Brazilian 'whitening' policy more widespread?

[DominusNovus]

I've been fascinated by Brazil's approach to the racial divide in their country, particularly in the end of the 19th century. Essentially, while most other countries of European origin pursued some policy of segregation in order to maintain the racial order, the Brazilians took the scientific racism of the time and went the other way: make everyone white, by encouraging intermarriage.

It certainly turns the racism of the time on its head, without abandoning it entirely. Could other countries have embraced a similar idea? Could the US?

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Didn't the Spanish American colonies have similar policies? I can't remember if mixed-race colonials were considered white or just better than natives, but either way it's not too dissimilar from the Brazilian idea.

 

[DominusNovus]

Didn't the Spanish American colonies have similar policies? I can't remember if mixed-race colonials were considered white or just better than natives, but either way it's not too dissimilar from the Brazilian idea.

My knowledge of South America's post colonial history is limited, but I know that during their revolutions there was plenty of racial strife.

 

[Arkenfolm]

That was a long-term policy of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas, and I believe in Africa too. Also applied to American Indians too, who were more numerous than Africans in most areas.

Even the US's one-drop policy had something similar, since if you were less than 1/64 black (or in some states 1/128 black), you were white. More practically, look at the Americo-Liberians, many of whom had significant white ancestry. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first Liberian president, was probably 7/8 white. Even now (at least in the US), you can see some disparity between the darker skinned blacks and lighter skinned blacks. The difference is that Brazil (and Latin America)'s informal racial hierarchy "rewards" those lighter skinned blacks while the US's treats them as any other black person.

If you want that in the US, you need to get the South (at the forefront of racial politics) to divide their black population. Lighter-skinned blacks--because of European ancestry--are better than darker skinned blacks. That would be the conclusion a "racial scholar" would draw from this. And they could evade legal restrictions more easily than darker-skinned blacks. Such beliefs could be promulgated amongst the minority population that marrying someone with lighter skin is the ticket to success. Of course, the one-drop rule is such a huge obstacle to this policy, even as it acknowledges that someone with 1/128 African ancestry is white. It isn't hard for a 7/8 white person ("octoroon") to pass for white, much less someone with even less African ancestry. But blame the one-drop rule for making things that way. That racial conception seems so hard to make work in the United States, since it undermines the American conception of slavery.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

That was a long-term policy of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas, and I believe in Africa too. Also applied to American Indians too, who were more numerous than Africans in most areas.

Even the US's one-drop policy had something similar, since if you were less than 1/64 black (or in some states 1/128 black), you were white. More practically, look at the Americo-Liberians, many of whom had significant white ancestry. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first Liberian president, was probably 7/8 white. Even now (at least in the US), you can see some disparity between the darker skinned blacks and lighter skinned blacks. The difference is that Brazil (and Latin America)'s informal racial hierarchy "rewards" those lighter skinned blacks while the US's treats them as any other black person.

If you want that in the US, you need to get the South (at the forefront of racial politics) to divide their black population. Lighter-skinned blacks--because of European ancestry--are better than darker skinned blacks. That would be the conclusion a "racial scholar" would draw from this. And they could evade legal restrictions more easily than darker-skinned blacks. Such beliefs could be promulgated amongst the minority population that marrying someone with lighter skin is the ticket to success. Of course, the one-drop rule is such a huge obstacle to this policy, even as it acknowledges that someone with 1/128 African ancestry is white. It isn't hard for a 7/8 white person ("octoroon") to pass for white, much less someone with even less African ancestry. But blame the one-drop rule for making things that way. That racial conception seems so hard to make work in the United States, since it undermines the American conception of slavery.

That being said, there was different racial divides based on color and percentages in some parts of the US. Namely, Louisiane, which had clear separation between multiracial mulattoes and those of wholly African or of French descent.

 

[DominusNovus]

If you want that in the US, you need to get the South (at the forefront of racial politics) to divide their black population. Lighter-skinned blacks--because of European ancestry--are better than darker skinned blacks. That would be the conclusion a "racial scholar" would draw from this. And they could evade legal restrictions more easily than darker-skinned blacks. Such beliefs could be promulgated amongst the minority population that marrying someone with lighter skin is the ticket to success. Of course, the one-drop rule is such a huge obstacle to this policy, even as it acknowledges that someone with 1/128 African ancestry is white. It isn't hard for a 7/8 white person ("octoroon") to pass for white, much less someone with even less African ancestry. But blame the one-drop rule for making things that way. That racial conception seems so hard to make work in the United States, since it undermines the American conception of slavery.

So, basically, if the southerners adopted a 'divide and conquer' policy toward handling their ex-slaves after the ACW? It looks like the one drop rule didn't gain much popularity until relatively late.

 

[Tripledot]

So, basically, if the southerners adopted a 'divide and conquer' policy toward handling their ex-slaves after the ACW? It looks like the one drop rule didn't gain much popularity until relatively late.

Southerners did use a divide and conquer strategy post-war. They pitted poor whites against blacks, which would do better to keep the entrenched landholding interests in power than a policy of miscegenation (because once everyone considers themselves to be the same race, they'll actually band together and demand better treatment).

 

[Beausoleil]

An earlier and more successful Louisiana might do the trick. If Mississippi and Alabama and the Mississippi Delta region even up into Illinois and Missouri were more thoroughly peopled with Frenchmen who held slave plantations, there would likely also be a larger Creole Noir population, too. The Red River Valley and Arkansas River Valley would also lend themselves to this type of economy. Perhaps more or earlier settlement of New France in general would lead to earlier mapping and claiming of Louisiana and more settlement there. The French Code Noir of Louis XIV would then carry the French Catholic culture of racial stratification throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley and potentially be assimilated into Anglo-American culture (assuming the US still spreads westward) before the one-drop rule has a chance to develop and become codified into law.

 

[Arkenfolm]

So, basically, if the southerners adopted a 'divide and conquer' policy toward handling their ex-slaves after the ACW? It looks like the one drop rule didn't gain much popularity until relatively late.

An important part might be to "de-racialise" slavery by having it so that poor Southern whites can sell themselves (or their children) into slavery under codes comparable to what the Bible has to say on slavery. Poor whites being enslaved was not an alien concept amongst the intellectual Southern whites, who at one point proposed the idea. And religion can easily justify it.

It's effectively a very different slavery in the American South, related to OTL's slavery only in the Biblical justifications for it. Even in OTL, poor Southern whites suffered under similar conditions that poor Southern blacks did in sharecropping, the difference being solely the value of their skin colour. So for the sake of expanding Brazilian racial ideology (which is going to need to be before the Civil War, without a doubt, at least in the US), how can we make the status of the poor Southern white (who potentially has black ancestry which the one-drop rule may or may not discriminate against) be what the poor Southern black can achieve given a couple of generations of strategic marriages. If those poor Southern whites fail the one-drop rule (by being 1/16--"hexadecaroon" or 1/32--"duotrigeseroon", I think I came up with the latter term myself, but it hopefully illustrates how ridiculous this concept is), they can intermarry with the lighter-skinned blacks to be upwardly mobile. Maybe a "hexadecaroon" or at worst, the "duotrigeseroon" is the limit to black ancestry which can be deemed white. Perhaps a racial hierarchy where quadroons and below are the lowest rung, octoroons to my "duotrigeseroons" (if not more, like 1/64 as in some state "one drop rule" codes) are the middle group of "African ancestry underclass", which would probably include those with large Native American ancestry, since those who married "squaws" weren't well liked, nor were there children. Whites of course are the peak. Breed out your "inferior" racial genes, and you can be white.

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Pretty much all of Latin America embraced whitening ideas.

If you want this in the US, I'd suspect slavery needs to end as soon as possible and total legal equality needs to come as early as possible too (perhaps breaking the back of Southern landowners). Positivist racial attitudes are likely to develop then rather than segregationist.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

An earlier and more successful Louisiana might do the trick. If Mississippi and Alabama and the Mississippi Delta region even up into Illinois and Missouri were more thoroughly peopled with Frenchmen who held slave plantations, there would likely also be a larger Creole Noir population, too. The Red River Valley and Arkansas River Valley would also lend themselves to this type of economy. Perhaps more or earlier settlement of New France in general would lead to earlier mapping and claiming of Louisiana and more settlement there. The French Code Noir of Louis XIV would then carry the French Catholic culture of racial stratification throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley and potentially be assimilated into Anglo-American culture (assuming the US still spreads westward) before the one-drop rule has a chance to develop and become codified into law.

It also should be noted that the Louisiane situation of race before the end of the Civil war, was not just influenced by the Code Noir of Louis XIV, but by the long Spanish rule of the colony, which implemented a modified variation of the Criollo and Peninsulares to Louisiane. This stratification is seen in the distinctions in Louisiane pre civil war and in some cases until the 1920s. That being, the upper class, being people directly from France, Haiti (whites) and original colonists to the Mississippi River Valley, the second class, which consisted of the so called Cajuns or French people originally from Canada or Acadie, this is then followed by the Mulatto community of mixed persons in Louisiane and finally the lowest level being natives of the various tribes and those of African descent. Note, that in practical ways, the Natives has far more access to the city than the African slaves, and it is noted by French catholic missionaries that the Choctaw comprised a large portion of the northshore communities of Nouvelle Orléans in and around areas such as Lacombe, Saint-Tammanay, Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte (cho-funk-tu) river.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

An important part might be to "de-racialise" slavery by having it so that poor Southern whites can sell themselves (or their children) into slavery under codes comparable to what the Bible has to say on slavery. Poor whites being enslaved was not an alien concept amongst the intellectual Southern whites, who at one point proposed the idea. And religion can easily justify it.

I'm not sure you'd even need to bring religion into it -- in lots of ancient societies people who fell irrevocably into debt were either made their creditors' slaves, and I could just see the Southern elite trying to introduce the same thing into their own society.

As for the Spanish vs. US difference, I think this might partly be because the early Spanish Empire was mostly conquered by single young men who went over without any women, meaning that when they decided to settle down their only real option was to marry native women; and, when they did so, they naturally didn't want their own children to be condemned to a life of racial oppression. The original colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, OTOH, had many more women in their numbers, meaning that everybody could marry fellow-colonists without having to get involved with the natives. (You could compare this with the situation in British India, where mixed-races marriages became much less socially acceptable in the nineteenth century as more European women started to come over.)

Interestingly enough, in Rome freed slaves became full Roman citizens upon manumission, although that might have had something to do with the fact that, at least in the early days, slaves would mostly be captives taken from the neighbouring city-states, who therefore came from a similar cultural and racial background to the Romans themselves (plus, Rome's original population was an amalgamation of two or more different tribes, so concerns over racial purity never really loomed large in the Roman psyche). In the Deep South, OTOH, the slaves were mostly taken from a totally different culture thousands of miles away, and looked rather different to their enslavers.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I'm not sure you'd even need to bring religion into it -- in lots of ancient societies people who fell irrevocably into debt were either made their creditors' slaves, and I could just see the Southern elite trying to introduce the same thing into their own society.

As for the Spanish vs. US difference, I think this might partly be because the early Spanish Empire was mostly conquered by single young men who went over without any women, meaning that when they decided to settle down their only real option was to marry native women; and, when they did so, they naturally didn't want their own children to be condemned to a life of racial oppression. The original colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, OTOH, had many more women in their numbers, meaning that everybody could marry fellow-colonists without having to get involved with the natives. (You could compare this with the situation in British India, where mixed-races marriages became much less socially acceptable in the nineteenth century as more European women started to come over.)

Interestingly enough, in Rome freed slaves became full Roman citizens upon manumission, although that might have had something to do with the fact that, at least in the early days, slaves would mostly be captives taken from the neighbouring city-states, who therefore came from a similar cultural and racial background to the Romans themselves (plus, Rome's original population was an amalgamation of two or more different tribes, so concerns over racial purity never really loomed large in the Roman psyche). In the Deep South, OTOH, the slaves were mostly taken from a totally different culture thousands of miles away, and looked rather different to their enslavers.

The religious motive is to appeal to Southern society. Slavery of whites would be just as moral, and just as good, as slavery of blacks, because that's what the Bible laid out, and there is nothing wrong with slavery according to the Bible. Consider it a multiracial version of the South's OTL transformation of slavery from a necessary evil to a positive good.

Your other points are pretty much correct as well. You can see the US's own take on this where white men who married American Indian women found themselves and especially their children ostracised once enough "normal" white settlers moved into the area. That's incidentally where we get the huge amount of white ancestry in American Indians--it's a very similar to the one-drop rule, where you be 1/4 or even 1/8 American Indian, but still be an American Indian of whichever tribe. It's certainly very interesting comparing the means of racial hierarchy between European nations, and the minimal impact of the one-drop rule in Iberian classifications does make their system somehow more egalitarian, even if in theory you can beat the one-drop rule in many generations of marrying whites or if you have a small enough percentage of American Indian blood that no tribe will accept you so you might as well be white.

 

[Sicarius]

Random first thought: Young women during the Great Depression married elderly Civil War veterans for their pensions. I actually have no idea if this is true or an urban (rural?) myth. Imagine some sort of Radical Republicans Gone Wild world where a.) Southern state governments are made weak (or nonexistent) and remain so, and b.) The Federal government offers generous pensions to former slaves and their spouses, for life. And why not some actual 40-acre-and-a-mule homesteads carved from the land of erstwhile Confederates to boot? This being America, with such strong economic incentives the invisible hand of the free market will be the ringbearer in many an interracial marriage.

 

[Revachah]

In the United States there actually was a whitening "policy" so to speak but it was a combination of formal blood quantums and also individual lawsuits to whiteness.

The whole "one drop rule" came at the time of Plecker after the 1920's.

Dominican Republic actively encouraged whiteness, in Haiti after the revolution the elite did as well for themselves. Jamaica early on sought to allow a "dilution" policy to form to augment the lack of European women but it was never officially made though socially it did occur.

Honestly what most people feel to be the history of black America is generalized and quite often wrong. It's complicated and far more dynamic.

It also should be noted that the Louisiane situation of race before the end of the Civil war, was not just influenced by the Code Noir of Louis XIV, but by the long Spanish rule of the colony, which implemented a modified variation of the Criollo and Peninsulares to Louisiane. This stratification is seen in the distinctions in Louisiane pre civil war and in some cases until the 1920s. That being, the upper class, being people directly from France, Haiti (whites) and original colonists to the Mississippi River Valley, the second class, which consisted of the so called Cajuns or French people originally from Canada or Acadie, this is then followed by the Mulatto community of mixed persons in Louisiane and finally the lowest level being natives of the various tribes and those of African descent. Note, that in practical ways, the Natives has far more access to the city than the African slaves, and it is noted by French catholic missionaries that the Choctaw comprised a large portion of the northshore communities of Nouvelle Orléans in and around areas such as Lacombe, Saint-Tammanay, Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte (cho-funk-tu) river.

Bayou Lacombe Choctaw were peddlers of herbs that went out and about around Congo Square and other markets to trade but it's absolutely false that Native Americans had access to cities when NOLA was for quite some time predominately black or atleast substantially so.

The Indigenous people of north shore were there at the time of the backwaters, they were pushed out, assimilated or made slowly into a forgot backwoods people patronized by plantation owners.

 

[Lecen]

I've been fascinated by Brazil's approach to the racial divide in their country, particularly in the end of the 19th century. Essentially, while most other countries of European origin pursued some policy of segregation in order to maintain the racial order, the Brazilians took the scientific racism of the time and went the other way: make everyone white, by encouraging intermarriage.

It certainly turns the racism of the time on its head, without abandoning it entirely. Could other countries have embraced a similar idea? Could the US?

I'm sorry, but you got it wrong. There was never a policy such as that in Brazil. Some intelectuals supported the idea of bringing more Europeans to overwhelm the mixed-race population, but no one called for interracial marriage.

 

[DominusNovus]

I'm sorry, but you got it wrong. There was never a policy such as that in Brazil. Some intelectuals supported the idea of bringing more Europeans to overwhelm the mixed-race population, but no one called for interracial marriage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_whitening

Supporters of the Whitening ideology believed that the Negro race would advance culturally and genetically, or even disappear totally, within several generations of mixed breeding between whites and blacks.

http://theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record.aspx?libID=o279297
Since that piece is an image, I dont have the patience to quote it.

But it sure sounds like they were talking about intermarriage to me.

 

[Revachah]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_whitening


http://theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record.aspx?libID=o279297
Since that piece is an image, I dont have the patience to quote it.

But it sure sounds like they were talking about intermarriage to me.

There has always been talking of whitening, an official policy never seemed to come.

The social pressure and norm to whiten however did exist and persist, that was what formed the backbone of branciemento in Brazilian society.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

In the United States there actually was a whitening "policy" so to speak but it was a combination of formal blood quantums and also individual lawsuits to whiteness.

The whole "one drop rule" came at the time of Plecker after the 1920's.

Dominican Republic actively encouraged whiteness, in Haiti after the revolution the elite did as well for themselves. Jamaica early on sought to allow a "dilution" policy to form to augment the lack of European women but it was never officially made though socially it did occur.

Honestly what most people feel to be the history of black America is generalized and quite often wrong. It's complicated and far more dynamic.

Bayou Lacombe Choctaw were peddlers of herbs that went out and about around Congo Square and other markets to trade but it's absolutely false that Native Americans had access to cities when NOLA was for quite some time predominately black or atleast substantially so.

The Indigenous people of north shore were there at the time of the backwaters, they were pushed out, assimilated or made slowly into a forgot backwoods people patronized by plantation owners.

I disagree that blacks as in mostly African descent was the majority of the city at any time but post 1970 census. There already were 40 000 or so mulattoes and the population of whites was very large and still is to some extent. This is also before white communities moved out of Orléans parish and into places such as Gretna, Arabe, etc.... Basically, unless we are talking post 1900, there is no way to make the argument that wholly black descent was predominant in NO.

Well the Choctaw certainly had more access to the city that slaves on plantations, no? That's more what I meant than those of African descent already in the Orléans parish.

EDIT: notice, I'm including Metairie with NO, all as the so called Île d'Orléans, not simply limited to modern parish drawings.

 

[Clandango]

Since the Portuguese have a darker complexion than Northern Europeans, I imagine that they will not need people to be lily white to be accepted under their ideal. Bring in a swarm of Europeans, have them marry various people, while the Brazilians descended from Africans and indigenous peoples mingle around as well, speak good Brazilian Portuguese, and say they are just a little tan. I remember reading on how a mixed-race slave (a woman) put on a suit and spread something on her face to give a slightly more olive complexion, and escaped with her husband (posing as her slave), by claiming she was Spanish. But for this Whitening Policy I think we would need to look at the exact terminology used, and the historical context and implications of it.