(Brazil) Changing race for financial and political benefit?
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Thousands of Brazilians who won elections as Black candidates in 2020 previously ran for office as white
https://news.yahoo.com/thousands-brazilians-won-elections-black-133011439.html
Seems like a bit much after what USA experienced with race changing by Rachel Dolezal. I won't pretend to know what it is like in Brazil, but the headline is attention grabbing.
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@bc22
I don't get the "trans-racial" thing.
I know that a lot of people have been using race for political and personal gain.
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Brazil is a very mixed race country, even more so than the US, I think, because there was never a fully segregation period here. Almost everybody has Portuguese, Italian, African, Indigenous and something-in-between roots. So it's kind of difficult for a Brazilian to be completely white or black. Most people are light or dark "pardo" (this is how a mixed-race between a black parent and a white parent is called in Portuguese), which is the idea people normally have of the "Brazilian" race.
So it is possible for a person to go either way, most of the times. In fact, a very interesting political theory here nowadays is called Schrödinger's Pardo. Statistically, pardos can be either white or black, depending on the narrative. The left here uses this a lot. Pardos are black when considering the incarcerated population (thus pushing the narrative that our judicial system is racist and there are more blacks than whites in prisons), but pardos are white when considering people in universities (thus pushing the narrative that there are fewer blacks than whites graduating here).
It comes as no surprise that recently the trend is that the person can self identify as white, black, pardo or whatever. The result is what you saw: people who are obviously not black saying they are just so they can use quota systems (and there are quotas for A LOT of things here). Sometimes it is even very obvious, so some people have been punished because of that, and the "self identification" system has become a nightmare. Some universities and governmental labor selection companies have instated systems to verify the race of those who identified themselves as black. A race tribunal of sorts. Very dignifying, isn't it?
(English is not my first language, so please ignore weird sentences or mistakes/errors)
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@ricky Thanks!
Brazil is a very nice country to visit. Choose well when you two decide to come. Brazil is many different countries in one. For instance, if you go to the south of Brazil, you'll see something quite similar to a less historical Europe. In São Paulo there is a whole city-like region that is almost a piece of a less populated Japan. The center-west is almost full of American like farmlands. Sadly many people go to Rio or Salvador, which are, in my opinion, not great places at all. If you allow a complete stranger to give you some tips, I'd recomend João Pessoa or Recife (if you like beaches), Manaus (if you like the Amazon rainforest), Belo Horizonte (if you want to get a fell of how multiple Brazil is and appreciate nightlife) and Gramado (if you want to experience Brazil's cheaper Europe).
