Darker middle class
A new study concludes that 53.5% of Brazilian Blacks and 47.3% of those with a mixed Black and White heritage belong now to the middle class (which includes the so-called A, B and C classes).
According to economist Marcelo Neri, interviewed this week by daily O Estado de S. Paulo, these numbers show a very positive evolution in the last 15 years. In 1993, less than a quarter of the Blacks (23.8%) and just a little over one fifth of those with mixed heritages (21.7%) were in the middle and upper classes. Also, he verified that the mobility of Whites in this period was, in comparison, less accentuated.
Neri, who works for the Centro de Políticas Sociais of Fundação Getúlio Vargas (a respected university and think tank), based his info in data collected in the 2008 edition of Pnad, a reduced version of the census, with a limited sample of interviews, produced by IBGE, the federal bureau of statistics.
Naturally, we can argue that the Pnad – which asks the interviewees to define their own color – may be misguided by those who prefer to see themselves as whiter than they effectively are. Census interviewers have been reporting for decades that many people refuse to be classified as Blacks, preferring to state that they are tanned or morenos (a word with a slightly vague meaning, that normally applies for a brunette or maybe someone of Mediterranean origin). But, if that is the case, there is a good chance the presence of Blacks in the middle classes might be even higher.
The slow ascension of the Afro-descendants is still very far from solving the Brazilian disparities (racism was the topic of a recent post), but it deserves to be celebrated, anyway.
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I have one doubt before we all go celebrating about this.
Over the last fifteen years, there’s been a big push for Brazilians to declare themselves afrodecendente. For the first time in the country’s history, this is seen as a positive thing.
So my question to Dr. Neri is this: have the percentages of black and mixed Brazilians stayed the same over the last 15 years? Because I strongly suspect – though I may be wrong – that we’ve become “darker” as a nation as more previously “white” people declare themselves to be “pardo” and previously “pardo” people declare themselves to be “black”.
I do hope he’s able to dismiss my fear.
That’s a very good point. If you read the article that quotes Neri, that I linked in my post, you will see they mention other sources, such as Marcelo Paixão, from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. In a given moment, they say the phenomenon you say might be partially (but only partially) responsible for those numbers. Anyways, I really think there is some ground for celebration there.
This is truly great news. And as for Thaddeus’ comment, I would argue that Brazilians beginning to declare their Afrodecendencia is *also* great news, if that is the case.