On the (in)visibility of whiteness and Galician immigration in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

This article focuses on how whiteness, in the process of being (re)enacted in its different everyday versions, becomes invisibilised at certain moments while reappearing at others as overly present. The article borrows Widmer's metaphor of race as two types of ‘watermarks’, that of a banknote that stands in to confirm authenticity when needed, and that of the marks left by glasses on a wooden surface. The idea is to consider the experiences of early 20th‐century Galician immigrants in the city of Salvador, Brazil. I argue that understanding this process of (in)visibility helps us comprehend some of the ways in which these immigrants were involved in both confirming and challenging local versions of what it means to be white. This analytical approach allows us to go beyond a homogenised, monolithic and ahistorical portrayal of whiteness, towards a more nuanced one that takes into account the heterogeneous combination of historical and contemporary, global and regional, hegemonic and alternative versions of whiteness.

Not in the Eye of the Beholder: Racialization, Whiteness, and Beauty Standards in Mexico

“…The link to the upper class is established through the alleged historical racial composition within a social structure that has remained unaltered (see also Iturriaga 2016). Nevertheless, similar to Calvo Gonzalez’s (2019) study of Galicians in Brazil associated with poverty and manual labor, the existence of “second-class whiteness” does not dent the privilege of normative elite whiteness (also present in our data in the term güeros de rancho , equivalent to “white trash”). Once the social markers of poverty and coarseness could be erased, social mobility ensued swiftly.…”

“… 2 Related studies throughout Latin America include Ramos (2020); Calvo González (2019); Chávez-Dueñas, Adames, and Organista (2014); Jarrín (2010, 2017); and Pedraza (2014). …”

“…Related studies throughout Latin America includeRamos (2020); CalvoGonzález (2019); Chávez-Dueñas, Adames, and Organista (2014);Jarrín (2010Jarrín ( , 2017and Pedraza (2014).3 We acknowledge the contribution of Carlos Arroyo to an earlier version of this section.…”

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

“…De Witte (2019) and Çankaya and Mepschen (2019) critically analyse the tensions of post‐racial society in the Netherlands and the rise of Afropolitism. Calvo‐Gonzalez (2019) explores non‐elite versions of whiteness in a post‐colonial setting in Brazil, while Jefferson et al (2018) and Agier (2018) explore the heterotopias that are emerging in the ghettoes, favelas , refugee camps and banlieues, where political and territorialised separation presides over ‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998). In gender and sexuality, Gellner (2019) applauds Latour’s (2005) Actor Network Theory in a deliberation of the social phenomenon of a ‘third gender’ in Nepal, Tidey (2019) celebrates a Muslim transgender pioneer in Indonesia and Stivens (2019) critiques the androcentrism that characterises most theorising of modernity.…”