Blog entry 9-22

Reading Taylor’s discussion of interstitial people coincided with a visit to Florida to visit my grandparents. The day I read the section about “illusions of purity”, my Grandfather renounced his Brazilian-ness.

“I am American, I have an American passport” he proclaims adamantly (in Portuguese nonetheless).

“I’m not Brazilian anymore.”

Taylor notes that identity is “dialectical”… constantly informed by interactions with others, with society.

I’ve noticed that for my grandfather, adopting the American way meant essentially assimilating to “white” America.

Taylor observes that, in Brazil, “marrying someone lighter is treated as a blessing for you and your progeny.” (144). My grandmother is a light, white Portuguese woman, while my grandfather used to be mistaken for mulatto.

Taylor notes that there is a “pro-white” colorist continuum and that “wealth and prestige can whiten” (144). Brazil, which rhetorically purports a more fluid model of racial-thinking still demonstrates hierarchy.  

Centuries of “social engineering” put whites on top. Even in Brazil, where an individual’s ethnicity is more dubious, and everyone is more or less a shade of brown, lightness is still equated with superiority and, like here in the United States, there are disproportionately more blacks living in extreme poverty than whites.  The darker you are, the poorer you are, and the less represented you are in media and government. It seems that even when everyone is mixed, a history of slavery informs attitudes about literal skin color.

Which brings me to a provocative question: if such dramatic racial stratifications (with whites consistently on top, and blacks consistently on the bottom) can be traced to origins of slavery, shouldn’t whites be enslaved for a period in order to achieve a more egalitarian society?