multicultural discourses? Does a cultural emphasis make it easier to organize around collective rights as argued by Hooker or does it equate mestizaje with assimilation?
Can the emphasis on color allow for a more inclusive definition of blackness as a collective identity, or does it outlaw the creation of identity boundaries between black and white populations?
These are important questions that can only be answered through a closer look within the region and its varieties of racial mixture formations. Abrir menu Brasil. Abrir menu. She is one of the authors of Getting respect: dealing with stigmatization and discrimination in the United States, Brazil and Israel , and Pigmentocracies: ethnicity, race, and color in Latin America Her current research projects focus on comparative race relations and elite's perceptions of poverty and inequality.
She is one of the authors of Pigmentocracies: ethnicity, race, and color in Latin America , and has published several articles and books chapters both in Spanish and English on mestizaje, racial statistics, interculturality an anti-black racism in Mexico. About the authors. Abstract By the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of multicultural discourses and identity politics, Latin American ideologies of racial mixture had become increasingly denounced as myths that conceal and thus support the reproduction of racial inequalities.
Our focus is on the ideological centrality of racial mixing in Latin America, where it also created strong hybrid identification as mestizos , morenos, mulattos and pardos. Because indigenous people were only a small fraction of the Brazilian population, their mention was more symbolic than based on actual social policies. For more information, see Garfield, Garfield, Seth. Indigenous struggle at the heart of Brazil: state policy, frontier expansion, and the Xavante Indians, The idea of changing the question was justified by the perception that previous categories had referred to color, while indigenous identity refers to race.
Their understanding is that the mixed-race category masks Brazilian racial inequalities, encouraging black people to 'whiten' themselves through the pardo identification. The survey was also conducted in Peru and Colombia. Although this sample included a few respondents who identified as black in Mexico and as indigenous or Asian in Brazil, they were excluded from our analysis due to their small numbers.
Like the Indians, Spaniards were also diverse in nature and background. Some were soldiers or missionaries directly from Spain. Others came as long time residents of New Spain Mexico. Distinctions were made between criollos , those born in the Americas, and peninsulares , those born in Spain. Criollos were considered inferior to those who came from the mother country.
Criollos were considered inferior to those who came from the mother country. Those persons of mixed race — Indian and Spaniard — known as mestizos, were one of the most rapidly growing groups in frontier society. Mestizo, plural mestizos, feminine mestiza, any person of mixed blood. This produced our baseline estimate that 3.
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