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:
“What an antithetical mind!—tenderness, roughness—delicacy, coarseness—sentiment, sensuality—soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity—all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.”
—Mary Mcleod Bethune (1875–1955)
“In a living society every day is a day of judgment; and its recognition as such is not the end of all things but the beginning of a real civilization.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)