One of the problems with human genetics where it resembles economics are the ethical issues involved in experimentation. Luckily for science, but unluckily for individuals, medicine offers many "natural experiments." But in the area of population genetics and history analyses of pedigrees or family based studies centered around particular traits and genes have limitations of scale. Luckily for science again, and unluckily for millions of Amerindians and black Africans, Latin America offers a cornucopia of possibilities when it comes to exploring the outcomes ensuing from admixture between geographically distinct populations when they are brought together. Not only is the scale of the admixture significant, but since it has happened in historical memory there are many supplementary textual records which allow us to describe the dynamics.
Brazil is arguably the most extreme case, both in scale and scope. Several years ago the arrival of genomics allowed for a fine-grained investigation of the way in which traits, which code for racial identity, and ancestry, relate to each other. After all, to ascertain ancestry humans don't perform a fine-scale genomic sequencing, but rather simply assess a subset of traits which reflect a finite underlying set of genes. Most prominent among those traits are skin color, which is controlled by about 6 genes when it comes to the vast majority of the between population variation (one gene alone, SLC25A5, can account for on the order of 1/3 of the between population variance between Africans and Europeans).
What the data from Brazil suggest are that:
1) There is a correlation between phenotype (racial self-classification) and ancestry.
2) But that correlation is modest at best, and a significant proportion of the Brazilian population which is white has more black ancestry than a significant proportion of the Brazilian population which is black.
A group which has explored these topics in the past has come out with a new paper, DNA tests probe the genomic ancestry of Brazilians:
We review studies from our laboratories using different molecular tools to characterize the ancestry of Brazilians in reference to their Amerindian, European and African roots. Initially we used uniparental DNA markers to investigate the contribution of distinct Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lineages to present-day populations. High levels of genetic admixture and strong directional mating between European males and Amerindian and African females were unraveled. We next analyzed different types of biparental autosomal polymorphisms. Especially useful was a set of 40 insertion-deletion polymorphisms (indels) that when studied worldwide proved exquisitely sensitive in discriminating between Amerindians, Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. When applied to the study of Brazilians these markers confirmed extensive genomic admixture, but also demonstrated a strong imprint of the massive European immigration wave in the 19th and 20th centuries. The high individual ancestral variability observed suggests that each Brazilian has a singular proportion of Amerindian, European and African ancestries in his mosaic genome. In Brazil, one cannot predict the color of persons from their genomic ancestry nor the opposite. Brazilians should be assessed on a personal basis, as 190 million human beings, and not as members of color groups
I think the bold sentence is too strong. When speaking to an American audience I think it may be justifiable, as we Americans tend to assume a much stronger a priori connection between color and ancestry than is justifiable in Brazil. But on average people of white self-identification are quite a bit more European than those of black self-identification. Intersection of sets does not to me entail rejection of the utility of categorizations in toto, though perhaps it would in the case of medically oriented genome-wide association studies.
The authors used 40 "ancestrally informative markers" which distinguished between world populations. They were in particular interested in markers which could distinguish Africans, Europeans and Amerindians, since these are the three putative founding populations for modern Brazilians. Using the HGDP samples here is the efficacy of their markers:
Assuming 3 ancestral populations their markers infer that Europeans are 95% European, Africans 95% African and Amerindians 95% Amerindian. There is naturally some imprecision, but not too bad for 40 markers.
How do the Brazilians fit into this? I've reformatted for clarity:
Everything matches intuition. In the whither southern states of Brazil whites are whiter. One interesting point though is that Amerindian ancestry is low, but similar, across most of Brazil. Here is a table of ancestry:
Due to caveats of sample size and representativeness, one should be careful, but I believe that the low, but non-trivial amount of Amerindian ancestry across Brazil, among both whites and blacks, dovetails perfectly with the history of an early admixture which has dispersed through the population. The paper reaffirms that the Amerindian (and black African) ancestry in Brazilians seems strongly female-mediated, while the European ancestry is male-mediated, through examination of mtDNA and Y lineages. The initial generations of mestizos must naturally have identified with their European fathers and melted into the white population, at which point they contributed their ancestry again to African slaves, and intermarried with newer immigrants from Europe.
Finally, one of the glaring facts one can observe in Brazil is that admixture does not lead to homogenization of a population into a uniform brownness. Rather, extantgenetic variance is preserved, and phenomena such as assortative mating can result in the reemergence of phenotypic races decoupled from ancestry. This also makes the reality of racism in Brazil, despite widespread admixture, less surprising.
H/T Dienekes
Citation: PENA, S.D.J.; BASTOS-RODRIGUES, L.; PIMENTA, J.R. and BYDLOWSKI, S.P.. DNA tests probe the genomic ancestry of Brazilians. Braz J Med Biol Res [online]. ahead of print [cited 2009-09-15], pp. 0-0 . Available from:
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Uhmm, studies were done back to the sixties showing that for Brazilians, appearance is only a very weak determinant of racial categorization, and social status is much higher.
So, to the extent that social status is inherited, you may find a correlation between genetic ancestry and racial classification -- but only because of their cross-correlation to social status, which may be the prime causative factor. The results are both unsurprising and overstate the value of racial classification -- it's not that "white people" are "more European", it's that "rich people" are "more European", and rich people are identified as white.
So, such a study would be much more useful in a society such as the US, where phenotype is much more determinant of people's racial classification in practice.
it's not that "white people" are "more European", it's that "rich people" are "more European", and rich people are identified as white.
well, correlations aren't always transitive, but point taken. do note that previous study used underarm skin color as a "check" on self-classification.
"Brazilians should be assessed on a personal basis, as 190 million human beings, and not as members of color groups": why just Brazilians?
bio, "genetic background," i.e., your population origin, may give a lot of insight or information when it comes to assessing the effect of particular genetic variants. in the context of brazilians this is more fraught because of the wide range of the genetic background.
Brazil also has the largest population of ethnic Japanese anywhere outside of Japan. Yet I've seen little indication whether Brazilians of East Asian ancestry have mixed significantly with the EuroAfroIndian majority. Did this study look at East Asian markers at all? Or are Japanese-Brazilians effectively culturally isolated?
Historically, it's my understanding that up until the 1920s or so, Brazil was racially stratified along the typical New World post-colonial lines. Ironically perhaps, when Getúlio Vargas was trying to implement Estado Novo style fascism, he hit on promoting racial intermarriage in an attempt to create a new "Brazilian race" of sorts. It's probably the only known attempt by a fascist to promote miscegenation.
Brazil also has the largest population of ethnic Japanese anywhere outside of Japan. Yet I've seen little indication whether Brazilians of East Asian ancestry have mixed significantly with the EuroAfroIndian majority. Did this study look at East Asian markers at all? Or are Japanese-Brazilians effectively culturally isolated?
they are only 2% of the pop. max. not enough to "matter" really. rather, the rest of the brazilian population will effect the japanese a lot more (as is evident by the fact that many japanese migrants to japan are actually mixed-race).
Historically, it's my understanding that up until the 1920s or so, Brazil was racially stratified along the typical New World post-colonial lines. Ironically perhaps, when Getúlio Vargas was trying to implement Estado Novo style fascism, he hit on promoting racial intermarriage in an attempt to create a new "Brazilian race" of sorts. It's probably the only known attempt by a fascist to promote miscegenation.
the admixture certainly predates the period you're talking about. most certainly for the amerindian element, which seems relatively equally distributed, but probably for the others too. if admixture was from the 1920s it seems you'd see more discrete clusters since many more people should be "multiples of 1/4." in any case, i'm perplexed you think brazil has an atypical racial stratification now. from all i know the creme rises to the top, as is usually the case, if you know what i mean....
I've only been studying about Brazil off and on for the last couple of months, so my understanding is very superficial at this point. I'm more interested in Brazilian music and popular culture, and have only been trying to learn some political history recently. I'm not looking for a fight, but I do appreciate being able to bounce my half-baked ideas off of you.
What I see from Brazil is that it is racially stratified because there's so little class mobility -- the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. But what you don't see is much racial estrangement within economic classes. The handful of rich blacks feel quite at home among the majority of rich whites, and the handful of poor whites likewise get along just fine with poor black majority. That's not just pop culture; check out any news footage of street violence in the favelas -- it's like that 1980s movie fantasy of integrated street gangs, but with real blood. There are more poor blacks and more rich whites, but within economic classes there's no where near the level of self-segregation you find in North America.
I don't think it's fair to say that "the cream rises to the top" in Brazil, because the cream started at the top, and generations of fascist* and militaristic economic policies have guaranteed that the cream doesn't have to go anywhere if it doesn't want to.
* Please note that I am not using "fascist" in the generic "people I don't agree with" sense. I mean a system of government based on the ideology of Franco, Mussolini, and the Estado Novo in Portugal in the mid-20th century, i.e., fascism proper.
What I see from Brazil is that it is racially stratified because there's so little class mobility -- the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
i'd be interested in quantitative data on this. or the impressions of brazilians.
The handful of rich blacks feel quite at home among the majority of rich whites, and the handful of poor whites likewise get along just fine with poor black majority. That's not just pop culture; check out any news footage of street violence in the favelas -- it's like that 1980s movie fantasy of integrated street gangs, but with real blood. There are more poor blacks and more rich whites, but within economic classes there's no where near the level of self-segregation you find in North America.
it is different from north america. but there is a large literature on the reality that black middle and upper class individuals are routinely assumed to be hired help in their apartment complexes. or, there was an instance of a black dentist who was shot because it was assumed he was stealing a car (his car was way too nice for a black man to own). e.g., see Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil .
I don't think it's fair to say that "the cream rises to the top" in Brazil, because the cream started at the top, and generations of fascist* and militaristic economic policies have guaranteed that the cream doesn't have to go anywhere if it doesn't want to.
this isn't really true. many of the european immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century arrived with little, but ascended up the class hierarchy. e.g., italian & japanese laborers and such. this may not be due to racism (in many social indices the japanese come out on top, not the whites), but, it is a real phenomenon which mirrors what occurs with immigrants in the USA.
Z,
You have to read Race In Another America. It's the most data-packed book there is on the sociology of race in Brazil. Really good.
The actual Estado Novo of Portugal which had African colonies promoted a conception of the nation as of blended race. The stormfronters condemn them for that to this day. I think Franco gets off easier, though they still complain about him bringing North African troops to Spain during the Civil War.
A progenitor of Nazi racial theories thought Prussians were the perfect race precisely because they were a mixture of German and Slav (Nietzche, not quite in the same category, thought the marriage of Prussian officers and Jewesses should be promoted).
Interesting. I wonder if this study would work for North Africans who are generally 10-20% Black in much the same way. But N. Africans seemed to absorb blacks.
Unlike Brazil, North Africans are pretty uniformly brown. It's true that black Moroccans are marginalized and called "abid" or slaves...okay, maybe that's not a good example...I can't speak this geneticist language...
Razib, there should be some way to compare the situation in Brazil with that of North Africa as they both have significant sub-Saharan African percentages among those considered "white." But they are also both kind of racist. Maybe Islam has something to do with North African absorption of blacks.
Very interesting study, though the results are unsurprising to anyone familiar with Brazil. A few comments on the comments before I have the time to read the study itself, to help the discussion:
1 - * Please note that I am not using "fascist" in the generic "people I don't agree with" sense. I mean a system of government based on the ideology of Franco, Mussolini, and the Estado Novo in Portugal in the mid-20th century, i.e., fascism proper. (/i>
In this case you have to brush up on your Brazilian history. The one government we had which adopted some Fascist ideas (e.g. in labor relations) was Getúlio Vargas's dictatorship of 1937-1945. That, however, would be the same Getúlio Vargas who crushed the actual Fascists we had (the Integralista movement) after they tried a coup in 1938, and the same Getúlio Vargas who sent 30,000 men to fight Fascism in Europe. Not a paragon of democracy for sure, but no fascist either; his political outlook was positivist of the Comtean variety.
2 - On the Japanese in Brazil
They are a large community, but concentrated in the state of São Paulo. I don't have the numbers at hand, but their social indicators (education, income, etc) are better than those of the "white" population by the same amount as those of the "whites" are better than the "blacks".
3 - What I see from Brazil is that it is racially stratified because there's so little class mobility -- the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor (/i>
You'll find wide disagreement among Brazilians about this. My opinion is that from c. 1870 onwards, the Southern region of Brazil has had relatively high levels social mobility, while this has not been true of the northern and northeastern regions until... today.
4 - the admixture certainly predates the period you're talking about. most certainly for the amerindian element, which seems relatively equally distributed, but probably for the others too
Indeed, the admixture is old. The first government to officially promote miscenegation wasn't Vargas; it was... the Portuguese colonizers, from the mid-18th century onwards (google "marquis of Pombal"), though they wanted only white-Indian miscegenation.
When Brazil became independent in 1822, the rough distribution of the population (then around 3 million) was 1 million "whites", 1 million "free people of color", and 1 million black slaves. (I'm obviously giving just the general idea). The basic structure of the population was already very well set; the subsequent immigration rush only skewed the balance towards "whites", without altering the general situation.
5 - There is a large literature on the reality that black middle and upper class individuals are routinely assumed to be hired help in their apartment complexes. or, there was an instance of a black dentist who was shot because it was assumed he was stealing a car (his car was way too nice for a black man to own).
This is true, but it's hard to disentangle the cumulative effects of race and social class. (And, nowadays, the rewards to be had from victimhood). This is not to deny that racism full and simple also occurs, as any Brazilian will tell you, but the picture is more complex. Appearance of being rich is everything, and being white is an element of it, but this can - and is - immediately overlooked if other elements are present (like, say, an expensive watch). This means that rich white Brazilians have more latitute not to look rich and keep their social status (among people who don't know who they are) than rich nonwhite Brazilians. Poor people of all races are discriminated against with no particular bonus for white skin color.
And this is not from today. Two anecdotes from the past for you to have an idea how odd have Brazilian race relations been:
i) when slavery was being abolished in Brazil (1880s), its last diehard defender was the Baron Cotegipe, who was a mulatto (son of a freedwoman) - not that that difficulted his social rise and political career (he was Prime Minister of Brazil).
ii) when the Baron Jequitinhonha, one of the most radical politicians of the independence era (1820s), head of Brazilian freemasonry and founder of the Brazilian Bar Association, visited the United States in the 1830s, he was not accepted in the hotel... because he was black. (I imagine biracial, but I don't actually know the proportions of his ancestry).
Finally, for disclosure, I'm socially white in Brazil, though with one black great-grandparent. (I think you call that an octoroon?)
I read something in a book on the history of the Spanish New World (I realize that Brazil is not Spanish) which stated that men had access to any woman who had darker skin than them. The result being children of mixed background who were often loved and helped by their lighter skinned fathers.
A Venezuelan friend, in 1969, told me there was no racial predjudice in Venezuela--it just happened that the poor were dark skinned and the rich light skinned. Back down there in the late 80's - early 90's. I noted a good many light skinned poor whom I had not seen in 1969.I wonder what drove that change.