Use of The Whitening Ideology
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 America 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,
| “ | Now comes the necessity to devise some method of dealing with it . You of the United States are keeping the blacks as an entirely separate element, and you are not treating them in a way that fosters their self-respect. They will remain a menacing element in your civilization, permanent, and perhaps even after a while a growing element. With us the question tends to disappear, because the blacks themselves tend to disappear and become absorbed... | ” |
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“Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation.... The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.”
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