Racial whitening as a global ‘innovation’: Race in the First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930)

This article explores the theory of racial whitening's role in the political attempt to reshape the national collective in the First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930) to explain the theory's origins and characteristics and suggest its international relevance. It is argued that this theory - which proposed that Brazil could modernize through interracial marriage and mass European immigration - was not a Brazilian or Latin American peculiarity but was aligned with a transformist strand of previous scientific racialism. The main novelty came from wide political resonance, not intellectual newness. In addition, the article demonstrates that racial whitening oriented the First Republic to construct ambiguous, yet effective, structures of discrimination, aimed at molding the national collective. These structures seem to have anticipated the transformation of racial relations elsewhere, preceding the global shift in the justification of institutional racism from biological to cultural bases after 1945. The article then underscores the importance of understanding historical dependencies and subtle mechanisms through which racism can be perpetuated, especially in societies that claim to be racially progressive.