Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945

Rating:
Summary: Infusing Eugenics into Social Policy
Review: "Using an elastic definition of degeneracy, white Brazilian elites did not see blackness and whiteness as mutually exclusive. Poor whites could be degenerate, and some Brazilians of color could escape degeneracy by whitening through social ascension. It is this crucial detail that infused Brazilian public education with its special significance." -Jerry Davila

In his book, "Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945", Dr. Jerry Davila communicates effectively how the educational experiences of millions of Brazilians was created by a small faction of elites with a deliberate sense of the significance of race in mind, more implicitly, with their scientific ideology of eugenics in mind. The author argues that the way the practice of eugenics submerged the management of racial hierarchy within social scientific language that "deracialized" and depoliticized the image of Brazilian society allows us to understand how both Brazilians and foreigners accepted this paradoxical myth of a racial democracy in the twentieth century. Davila provides analyses to this thesis through six intriguing chapters with the Rio de Janeiro school system as the model. With the most extensive school system in Brazil at the time, Rio serves as an outstanding model for illustrating "the reformist tendencies in education and the ways reforms contended with race, class, and gender." Davila also states that "Rio's schools provide a way to see how the educational system related to its city and responded to the particular circumstances created by rapid growth and industrialization."
Davila first evidences his thesis through this model of the Rio school system, but in detail, through expounding upon the role of the MES (Brazil's Ministry of Education and Public Health) and the IPE (Institution for Educational Research): Brazil's programs of combined psychological and anthropological studies of race, presenting the case for what Davila calls "the elasticity of disciplinary boundaries in the context of eugenics." He breaks down the role of the IPE and shows its significance through elaboration on its Orthophrenology and Mental Hygiene sector, a pundit of perpetuating these mythical ideas of cultural inferiority and the possibility of a racial utopia of former degenerates with their `diplomas of whiteness.'
Although I find Dr. Davila's research and analyses of the history of eugenic thought in Brazil and the institutions that harbored it to be the foundations for this work, it would not be complete without a critical analysis and evidence through primary sources, which Davila abundantly supplies. In his chapter: "What Happened to Rio's Teachers of Color?," Davila is able to prove his case that the dictators of social policy in education used their theories of degeneration when they began to use white educated women as the model for teaching with not only documented sources and first-hand conversations but also the use of an archived photo collection (used throughout the book) from Augusto Malta, which truly adds another dimension to the ability to grasp this Brazilian concept of "whitening." With Malta's collection, you see the transition from an early 1900's male afro-descendant teaching staff to the masses of middle-aged white female "clones" at the Institute of Education in 1943. From here, Davila breaks down the reforms in elementary education, secondary schools, and what he calls the "Escola Nova no Esatdo Nova": The New School in the New State; Brazil's school system under Vargas and militarism. Again employing an abundant number of sources compiled alongside Malta's photo collection, Davila is able to effectively demonstrate the effects and extent of policy reform on literally millions of young Brazilians.
Overall the authors conclusion on Brazil's "whitening through social ascension," this earning of a `diploma of whiteness,' is very effectively evidenced throughout the course of the book and is broken-down successfully in each succeeding chapter beginning from the first: "Building the Brazilian Man." The book is very well laid-out and it is easy to follow Davila's ideas as they transition well from one to the other, especially with the Malta collection available. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Latin American Studies or more specifically how race can influence social policy, not just in Brazil, but anywhere in the world. This book added significant insight and value to my History of Brazil course, presenting many analyses on race I had yet to ponder. According to Freyre, and evidenced by Davila, Brazil is truly the "laboratory of races." Everyone in Brazil has a `grandmother captured by lasso' or a `foot in the kitchen' so to speak.