(Count the ramifications, amerika! The word "white" has lost 90% of its meaning down there as it all goes blacker and leftier. NN) The Left slowly abandoned Marxism and now largely mimics the Democrat Party in the United States, with its broad coalition of “minorities,” promotion of “diversity,” and suspicion of heterosexual white men. What we see today is similar to the post-Tony Blair Labour Party in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Despite an instinctively conservative electorate, the progressive Left manages to dominate the intelligentsia and the politics of Brazil.
The return to civilian rule led to a new constitution in 1988, which granted official protection to Indian reservations and quilombos. Many of those areas are rich in minerals, and this leads to frequent skirmishes with outsiders over development. The government has also introduced “affirmative action” for blacks, mulattoes, and Indians (but not Asians) in public universities and, more recently, for government jobs. Race, which had receded as an issue since the end of the policy of whitening Brazil, has become a problem. Blacks, who had quietly accepted a subservient status, have become much more demanding.
[Caption: The many types of reservations take 34 percent of the land of Brazil. Brown: Land taken from unproductive owners and given to the poor as part of agrarian reform. Red: Quilombos. Pink: Indian Reservations. Green: Forest and jungle reserves.]
Since there has been very little immigration, the changes in percentages are largely a reflection of the perception of who is white, which is very fluid and has little to do with biology. Two factors determine who is considered white: social class and region.
In the Northeast, where there are many blacks and dark-skinned mulattoes, most middle-class light-skinned mulattoes consider themselves white. Thus, in the Northeast, the average “white” person has about 76 percent European genes. In the South, the average self-identified white has European ancestry approaching 90 percent, and anyone with black hair and dark eyes is suspect. [1] Thus, a person who considers himself white in the Northeast might consider himself a mulatto in the South.
Wealth can confer whiteness. Thus, both the people in the photographs below are very rich and consider themselves white. The soccer player Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima is from the North and Giselle Bündchen is from the South............
Click for Full Text!