The “race” segment of the Brazilian census is based on self-assigned skin color rather than ethnicity. Since the 1940 census, the rate of Brazilians self-declaring as black or mixed-race has grown in each new populational survey.
Experts believe that it is not the proportion of black Brazilians that has changed, but the number of those self-identifying as black due to recent surges in Afro-Brazilian educational and cultural movements.
But some Brazilian lawmakers are taking that to an undesirable extreme. Of the 124 lawmakers elected in 2018 who identified as being black or mixed-race, 43 changed their self-assignment to white upon taking office.
One of the parliamentarians who changed their color was Rodrigo Maia, the former speaker of the House. He declared as mixed-race and then changed his registration to white in 2020, claiming there was a mistake in his registration with the electoral courts. Mr. Maia said he never claimed nor considered himself to be mixed-race.
Due to Brazil’s complicated history of miscegenation with indigenous people, Europeans, and Africans, it is tricky for many Brazilians to trace their heritage and find a box that suits them in surveys around race.
The issue of race is so complicated in Brazil that when racial quotas were first implemented in federal universities, there was a case in which one young man was accepted as black while his identical twin brother was not.
For organizations fighting for the...