what's in a name the consequences of violating brazilian emic color-race categories

What's in a Name? The Consequences of Violating Brazilian Emic Color-Race Categories inEstimates of Social Well-BeingAuthor(s): Bryan Byrne, Marvin Harris, Josildeth Gomes Consorte and Joseph LangReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 389-397Published by: University of New MexicoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3630144 .Accessed: 13/11/2012 14:10

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WHAT'S IN A NAME? THE CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLATING BRAZILIAN EMIC COLOR-RACE

CATEGORIES IN ESTIMATES OF SOCIAL WELL-BEING1

Bryan Byrne and Marvin Harris Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611

Josildeth Gomes Consorte Department of Sociology, Catholic University of Sdo Paulo, Brazil

Joseph Lang Department of Actuarial and Statistical Sciences, University of Iowa,

Iowa City, IA 52242

This is the second article reporting the results of an experiment designed to assess the consequences of overriding the Brazilian emic color-race classification system in studies of color- race relations. We have already demonstrated that use of the nonsalient term parda, rather than the salient term morena, to denote "mixed" color-race status causes the overenumeration of brancas (whites) and pretas (blacks). Some Brazilianists remain confident that the classification errors do not affect their statistical analyses of social well-being as long as the categories are dichotomized or trichotomized. Therefore, in this article we demonstrate that these nonsalient color-race terms and aggregate categories also cause erroneous observations about socioeconomic status. Brazilianists should reconsider the results of their previ- ous work and concentrate their efforts on the search for a valid and reliable set of color-race categories.

EFFORTS TO MEASURE the consequences of racial discrimination in Brazil raise questions about the emic and etic means by which Brazilianists determine racial status. The terms emic and etic derive from the distinction between pho- nemic and phonetic forms of linguistic analysis. Phonemes are speech sounds that are perceived by native speakers as being contrastive in a given language; phonetic distinctions define speech sounds in terms of their articulatory and acoustic properties as perceived by the observer. By extension, emic statements refer to logico-empirical systems in which phenomenal distinctions or "things" are built up out of contrasts and discriminations which are significant, meaningful, real, accurate, or in some other fashion regarded as appropriate by the actors themselves. An emic statement can be falsified if it can be shown that it contradicts the cognitive calculus by which actors judge that entities are similar or different, real, meaningful, significant, or in some other sense appropriate or acceptable. Etic statements depend upon phenomenal distinctions judged appropriate by a community of scientific observers. Etic categories and statements are not falsified if they are rejected by the community of actors;

(Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 51, 1995)

389


390 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

their adequacy is ultimately a matter of the extent to which they contribute to the construction of cross-culturally testable hypotheses and theories (see Har- ris 1990).

Any method of compiling emic information about color-race2 identity requires that respondents use any term they consider appropriate. Interviewers are obliged to accept their responses. All of the methods of compiling etic information require trained observers to specify racial identity according to predetermined criteria whose validity does not depend on the respondents' cultural assessments. In one etic method, researchers define and enumerate racial status with reference to predetermined clusters of genetic alleles. In a less rigor- ous etic method, trained observers classify individuals with respect to predetermined phenotypic and/or nonphenotypic criteria. The most commonly used method mixes emic and etic information; respondents classify themselves by choosing one term from a predetermined list. Researchers sometimes go one step further by either aggregating the responses into glosses and/or by corre- lating responses and SES (socio-economic status) measures. They use their aggregate categories to analyze other data bases (see below).

Emic and etic approaches do not necessarily produce identical observations and conclusions. Those who claim that their mixed or etic classification systems are compatible with emic reports must demonstrate that their enumera- tions do not significantly diverge from those made using emic categories. Where they do diverge, researchers are obliged to demonstrate how and why their systems lead to testable cross-cultural theories.

COLOR-RACE IDENTITY IN BRAZIL

Brazil's system of color-race identity is neither egalitarian nor identical to the system found in the United States, Andean nations, or South Africa (Harris 1964a; Harris et al. 1993; Hasenbalg 1985, 1992; Sanjek 1971; Silva 1985, 1988; Skidmore 1985, 1993; Wood and Lovell 1992). Unlike the North American racial caste system in which identity is assigned via the practice of hypodescent (i.e., the "one drop rule"), the Brazilian system emphasizes phenotypic and socioeconomic characteristics over ancestry (Harris 1964a, 1964b; Kottak 1967, n.d.). Full siblings may have different identities in Brazil, but not in the United States (Harris and Kottak 1963). In accordance with the "ideology of whiten- ing," Brazilians change their color-race identity, to a limited extent, in accordance with shifts in their socioeconomic status (Harris 1964b; Kottak 1990, n.d.). Consequently, Brazilians make fine and often contradictory distinctions between color-race identities (Harris 1970; Stephens 1989).

These cultural practices have made it terribly difficult to operationalize a valid and reliable method for enumerating Brazilian color-race identity. The IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica) has always been indeci- sive about which color-race terms should be used in the national census. After refraining from asking about color-race identity for twenty years, the IBGE census schedule for 1980 encouraged respondents to identify themselves as


BRAZILIAN COLOR-RACE CATEGORIES 391

either branca (white), preta (black), parda (mixed), or amarela (literally, yel- low) (IBGE 1980).

The 1980 census marked a change from the 1950 census in which the term mulata marked "mixed" race. The IBGE based its decision to replace mulata with the term parda on an analysis of the 1976 Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios (PNAD). Researchers conducting the PNAD study asked a subsample of respondents freely to state their color-race identity; 43.6 percent of the respondents identified themselves as branca, 35.5 percent said morena, 7.0 percent responded parda, and 4.6 percent claimed to be preta (Silva 1988:147). Then they asked these respondents to identify themselves according to four forced choice options: branca, preta, parda, and amarela. The proportion of brancas rose to 56.4 percent, pardas increased to 31.3 percent, and pretas grew to 8.4 percent of the subsample. Of those who had claimed to be morena, 63 percent reidentified themselves as parda, while another 24.5 percent chose branca. Even though use of the term parda inflated the number of brancas, pardas, and pretas, the IBGE researchers decided to include it in the census.

Silva (1988:146-48) defended the decision, insisting that morena is a "completely ambiguous" term that can refer to either skin or hair color. Silva's claim is debatable. It is true that morena covers a wider array of phenotypic and social characteristics than parda. It is also true that skin and hair color are factors in the determination of color-race identity. And it is true that morena, like many other color-race terms, can be used in contradictory ways by the same informant. But that does not mean that morena is "completely ambiguous"; respondents do not need information about hair color to quickly apply morena to black-and-white watercolor portraits in a nonrandom fashion (Kottak n.d.; Sanjek 1971).

While Brazilianists disagree about the relative utility of specific "mixed" color- race terms, they agree that the IBGE 1980 census failed to represent perfectly emic color-race identity (Skidmore 1985). In that census, 54 percent of the respondents identified themselves as branca, 38 percent asparda, and 5.9 percent as preta. (We will not focus on the term amarela since its status is not strongly contested and it represents only 0.7 percent of the population.)

Still, many Brazilianists consider the IBGE data to be robust; they can be reliably used once aggregated into trichotomous or dichotomous categories. Edward Telles (1992, 1995) applied trichotomous categories in his study of segregation because he thought they were more consistent with the cultural cognitive system than dichotomies. Although Telles does not specify the criteria he used to arrive at this decision, he encourages others to follow his ex- ample (Telles 1995; Harris et al. 1995). Silva's (1985, 1988) work with the PNAD convinced him that mulata and preta can be lumped under the term "black" because both color-race groups exhibit similar sociodemographic patterns. He feels that black/nonblack dichotomies are appropriate. Carlos Hasenbalg (1985, 1992) believes a white/black dichotomy is inappropriate, but his statistical analyses of census and survey data lead him to approve of a white/ nonwhite dichotomy. Wood (1990) and Wood and Lovell (1992:722; Lovell 1993,


392 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

1994) argue that their analyses of successive Brazilian censuses demonstrate that the use of mulata or parda significantly affects population estimates of particular kinds of ndo-brancas (nonwhites) but has only a minimal effect on estimates of brancas. In other words, there is little "migration" from ndo-brancas to brancas regardless of the term marking "mixed" color-races. Thus, a white/ nonwhite dichotomy would not seriously distort the demographic profile.

We take yet another position. The use of the termparda distorts emic color- race profiles. Dichotomizing or trichotomizing Brazilian color-race categories as currently practiced does not minimize reclassification errors. Instead, both tactics obscure measurable variation between color-race groups.

A SPLIT CENSUS OF RIO DE CONTAS, BRAZIL

We conducted a split census in Rio de Contas, a county seat in the northeast- ern state of Bahia. A team of two census takers interviewed one adult from each of the town's 536 households. They first elicited emic information by asking respondents to identify freely their color-race. Then they elicited a mixture of emic and etic information by asking individuals to respond to one of two alternative forced census options. Half of the respondents saw a schedule con- taining the options branca, preta, parda, and amarela. Residents living in adja- cent houses saw the second schedule, in which morena was substituted for parda. At the end of each interview, the census takers showed the respondents 72 standardized black-and-white watercolor portraits and asked them to indi- cate the one which most resembled themselves.3 Afterwards, both census takers used the same portraits to establish independently the respondent's etic status.

The respondents used 65 unique terms to identify freely their own emic color-race status. The total falls to 25 once the terms are aggregated according to their primary lexemes (e.g., combining morena clara and morena escura with morena). Only variants of morena, branca, and preta were used by more than 10 percent of the respondents; 256 (47.7 percent) identified themselves as some type of morena; 94 (17.9 percent) answered branca; and 65 (12.1 percent) declared preta. Only 32 (5.9 percent) replied parda. Together these four glosses account for 83.4 percent of the responses. The other terms used were variants of amarela, aragaga, alva, clara, cor de canela, cor de formiga, escura, loura, roxa, sarard, cabo verde, cabocla, galega, garapada, mestiqo, misturada, mulata, negra, queimadinha, sapecada, and vermelha. Twenty-nine respondents (5.4 percent) declined to respond. The Consequences of Substituting Parda for Morena in the Split Census for the Color-Race Profile of Rio de Contas

As demonstrated in our first article (Harris et al. 1993), the parda and morena forced options produce distinct population profiles despite the fact that a loglinear analysis shows that the two sample groups have etically comparable clusters of phenotypes. A second loglinear analysis indicated that the probability of indi-



viduals classifying themselves as either preta or branca was much higher in the parda option than in the morena option (Harris et al. 1993).

A closer examination of response patterns demonstrates how the parda option distorts the free-choice responses. Of the 252 respondents, 131 (52 percent) shown the parda option had already claimed they were morena in the free-choice option. Of these, 41 (31 percent) reidentified themselves as branca, 49 (37 percent) as preta, and 36 (27 percent) as parda. In contrast, the morena option avoids the mass reclassification of morenas. All of the 122 free-choice morenas, who constituted 48.2 percent of individuals shown the morena option, again identified themselves as morenas. It is impossible to claim that theparda forced-choice option leads to a population profile that closely approximates the free-choice reports.

It is doubtful that the dichotomization of the color-race categories offered in the parda option could minimize the consequences of the mass reclassification of morenas. An etic white/nonwhite dichotomy, in which pardas and pretas are classified as nonwhites, would create a white category in which 50 percent of the members initially considered themselves to be nao-branca. On the other hand, an etic black/nonblack dichotomy, in which parda and branca are joined to form a nonblack category, would create a black category in which over 50 percent of its members initially claimed to be something other than preta.

There is an additional problem. Regardless of classification errors, it remains to be demonstrated that the color-race groups can be combined into dichotomous categories without obscuring variation between them. Combining branca with parda or morena into a nonblack category or placing preta with parda or morena into a nonwhite category could easily hide significant variation in their socioeconomic measures.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF DICHOTOMIZING OR TRICHOTOMIZING THE ALTERNATIVE CENSUS SCHEDULES

ON SES MEASURES

We are now in a position to demonstrate that the forced-choice parda and morena options and the dichotomous and trichotomous categories used by Brazilianists lead to inconsistent observations of social well-being. We exam- ine the effect of the survey options on estimates of Years of Education and Monthly Income because these two SES measures are fundamental in analyses of Brazilian race relations.

Theoretically, if "mixed" color-race terms are roughly synonymous, or if the classification errors generated by the use of the term parda can be minimized by creating dichotomous or trichotomous categories, then the parda and morena options should identify similar SES patterns among the color-race groups. A white/nonwhite dichotomy might be defensible if the means for preta and parda/ morena "mixed" categories are statistically similar and if they differ from the means of branca. Conversely, a black/nonblack dichotomy might be defensible if both parda/morena "mixed" categories and branca have similar means, but


394 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH differ from the means forpreta. If there is any inconsistency, the "mixed" color- race terms and the aggregate categories should be carefully reconsidered.

We employed Tukey's HSD (Honestly Significant Difference) test to determine whether the parda and morena options lead to the same group affinities. The Tukey's HSD test conducts simultaneous pairwise comparisons of means to tease out the internal relationship among categories in a variable. Those groups that have similar means are contrasted with groups that are statistically different. By comparing the Tukey's HSD tests for both the parda and morena options, we can determine whether they produce the same clusters of color-race groups.

Results We report the results of the Tukey's HSD for measures of Years of Educa-

tion before turning to Monthly Income. Those claiming to be branca in the parda option had a mean of 6.4 years of education (Table 1). The mean among pardas was 6.8 years. The Tukey's HSD test indicates that these means are not statistically dissimilar. But both are different from the pretas, who had a mean of 4.1 years of education. In this case, lumping pardas and pretas into a nonwhite category would obscure the similarity between pardas and brancas. It would also ignore important disparities between pardas and pretas. Brancas responding to the morena option had a mean of 8.4 years of education. The mean for morenas is 6.4 years and 4.5 years for pretas. The means for all of these categories are statistically dissimilar. Any dichotomy would obscure significant differences among the groups.

Another pattern emerges for estimates of mean Monthly Income as expressed in terms of multiples of the minimum wage (Table 2). Those identifying themselves as brancas in the parda option had a mean of 2.7 times the minimum wage. The mean forpardas was 2.0 and 1.4 forpretas. Any dichotomy would be misleading because the mean for pardas is not statistically different from the

TABLE 1 Results of Tukey's HSD for Mean Years of Educational Attainment across

Color-Race Groups under the Alternative Census Options

Color-Race Tukey Grouping Mean SD N Parda option (minimum significant difference = 1.4387)a

Branca Ab 6.452 3.885 84 Parda A 6.824 3.665 74 Preta B 4.114 3.666 70

Morena option (minimum significant difference = 1.7743) Branca A 8.396 3.791 48 Morena B 6.462 3.936 143 Preta C 4.543 3.752 35

a. If the difference between two means exceeds the value shown, they may be considered statistically different.

b. Each letter represents a statistically unique color-race group. There are no significant differences between the means of color-race groups labeled by the same letter.



TABLE 2 Results of Tukey's HSD for Mean Monthly Income across Color-Race Groups under the Alternative Census Options

Color-Race Tukey Grouping Mean SD N Parda option (minimum significant difference = 0.8977)a

Branca Ab 2.692 2.831 65 Parda A B 2.060 1.924 58 Preta B 1.421 0.839 57

Morena option (minimum significant difference = 1.1008) Branca A 3.396 2.372 36 Morena B 2.146 2.475 107 Preta B 1.197 0.773 35

a. If the difference between two means exceeds the value shown, they may be considered statistically different.

b. Each letter represents a statistically unique color-race group. There are no significant differences between the means of color-race groups labeled by the same letter.

means of either brancas or pretas. Finally, those identifying as brancas under the morena option earned 3.4 times the minimum wage. In contrast, the mean for morenas was 2.1 and 1.2 for pretas. The means for morenas and pretas are not statistically different, but both differ from the mean income for brancas. Here, a white/nonwhite dichotomy might be defensible, but a black/nonblack dichotomy would not be.

Two observations deserve to be made. First, the parda and morena options lead to different Tukey's HSD groups for both SES variables. Since the parda option overenumerates brancas and pretas, the morena option is a better indi- cator of variations in educational achievement and income for the population of Rio de Contas. Second, dichotomizing either the parda or morena options obscures similarities and differences among groups.

While we cannot generalize to Brazil as a whole, we strongly suspect that survey terms and categories which override the Brazilian emic classification system distort color-race profiles and SES measures for many other towns. Despite the confidence expressed by some Brazilianists, aggregate categories can both obscure and create the illusion of variation among Brazil's color-race groups.

We cannot suggest that Brazilianists simply replace the parda option with the morena option; other salient terms exist, and the extent to which their referential meanings vary within and among sociodemographic groups is still unknown. We can suggest that Brazilianists learn more about Brazil's dynamic emic system of color-race identity before using existing data bases to conduct more statistical analyses of its influence on social well-being.

NOTES

1. The authors thank Marcos Luciano Lopes Messeder of the Federal University of Bahia and Walter Lopes Meseder of the Federal University of Sfo Paulo for conducting


396 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH the census. We are grateful to H. Russell Bernard, John Dixon, Jirimutu, Diego Hay, John Henretta, and several anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments. The authors alone are responsible for the content of this paper. The research was funded by NSF grant BNS 9022228 and a University of Florida Graduate Research Assistantship Grant. Direct correspondence to Marvin Harris, Department of Anthro- pology, 2031 Turlington Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.

2. We refer to the Brazilian complex by "color-race." The term connotates an un- stable social status which emphasizes an individual's physical features and socioeconomic status rather than descent.

3. The 72 portraits permuted five variables. Sex could be either male or female. Skin tone was light, medium, or dark. Hair quality was straight, wavy, or kinky. Nose form was narrow or wide. Lip form was thin or thick.

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Article Contentsp. 389p. 390p. 391p. 392p. 393p. 394p. 395p. 396p. 397

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 287-416Volume Information [pp. 413-416]Front Matter [pp. 411-411]The Anatolian Middle Paleolithic: New Research at Karain Cave [pp. 287-299]Ritual as an Instrument of Political Resistance in Rural Japan [pp. 301-328]The Struggle for Family Succession and Inheritance in a Rural Korean Village [pp. 329-346]Familiar Partners? The Mountain Arapesh and the Westermarck Effect [pp. 347-362]Too Many Maya, Too Few Buildings: Investigating Construction Potential at Copn, Honduras [pp. 363-387]What's in a Name? The Consequences of Violating Brazilian Emic Color-Race Categories in Estimates of Social Well-Being [pp. 389-397]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 399-403]Review: untitled [pp. 403-405]Review: untitled [pp. 405-408]Review: untitled [pp. 408-410]

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