The “myth of racial democracy”, like the good myth it is, contains distortions in its much vaunted absolute equality, but does contain partial truths in indicating a singularity in the relationship between the races, mainly between races and culture. Tags: Black Women of Brazil, eugenics, Francis Galton, Gilberto Freyre, Jefferson Medeiros, Júlio de Mesquita, Lilia Schwarcz, Manoel Bonfim, Maria Eunice Maciel, Maria Maciel, Miguel Couto, Monteiro Lobato, Pietro Diwan, Renato Kehl, Tiago Ferreira, VixĬomments Off on Eugenics in Brazil: In the early 20th century, elites believed racial improvement was only possible with a project favoring predominance of the white race His project was intended to prove that the intellectual capacity was hereditary, that is, it passed from member to member of the family and, thus, to justify the exclusion of the blacks, Asian immigrants and disabled of all the types… He imagined that the concept of natural selection of Charles Darwin-who, by the way, was his cousin-also applied to humans. The idea was disseminated by Francis Galton, responsible for creating the term, in 1883. “Eugenics emerged to validate hierarchical segregation,” Pietro Diwan, author of the book Raça Pura: uma história da eugenia no Brasil e no mundo ( Pure Race: A History of Eugenics in Brazil and the World), explains to VIX. What was the eugenics movement in Brazil: so absurd that it is difficult to believeĮugenia is a term that came from the Greek and means ‘well born’.

Eugenics in Brazil: In the early 20th century, elites believed racial improvement was only possible with a project favoring predominance of the white raceīlack Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent

Brasil by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz