Brazilian Ethnoracial Classification and Affirmative Action Policies: Where Are We and Where Do We Go?

Petruccelli, José Luis

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-20095-8_6

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Details of evolutionary mechanisms were few and far between, however, and calls for a new science of human diversity studies to counter continuing racism in the U.S. (Mead, 1968) did not yield significant results until decades later. Racial classifications or "population group descriptions" along with race labels continue to be used by many governments in official contexts, including in the U.S., South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere (Petruccelli, 2015; (Lieberman, 2001) and the devising of other methods to determine disease risk or degree of economic hardship.…”

Section: Whiteness Justifiedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Racial classifications or “population group descriptions” along with race labels continue to be used by many governments in official contexts, including in the U.S., South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere (Petruccelli, 2015; Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, 1997; Statistics South Africa, 2016). These designations are only slightly modified versions of the color‐based race classifications and race labels widely used in the nineteenth century.…”

Section: Skin Color As Signifiermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Skin color and race

Jablonski

2020

American J Phys Anthropol

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Skin color is the primary physical criterion by which people have been classified into groups in the Western scientific tradition. From the earliest classifications of Linnaeus, skin color labels were not neutral descriptors, but connoted meanings that influenced the perceptions of described groups. In this article, the history of the use of skin color is reviewed to show how the imprint of history in connection with a single trait influenced subsequent thinking about human diversity. Skin color was the keystone trait to which other physical, behavioral, and culture characteristics were linked. To most naturalists and philosophers of the European Enlightenment, skin color was influenced by the external environment and expressed an inner state of being. It was both the effect and the cause. Early investigations of skin color and human diversity focused on understanding the central polarity between "white" Europeans and nonwhite others, with most attention devoted to explaining the origin and meaning of the blackness of Africans. Consistently negative associations with black and darkness influenced philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant to consider Africans as less than fully human and lacking in personal agency. Hume and Kant's views on skin color, the integrity of separate races, and the lower status of Africans provided support to diverse political, economic, and religious constituencies in Europe and the Americas interested in maintaining the transatlantic slave trade and upholding chattel slavery. The mental constructs and stereotypes of color-based races remained, more strongly in some places than others, after the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. The concept of color-based hierarchies of people arranged from the superior light-colored people to inferior dark-colored ones hardened during the late seventeenth century and have been reinforced by diverse forces ever since.These ideas manifest themselves as racism, colorism, and in the development of implicit bias. Current knowledge of the evolution of skin color and of the historical development of color-based race concepts should inform all levels of formal and informal education. Awareness of the influence of color memes and race ideation in general on human behavior and the conduct of science is important.

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Section: Whiteness Justifiedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Skin Color As Signifiermentioning

confidence: 99%