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'Brazilians' (Brasileiros in
Portuguese) are people inhabiting or originating from
Brazil. The vast majority of Brazilians live in Brazil, although there are significant Brazilian communities in
Paraguay, the
United States,
Japan, and
Europe.
Ethnic origin
Brazilians are mostly
descendants of
Brazil's indigenous peoples,
colonial Portuguese settlers,
African slaves, along with several
groups of immigrants who arrived in Brazil mostly from the 1820s until the 1970s. Most of the immigrants were
Italians and Portuguese, but also significant numbers of
Germans,
Spaniards,
Japanese, and
Lebanese.
[2]
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (
IBGE) classify the Brazilian population among five categories:
white,
black,
pardo (
brown),
yellow (
Asian) or
Indigenous, based on
skin color or
race. The last PNAD (National Research for Sample of Domiciles) census found Brazil to be made up of 93,000,000 Whites, 80,000,000 brown people, 11.7 million Blacks, and 1.3 million Asian or Amerindian.
Compared to other census realized in the last two decades, for the first time the number of White Brazilians did not exceed 50% of the population. In 2000, Whites were 53.7% in the census. In comparison, the number of brown people went up of 38.5% for 43.2% and the Black one from 6.2% to 6.3%.
[3] According to the IBGE, this trend is mainly because of the revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups.
[4]
The ethnic composition of Brazilians is not uniform across the country. Due to its large influx of
European immigrants in the
19th century, the
Southern Region has a large White majority, composing 80.8% of its population
[5]. The
Northeastern Region, as a result of the large numbers of African slaves working in the
sugar cane engenhos, has a majority of brown and black peoples composing, respectively, 63.1% and 7%
[6].
Northern Brazil, largely covered by the
Amazon Rainforest, is 71.5% brown, due to its strong Amerindian component
[7].
Southeast and
Central-Western Brazil have a more balanced ratio among different ethnic groups.
According to the
Brazilian Constitution of 1988, racism is an unbailable crime and must be met with imprisonment. This is taken very seriously.
External links
★
Lusotopia
Footnotes
1. PNAD
2. [1]
3. [2]
4. PNDA Census 2005 race
5. [3]
6. [4]
7. [5]
See also