Race, With or Without Color? Reconciling Brazilian Historiography

Abstract

This essay analyzes the Brazilian historiographies of race in order to highlight the incongruity in the idea of race as it developed with respect to Brazilians of African descent as compared to other, immigrant, peoples who came to be identified as ‘non-white.’ The roots of this constraint include the means by which flexible understandings of race simultaneously reinforced the interests of disparate groups and the implicit comparison of the Brazilian expericence wtih that of the United States. I contend that separate treatment for racially-defined groups has constrained our understanding of race in Brazil. Brief overviews of the historiographies highlight the intersections in these bodies of research. Considering race historiography in the aggregate, crystallizes the process by which Brazilians have defined white. At the same time, that it also reveals important lacunae in our understanding of the concept of non-white in Brazil. Beyond the implications for our understanding of Brazil, such a re-oriented perspective can help to understand the mechanisms by which racial identity and definition change over time.