Analyzing Whiteness, Deconstructing Privilege in Brazil

• In Event: Revisiting Race and Conceptualizing Whiteness in Latin America

Abstract

In the last decades the role of race in Brazilians’ lives and institutional policies has been object of heated debates, however little space has been dedicated to understand how whiteness is defined by whites and blacks, and how it is central to the reproduction of racism. Silence around whiteness is still deep, the equivalent term in Portuguese (branquitude) is not very widespread and sometimes even considered as an “importation” from USA. In this presentation I will discuss what are the characteristics of whiteness in Brazil, a country which has historically put the valorization of mestiçagem (mixed race) at the center of its national identity and in which people recognize easily class inequalities, whereas tend to negate race inequalities. Using data from an ethnographic study among self-identified white middle-class men living in Rio de Janeiro, I will examine how race and class are constantly and mutually shaped in the experiences of these men, along with gender, especially in their “sexual apprenticeship” with domestic workers. In particular I will focus on how “not knowing” their own whiteness, by defining it as “normal,” represents a way for these men to continue reproducing their structurally privileged position. I will stress the importance of naming whiteness as a central element of the imbrication of the race, gender and class power relations, despite the fact that white people themselves rarely recognized their whiteness as part of their privileged position.

Author

• Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz