Self-Declared Skin Color in Contemporary Brazil

It is well established in litterature that popular saying "money whitens" is a strong mechanism of skin color self-declarations in Brazil. It was indeed observed comparing self-declarations and declarations by a third – mainly the interviewer – that the higher the educational level, the lighter the declaration by respondents. The same link was assessed for wages and income. These researches do not include a full analysis of darkening and chromatic immobility. Admittedly darkening is sometimes mentioned, but it is rather a strict counterpart of lightening than a choice for itself: if "money whitens", "poverty darkens". But contemporary evolutions of representations in brazilian society lead notably to a valorization of darkening. In this paper, I construct a chromatic mobility model to analyse lightening, darkening and chromatic immobility together. In this model, the mobility is realized by the respondent in relation to the perception of a third. Each individual realizes a trade-off to maximizes its satisfaction. This trade-off calls together personal identity and social identity. The empirical application of this chromatic mobility model relies on original data collected during a field research conducting in São Paulo (november 2006 – august 2007). I conclude that the link between chromatic mobility and educationnal level has to be nuanced. Indeed, it exists a threshold above which darkening is prefered to lightening. I although underline variables which are linked to chromatic immobility.