Diploma of Whiteness

Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945

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by Jerry Davila

Duke University Press

Due/Published April 2003, 296 pages, paper

ISBN 0822330709

In Brazil, the country with the largest population of African descent in the Americas, the idea of race underwent a dramatic shift in the first half of the twentieth century. Brazilian authorities, who had considered race a biological fact, began to view it as a cultural and environmental condition. Dávila explores the significance of this transition by looking at the history of the Rio de Janeiro school system between 1917 and 1945. He demonstrates how, in the period between the world wars, the dramatic proliferation of social policy initiatives in Brazil was subtly but powerfully shaped by beliefs that racially mixed and nonwhite Brazilians could be symbolically, if not physically, whitened through changes in culture, habits, and health.

Providing a historical perspective on how racial attitudes move from elite discourse into people's lives, Diploma of Whiteness shows how public schools promoted the idea that whites were inherently fit and those of African or mixed ancestry were necessarily in need of remedial attention. Analyzing primary material--including school system records, teacher journals, photographs, private letters, and unpublished documents--Dávila traces the emergence of racially coded hiring practices and student-tracking policies as well as the development of a social and scientific philosophy of eugenics. He contends that the implementation of the various policies intended to "improve" nonwhites institutionalized subtle barriers to their equitable integration into Brazilian society. 

"By taking an innovative approach to the study of race and social policy, Jerry D‡vila has written a rare book that shows how racial attitudes move from elite discourse into the real lives of real people. This approach combines with fascinating research and a narrative style that is compelling and often dramatic to make a first-rate contribution to the fields of Latin American and Brazilian history."--Jeffrey Lesser, author of Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil

"A superbly researched analysis of the application of the whitening ideal, with all its contradictions, in the Rio de Janeiro schools during the interwar years."--Thomas Skidmore, author of Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought