Brazilians defining themselves as black has grown 15%; while pretos and pardos are considered black, pretos are those defining themselves as simply black

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Census/Demographics, Media Archive on 2017-12-20 22:41Z by Steven

Brazilians defining themselves as black has grown 15%; while pretos and pardos are considered black, pretos are those defining themselves as simply black

Black Women of Brazil
2017-12-12

Source: Jornal Floripa, Tudo que Preciso SaberNº de pessoas que se declara preta ou parda cresce 14,9%

Note from BW of Brazil: So what does today’s report really mean in plain English? It’s a topic that’s been discussed here since the debut of this blog back in 2011. Depending on how you look at it, Brazil could have as many 112.7 million black people, which would be 54.8% of the country’s total population of 205.5 million people. Or, looking at it from another perspective, the black population could be around 16.8 million people, which would represent about 8.2% of all Brazilians. Why such a huge discrepancy? Well, again, it depends on how you see it. To come to a figure of 112.7 million black people, one has to include the population of people who define themselves as “pardos”, loosely meaning ‘brown’ or ‘mixed’. At almost 96 million people, they make up about 46.7% of the Brazilian population. For decades, due to quality of life and socioeconomic statistics, black activists have defined the country’s população negra (black population) as the combination of self-declared pretos (blacks) and pardos. The question here would be, how many of those pardos have a phenotype that most would consider black? The world may never know.

The number of Brazilians who declare themselves pretos (blacks) has increased 14.9% to 16.825 million people between 2012 and 2016, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which announced on Friday the “Características gerais dos moradores 2012-2016” (General characteristics of residents 2012 -2016), raised by the National Continuous Household Sample Survey (PNAD).

According to the survey, the number of Brazilians who declared themselves pardos (or were declared pardos by the resident interviewed) also grew between 2012 and 2016, by 6.6%, to 95.9 million people. This is the largest group, accounting for 46.7% of the population, a condition it assumed from 2015.

The number of Brazilians declaring themselves brancos (whites) in turn continued to shrink: they were 90.9 million in 2016, 1.8% less than in 2012. Of 46.6% of residents in the country in 2012, the declared white population accounted for 44.2% of the total in 2016. Those declared black were 8.2%.

According to Maria Lucia Vieira, research manager, the data indicate an increasing miscegenation in Brazil. There are basically three possible explanations, according to her: increased self-assertion of pretos e pardos (blacks and browns); marriage growth between races; higher fertility rate among pretos and pardos…

Read the entire article here.

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Brazil sees a rise in number of people who consider themselves black

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-11-18 22:55Z by Steven

Brazil sees a rise in number of people who consider themselves black

El País
Madrid, Spain
2015-11-17

Marina Rossi
São Paulo, Brazil

English version by Martin Delfín.


Participants in the “Curly Hair Pride March,” which was held in July in São Paulo. / CORDON PRESS

More and more Brazilians say they are black or multiracial when asked to describe their race, a new study reveals.

In a survey taken by the Brazilian Geographical and Statistics Institute (IBGE) last year, 53% of Brazilians classified themselves as either being black or multiracial while, 45.5% considered themselves white.

In the same National Household Survey taken 10 years earlier, 51.2% of Brazilians polled said they were white while 47.9% replied with black or multiracial…

…Katia Regis, a coordinator for African and Afro-Brazilian studies, believes that the increases among the population who identify themselves as black can be attributed to long battles waged by the country’s black organizations, as well as more access to higher levels of education…

Read the entire article here.

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