Racial whitening

Racial whitening, or "whitening" (branqueamento), is an ideology that was widely accepted in Brazil between 1889 and 1914, as the solution to the "Negro problem." However, racial whitening specific to Brazil also encompasses the perception of individuals as being white in relation to their position in the class system. Supporters of the Whitening ideology believed that the Negro race would advance culturally and genetically, or even disappear totally, within several generations of mixed breeding between whites and blacks. This ideology gained its support from two scientific racism beliefs that were prominent during this time. One being social Darwinism, which applied Darwin's theory of natural selection to a society or race, and the other being Aryanism, the belief that the "white" "Aryan" race was superior to all other cultures. By combining these two ideas, the white elites of the time believed that because "white" blood was superior it would inevitably "whiten" the inferior races' blood.

The actual use of the Whitening ideology seems to be peculiar to Brazil, and was not seen in Europe or the United States. Many Europeans believed that the mixing of races would produce degenerate offspring and they feared mixing could become a threat to the white race. In the United States a barrier between blacks and whites was formed by segregation, which forbade the mixing of the two races.

Brazil on the other hand did not have the barrier of segregation, and the Portuguese were more accepting of miscegenation. Also Brazil was already a multicultural society that already had a mixed-class. When scientific racist beliefs and ideas became more prominent in the 1850s, Brazil's society felt they needed to find their place in the social order and to do this they needed to solve their problem with the supposedly inferior races. Because they already were a multicultural society, the Whitening ideology was a perfect solution. Most Brazilians thought this approach was a far better one than what the United States had done. A Brazilian statesman compared the United States and Brazil by saying,

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