Racial Diversity in 19th and 20th century Latin America

  At the start of the 19^th century in Brazil there were both black and white and mixed races. This was so incredible to some people but, not in the way as it is great that there is a mix of races but that in a scientific fact or almost like someone is going to see an off the wall piece of art at a museum. Many white men from foreign countries would come to study and observe the diversity of the Latin countries as almost as if the black people and mixed-race people were test subjects in an experiment. So not only was the idea of these race sort of co-existing with one another mind blowing but also many viewed it as not good in the slightest and thought that the country needed to whiten. Some even said that the only way a country would get better was by whitening it. I took this as a few ways these people want to populate that land with more white people, these people wanted to reduce the amount of black or mixed people in these countries, or they want to whiten the black and mixed of the country. What I mean by “to whiten the black and mixed population” is that these white foreigners wanted to make it were the people of color behaved more like a white person. Doing this by having these people dress, act, talk, or work like a rich white person. Now, that was from the outside looking in many people withing these Latin American countries did not care and some even felt like everyone in the country was connected in some way. Then near the end of the 19^th century there were many different theories about the racial diversity in Brazil and they were often argued with the theories of European imperialism. From what I gathered the racial theory talks that racial diversity is good for the culture and government of a country while the European imperialism theory is essentially arguing that notion and that a country is better with a more white or European influence. The racial theory would have some gumption to it and would be easily backed up one would think. However, the theory would not be accepted by many researchers because they do not have a lot of credibility. Then into the early 20^th century the topic would be discussed and has different argumentative thoughts. Even today in America not only in Brazil and other Latin American countries there are still talks about race today granted since many civil rights movements and activists have occurred or spoken upon race issues the inequality has ceased but there are still talks of some problems minority races have. Many things early on have influenced the racial divide and one of them was science but that was also skewed by the Europeans because they were scared by the numbers that showed that mestizos and black population was growing. However, this same regard was embraced by the educated in Brazil. Another thing was the church because back then church and the government weren’t separate and not many slaves who were mostly black or mestizo did not have much prestige withing the church were the was much influence by the government. That creates the divide even bigger because of the impact the church and religion had on peoples lives back then because it was a huge impact and the mind set was essentially that if the church says its true it has to be true. As time has shown the issue of race granted has gotten better but is still not completely dealt with. I think the main contributor of this is the history as the events explained above and the lack of education for one another.