Whitening and De-whitening: Ambivalences and Challenges of Racialization and Social Categorization in Everyday Life in Brazil

Whitening as an ideological formation has played a critical role in the everyday life of the African diasporas for decades. In the Brazilian social, political, and economic context, branqueamento (whitening) has developed around a power structure and relations as an ongoing process that progressed through a discursive formation on slavery and colonization, with links to Africa. While this power structure has initially emerged from a historical political system of race and racism, this presentation argues that a power system has also evolved through a bottom-up process, with its actors ascribing racial identities toward whitening for themselves. This paper presents key findings from an ethnographic study based on participant observation of Black Brazilians and their mixed-race families in their everyday life interactions. The study unveils individuals’ engagement in social practices of skin pigmentation. It draws a line under the silent social, political, and economic implications of these practices, which have indirectly and unconsciously contributed to the perception of black skin as anathema.