Mixed Race Day is celebrated on June 27 in Brazil as a reference to the twenty-seven mixed-race ("mestiço" in Portuguese) representatives elected during the 1st Conference for the Promotion of Racial Equality, which occurred in the city of Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil, from April 7 to 9, 2005. It also refers to the month of June, in which caboclo activist Helda Castro was registered as the only mixed-race representative in the 1st National Conference for the Promotion of Racial Equality, which was held in Brasília (June 30 to July 2, 2005) and was sponsored by the Government of Brazil.
Manaus established "Mixed Race Day" (Dia do Mestiço, in Portuguese) as an official day of the city on January 6, 2006. The recognition was adopted by other cities and states: 2006, by the Brazilian state of Amazonas and by the city of Boa Vista, in Roraima; 2007, by the state of Roraima and the state of Paraíba.
Mixed Race Day honors all those who possess multi-ethnic origins. It occurs three days after the Day of the Caboclo, honoring the first mixed-race Brazilian group (people of European and Amerindian ancestry).
Famous quotes containing the words mixed, race and/or day:
“Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student of divinity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Re-born, he was in the other life, the greater day of the human consciousness. And he was lone and apart from the little day, and out of contact with the daily people.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)