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Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945 |
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Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945
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by Jerry Dávila and Jerry Dávila
Sales Rank: 873853
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List Price: $22.95
$12.50
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 292 pages
Published by: Duke University Press March 2003
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0822330709
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0822330707
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 1.1 pounds
Product Review
"[A] superb history of Brazilian racial ideas and the implementation of those ideas in the educational system of Rio de Janeiro in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . Diploma of Whiteness should be essential reading for modern scholars of Latin America."
--Michael Monteón, History: Reviews of New Books
"Diploma of Whiteness is more than a history of Brazilian education. It provides a brilliant lesson that in order to analyze critically any educational system (and/
or structure), knowledge of its past can be illuminating. Similarly, this text can elucidate how and why race remains a hidden force to be reckoned with in societies that are not only multiethnic/cultural, but are, in fact, fundamentally multiracial. Finally, this study of social reforms proves that the real measure of policy effectiveness should be sought in the lives of people: the human face of change and
social equality."
--Francis Musa Boakari, Comparative Education Review
"Dávila's exhaustively researched analysis is an great example of the study of micro-institutions"
--Rebecca Reichmann, Anthropology and Education Quarterly
"[T]his is a noteworthy book precisely because it strives to tackle the thorny set of methodological, analytical, and political issues that have clouded an assessment of the historic relationship between race and social policy in Brazil."
--Seth Garfield, American Historical Review
"[A]n illuminating contribution. . . . Diploma of Whiteness will be of special interest to those who study education, race, citizenship, and state building. It will make a fine addition to the books that are appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate seminars on Brazilian and Latin American history."
--Peter M. Beattie, The Americas
"A timely work for current debates about affirmative action policies in Brazil, this study describes the long history of issues related to race, racism, and class in Brazil's education system. . . . Diploma of Whiteness is an interesting and clearly written book, appropriate for both graduate and undergraduate courses on Brazil and Latin America."
--Sarah Sarzynski, Hispanic American Historical Review
"[T]he reader is captivated by the many similarities between the Brazilian experience and that of the United States. . . . This book is important if we are to avoid repeating history-especially since the history of Brazil's educational system is not very different from our own."
--Myrka A. González, Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education
"Dávila writes well and makes his case forcefully. . . . [S]timulating."
--Richard Graham, Ethnic and Racial Studies
"Diploma of Whiteness is an interesting and clearly written book. . . ."
--Sarah Sarzynski, HAHR
"This detailed study of educational policy and the history of the inclusiveness of the school system in Rio de Janeiro is an great analysis of how a racist elite agenda was perpetuated through apparently progressive social policies in early twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro."
--Elizabeth A. Kuznesof, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"[A]n essential book. . . . Dávila's book is a well-researched and valuable contribution to an enhanced understanding of this formative period in modern Brazilian cultural history."
--Andrew J. Kirkendall, Luso-Brazilian Review
"Diploma of Whiteness should be read by anyone interested in Brazilian race-relations or history, and Latin America more generally. This book, additionally, makes a wonderful contribution to a better understanding of race relations in Brazil in the 21st century."
--José de Arimatéia da Cruz, The Latin Americanist
"Dávila has achieved an important and laudable goal: his book is very well documented, presenting new archival data."
--Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães, Journal of Latin American Studies
"This extensively documented study will present new dimensions to the well-known studies of race by Dávila’s mentor, Thomas Skidmore, and will enhance the importance of
education and the educational pioneers whose visions of the ‘Brazilian Man of the Future’ structured racial and social policy during the first half of the twentieth century."
--Nancy Priscilla Naro, Bulletin of Latin American Research
"[S]uperb. . . . [T]he book deserves credit for enriching the debate on race relations in Brazil. . . . [H]ighly recommended to specialists and students alike."
--Silke Hensel, Iberoamericana
"[I]nnovative."
--Nancy P. Appelbaum, Latin American Research Review
Product Description
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. Jerry 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 unique 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.
Reader Reviews
"Using an elastic definition of degeneracy, white Brazilian elites did not see blackness and whiteness as mutually exclusive. Poor whites could be degenerate, and some Brazilians of color could escape degeneracy by whitening through social ascension. It is this crucial detail that infused Brazilian public education with its special significance." -Jerry Davila In his book, "Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945", Dr. Jerry Davila communicates effectively how the educational experiences of millions of Brazilians was created by a small faction of elites with a deliberate sense of the significance of race in mind, more implicitly, with their scientific ideology of eugenics in mind. The author argues that the way the practice of eugenics submerged the management of racial hierarchy within social scientific language that "deracialized" and depoliticized the image of Brazilian society allows us to understand how both Brazilians and foreigners accepted this paradoxical myth of a racial democracy in the twentieth century. Davila provides analyses to this thesis through six intriguing chapters with the Rio de Janeiro school system as the model. With the most extensive school system in Brazil at the time, Rio serves as an outstanding model for illustrating "the reformist tendencies in education and the ways reforms contended with race, class, and gender." Davila also states that "Rio's schools provide a way to see how the educational system related to its city and responded to the particular circumstances created by rapid growth and industrialization." Davila first evidences his thesis through this model of the Rio school system, but in detail, through expounding upon the role of the MES (Brazil's Ministry of Education and Public Health) and the IPE (Institution for Educational Research): Brazil's programs of combined psychological and anthropological studies of race, presenting the case for what Davila calls "the elasticity of disciplinary boundaries in the context of eugenics." He breaks down the role of the IPE and shows its significance through elaboration on its Orthophrenology and Mental Hygiene sector, a pundit of perpetuating these mythical ideas of cultural inferiority and the possibility of a racial utopia of former degenerates with their `diplomas of whiteness.' Although I find Dr. Davila's research and analyses of the history of eugenic thought in Brazil and the institutions that harbored it to be the foundations for this work, it would not be complete without a critical analysis and evidence through primary sources, which Davila abundantly supplies. In his chapter: "What Happened to Rio's Teachers of Color?," Davila is able to prove his case that the dictators of social policy in education used their theories of degeneration when they began to use white educated women as the model for teaching with not only documented sources and first-hand conversations but also the use of an archived photo collection (used throughout the book) from Augusto Malta, which truly adds another dimension to the ability to grasp this Brazilian concept of "whitening." With Malta's collection, you see the transition from an early 1900's male afro-descendant teaching staff to the masses of middle-aged white female "clones" at the Institute of Education in 1943. From here, Davila breaks down the reforms in elementary education, secondary schools, and what he calls the "Escola Nova no Esatdo Nova": The New School in the New State; Brazil's school system under Vargas and militarism. Again employing an abundant number of sources compiled alongside Malta's photo collection, Davila is able to effectively demonstrate the effects and extent of policy reform on literally millions of young Brazilians. Overall the authors conclusion on Brazil's "whitening through social ascension," this earning of a `diploma of whiteness,' is very effectively evidenced throughout the course of the book and is broken-down successfully in each succeeding chapter beginning from the first: "Building the Brazilian Man." The book is very well laid-out and it is easy to follow Davila's ideas as they transition well from one to the other, especially with the Malta collection available. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Latin American Studies or more specifically how race can influence social policy, not just in Brazil, but anywhere in the world. This book added significant insight and value to my History of Brazil course, presenting many analyses on race I had yet to ponder. According to Freyre, and evidenced by Davila, Brazil is truly the "laboratory of races." Everyone in Brazil has a `grandmother captured by lasso' or a `foot in the kitchen' so to speak.
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Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945
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