2 - The Puzzle of Racial Reclassification

Summary

Chapter 2 focuses on establishing and motivating the empirical puzzle that motivates this study. I present descriptive data to document that reclassification is indeed taking place, and to lay to rest simple explanations that might account for this change. I then shift to motivate the puzzle theoretically. I situate these patterns against the well-established expectations of anthropological and sociological literatures, which emphasize how discrimination and stigmatization have long incentivized whitening, or at least lightening. Zooming out further, I situate these patterns historically, arguing that the recent reclassification reversal should be understood as simply the latest development in the evolution of racial subjectivity and state policy that has spanned three centuries in Brazil.