Pardo

[karmicdragonfly]

Pardo -- brown (skinned).

Far be it from me to negatively judge how another culture handles the differences in skin color. Notice, I did not say 'race' because I think that word is not precise. I think we should just say 'skin color' and talk about the effects of darker vs lighter, and why those effects manifest themselves.

I found this article very interesting!

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/

...how Fernando sees himself. He identifies as pardo, or brown: a mixed-race person with black ancestry. His family has struggled with discrimination ever since his white grandfather married his black grandmother, he told me. “My grandfather was accused of soiling the family blood,”...

The marker of race drifted away from a binary consideration of a person’s ancestry and became increasingly based on one’s appearance. Today, Brazilians see themselves as falling across a spectrum of skin colors with a dizzying assortment of names: burnt white, brown, dark nut, light nut, black, and copper are a few of the 136 categories that the census department, in a 1976 study, found Brazilians to use for self-identification.

The Department of Education in Para, Brazil’s blackest state, attempted to fulfill the decree with a checklist, which leaked to the press. Among the criteria to be scored: Is the job candidate’s nose short, wide and flat? How thick are their lips? Are their gums sufficiently purple? What about their lower jaw? Does it protrude forward? Candidates were to be awarded points per item, like “hair type” and “skull shape.” In response to the leaked test, one college professor from the state wrote on Facebook, “We’re going back to the slave trade. During job interviews they’re gonna stick their hands in our mouth to inspect our teeth.”

But black activists say such measures are unavoidable. “A person who does not look phenotypically black is not the one getting killed by police every 23 minutes,” said Santos, the law student and Coletivo Negrada member. “So long as this is how racism manifests itself here, we need to ensure that the people taking up admission spots in universities are the ones with these characteristics.”