Republican Progressivism and Race

When the last emperor of Brazil was deposed in 1889, political uncertainty ran rampant in the country. “Progress” became the top priority of the new regime. However, the meaning of “progress” and how to achieve it were far from consensus issues. A new antagonism emerged between “monarchists-aristocrats” and “ascending republicans,” revealing an explicit reshuffling of alliances that broke the reformist bloc that had pushed for the republic up to that point (Alonso Reference Alonso2009). Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that shared views were not nonexistent. After all, actors’ worldviews were shaped by fin-de-siècle political ideologies, economic doctrines, and scientific theories (Schwarcz Reference Schwarcz1993).

Since the 1870s, race theories had been popular across the political spectrum (Arteaga Reference Arteaga2017; Skidmore Reference Skidmore1993). As in Europe and North America, these new ideas soon overflowed the pages of newspapers and scientific books, infiltrating numerous other domains of social life. For example, they took the form of naturalism in the widely read and written “scientific novels” (see, for instance, Azevedo (Reference Azevedo2016 [1890]). Therefore, it is unsurprising that well-read circles generally perceived the high percentage of “racially inferior” people in the country as one of the major obstacles to modernization (Marx Reference Marx1998; Skidmore Reference Skidmore1993, p. 149).

The racial diversity of the population was considered a political problem, prompting the emergence of structures of racial discrimination. But it is also important to note that comprehensive measures to restrict citizenship based on class were implemented around the same time (de Carvalho Reference de Carvalho2017; dos Santos Reference dos Santos2022). These measures effectively transformed the democratic regime established in the 1891 Constitution into a de facto oligarchy (see Napolitano Reference Napolitano2016, Chapters 1 and 2).Footnote ⁵ However, the focus of this article lies on the resonance of race in the political system. It examines how Black individuals encountered unique limitations on their citizenship rights, which overlapped with but also surpassed these broader restrictions.Footnote ⁶

The present case is important because the “race problem” was addressed in an unusual way in the First Brazilian Republic. To understand how it differs from similar cases (e.g., South Africa or the United States), one must consider the type of race theory that was popular among Brazilian decision-makers.Footnote ⁷ Two central differences regarding formative processes must be considered: the “extractive state” (Acemoglu et al., Reference Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson2001; Monasterio and Ehrl, Reference Monasterio and Ehrl2015) and the timing of the country’s Portuguese colonization (de Alencastro Reference de Alencastro1985). The vast majority of Brazilians, including members of the elite, were considered insufficiently White internationally, even those who appeared to be so (Ramos Reference Ramos2023). This situation favored the local rejection of ideas about the degenerative effects of race mixing and related notions of racial immutability (racial essentialism) because these ideas implied that Brazil would never become modern. These theories did emerge in Brazil but ultimately failed to gain clout (e.g., Rodrigues Reference Rodrigues1894). In contrast, a scientific “variation” aligned with the country’s official history and aspirations emerged: the theory of racial whitening. Promising a modern, Europeanized future for the nation, this framework offered White political elites a way out of their perceived predicament.

Before delving into race theories in Brazil, however, it would be interesting to briefly examine the broader history of race theories. This will demonstrate that the theory of racial whitening was not merely a copy of international trends nor uniquely Brazilian. Consequently, I can firmly claim that racial whitening’s key innovation was not its scientific novelty, but its ability to resonate widely within the polity.

The Scientific Construction of Races

Although there is no consensus on whether racism is a modern or ancient phenomenon, particular or universal, it is widely accepted that scientific race theories emerged in the eighteenth century. Carl Linnaeus is often considered the starting point (Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2013; Gould Reference Gould1996; Hofbauer Reference Hofbauer2006). Although Linnaeus’s reasoning had a somewhat Aristotelian and Christian flair, his methods were groundbreaking. He introduced a systematic, all-encompassing framework that permitted the classification, comparison, and observation of species (Koerner Reference Koerner1999; see also Foucault Reference Foucault1966, Chapter 5). First published in 1735, his Systema Naturae classified humans—or Homo sapiens, as he originally named them—as part of nature. Setting aside the low quality of his arguments on human variety, the introduction of two human variations in the second edition of his masterpiece was radically new. Breaking with theological tenets, the wild [Homo ferus] and the monstrous [Monstrosus] revealed that the human species, like nature, could change. The wild were an implicit, hypothetical transitional state between human and monkey. The monstrous were a product of environmental factors that deviated from God’s work, supposedly visible in the indigenous Patagonian (Linnaeus Reference Linnaeus and Willdenow1806).

Generations of scholars have studied Systema Naturae seriously. It was a paradigmatic work for over a century. Many then refined, criticized, and expanded its research program based on ethnographic observations of human diversity. However, the attempt to categorize human kinds was not left unquestioned within scientific ranks. For example, ethnologists James Prichard (Reference Prichard1973) and Alexander von Humboldt (Reference von Humboldt1971) highlighted the imprecision of the proposed racial boundaries at the time and the lack of evidence supporting such claims. But they belonged to a small minority. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the existence of races, and to a slightly lesser extent, racial hierarchies, was considered an objective scientific fact, similar to Newtonian laws of motion (Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2013; Gould Reference Gould1996). Consequently, the natural or biological concept of race remained an “epistemological obstacle” (Bachelard Reference Bachelard and Jones1987) for a long time. It was accepted as naturally occurring, even by those who opposed ideas of racial essentialism and hierarchy, such as the young W. E. B. Du Bois (Albuquerque Reference Albuquerque2009; Góes Reference Góes2022). This would be the case until the “retreat of scientific racism” after World War II (Barkan Reference Barkan1991), when the idea that races are socially or culturally constructed began to dominate scientific discussions, causing the biological concept of race to lose ground.

From Linnaeus’s time until the rise of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the most significant debate in the field of human natural history occurred between proponents of a single “creation” (monogenists) and those of multiple creations (polygenists). Monogenists believed in a common human ancestry, explaining intraspecies diversity through environmental changes, such as migration. Polygenists, on the other hand, proposed different creations in distinct environments and explained variation based on original design, which would confer innate and immutable characteristics to each race. There was no consensus on several topics, even among scholars with similar views on “creation” (see Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2013; Geulen Reference Geulen2007; Gould Reference Gould1996; Smith-Ruiu Reference Smith-Ruiu2015). Three contentious matters key to our discussion synthesize the debate on racial transformism: (1) whether races could change (“improve” or “degenerate”), (2) the effects and desirability of race-mixing, and (3) the possibility of the intellectual advancement of so-called racially inferior people through nurture.

Starting in the eighteenth century, influential naturalists, anthropologists, and ethnologists argued that races and species evolved due to migration, environmental factors, and miscegenation (Buffon, Kant, and Blumenbach), or progressed continuously through the transmission of acquired characteristics to offspring (Lamarck, Saint-Hilaire, and Virey).Footnote ⁸

Additionally, studies debunked myths about the alleged infertility of Mixed people (Buffon, Blumenbach, and Prichard) and proposed race-mixing as a means of racial improvement (Blumenbach and Virey). Despite Kant’s late adoption of this understanding (Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld2007), these scholars believed in the perfectibility of individuals from inferior races. This belief served as a pre-Darwinian justification for colonialism and “civilizing missions,” among other things). However, such views were not universally accepted.

Prominent and influential scholars such as George Cuvier, the crown scientist of Napoleonic and post-Revolutionary France, concluded that race and racial hierarchies were fundamentally immutable and God-given (other important examples could be Knox or Gobineau). These ideas were often presented in a way that implicitly or explicitly naturalized inequality among or within societies). Through their peculiar lenses, Knox and Gobineau claimed that race was the defining element of human history.

In the mid-nineteenth century, radicalizing such racial essentialism, a new variant of racialism emerged on the other side of the Atlantic. A group of scholars developed a new theory of races based on multiple creations (polymorphism), including Morton, Nott, Gliddon, and Agassiz. Meanwhile, the majority of European ethnologists and naturalists, including Cuvier and Gobineau, defended some form of monogenism, albeit only for White races. However, the most interesting aspect of the American School of Polygeny is a different one. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, these U.S.-based scientists concluded that so-called inferior races could never improve; that miscegenation always led to “degeneration” and infertile offspring; and that “racially inferior” individuals were incapable of intellectual excellence, even with an education. Although they disagreed with their European predecessors about the exact delineations of races, they all agreed against racial leveling. As a result, given the ethnic composition of the United States, segregation seemed to be the only logical choice. After the Civil War, it is difficult to overstate the impact these scholars had on their country’s understanding of race (see Reuter Reference Reuter1945, for example).

As Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (Reference Darwin1859) gained widespread scientific acceptance, the debate between monogenism and polygenism, as well as the dominance of racial essentialism à la Cuvier, became progressively obsolete. Building on the work of geologist Charles Lyell and demographer Thomas Malthus, Darwin explained the origin of species through natural selection, the cornerstone of his theory of evolution. Darwin defined this concept as “the principle by which each slight variation [in a species], if useful, is preserved”, or as the “survival of the fittest,” adopting Herbert Spencer’s “more accurate” expression (Darwin Reference Darwin1883, p. 49). This discovery alone imploded any ideas of racial essentialism and the possibility of multiple creations.

However, it would be another twelve years before Darwin analyzed human evolution at length in The Descent of Man (Reference Darwin1871), explicitly concluding that all humans had evolved from a common primate ancestor. The eighth chapter of the book is dedicated to race and defends the idea of human progress by stating that all civilizations descended from “barbarians.” In line with his natural history predecessors, Darwin also accepted the idea of average physical and mental differences among the races, which favored White people as a whole. He explained this through some forms of selection. Although Darwin highlighted the centrality of natural selection as a causal force in evolution, he did not claim its exclusivity. Yet, like Prichard and von Humboldt, Darwin rejected rigid boundaries between races and did not perceive their mixing as a problem. He also disputed any strong form of racial determinism regarding an individual’s personality and skills (Darwin Reference Darwin1871).

Darwin’s theory of evolution sparked a significant shift in several epistemic communities dedicated to studying human diversity. “Evolution” became a central concept in biology, cultural anthropology, and other social sciences. It informed various forms of social evolutionism, a way of thinking that became associated with the latter half of the nineteenth century. Unsurprisingly, since the 1940s, a group of evolutionary social analyses drawing on Darwin have been branded with the term “social Darwinism” (Hodgson Reference Hodgson2004; Hofstadter Reference Hofstadter1992). Despite their significant differences, these approaches attempted to justify or explain human differences and hierarchies through stadial evolution, both within and between races.Footnote ⁹ Along with other social evolution theories inspired by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck’s transformism (Comte Reference Comte1835; Marx and Engels, Reference Marx and Engels2014), this new approach to social thought brought culture and history into the study of human diversity and inequality. It replaced essential hierarchies with the progression (or regression) of civilizational stages (Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2013). At the same time, this understanding would simultaneously underpin colonial and Eurocentric ideas and ventures in different ways, allowing descriptions of selfless imperialism to be considered scientifically plausible, if not evident. “The White Man’s Burden,” as Rudyard Kipling epically put it, was there to stay (Kipling Reference Kipling1889).

Race Theories and the National Question in Brazil

Brazilian research institutions began participating in the development of race science relatively late, in the second half of the nineteenth century, as the country lacked meaningful higher education and research institutes until then. As I will demonstrate, this participation transformed the polity’s predominant racial frames. Previously, racial differences were primarily viewed through non-scientific lenses aligned with religious discourses on race and economic interests (Arteaga Reference Arteaga2017). These pre-scientific theories of race provided the dominant semantic structures for political self-descriptions in Brazil for most of its postcolonial monarchical history (1822-1889) (Arteaga Reference Arteaga2017; Hofbauer Reference Hofbauer2006).

From the beginning of European colonization, Catholic theological debates were an important source of intellectual reflection about race in the “New World.”Footnote ¹⁰ In summary, it is fair to say that Indigenous peoples were considered closer to White people because of their lighter skin color and “innocence.” This would make their assimilation into the Portuguese “caste” and the Christian religion easier. However, this did not mean that the souls of Black people should not be saved as well. Transatlantic slavery was conceived as an attempt to save Black people from eternal damnation. White skin was associated with God’s purity and was a prerequisite for leadership positions in the country before and after independence. According to the prevalent cosmological manner of thinking at the time, Brazil’s destiny had to be in good hands since it was a Christian colony/nation. It was believed that the country would assimilate the natives (and possibly the Blacks) into Christianity and the Portuguese race in due time. The chosen means were religious conversion and race mixing (secretly aided by germs) (Hofbauer Reference Hofbauer2006).

At the end of 1822, in the midst of Hobsbawm’s “Age of Revolutions,” the newly formed Empire of Brazil separated from Portugal. In this context, nationalism and Romanticism emerged as important “programs” (Luhmann Reference Luhmann1997a) in politics and the arts, respectively (Anderson Reference Anderson2016; Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1992). This global phenomenon engaged different functional rationalities with the issue of national descriptions. In other words, different societal domains produced a joint semantics to describe what Benjamin Anderson (Reference Anderson2016) called “imagined communities,” a state of affairs that favored the observation of “the people” in racial terms. (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1992; see also Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2013). This association was also evident in the newly founded country (de Carvalho Reference de Carvalho2017; Sodré Reference Sodré1960). The political system, the humanities, and the arts actively collaborated and observed each other as they strove to form a national “history.” This established collective symbols and myths, thanks to the creation of national holidays, heroes, and significant events, which constructed an idealized foundational narrative for the Brazilian Empire (Sodré Reference Sodré1960).

In the 1870s, this narrative and the core institutions of the Empire were progressively questioned amid intense intellectual activity. One participant described this period ironically as a “flock of new ideas” (Romero Reference Romero1986, p. 23). An emerging corpus of scholarly texts, active in international scientific discussions, observed social structures in the country in light of scientific studies. The work of these self-proclaimed “men of science” presented a significant intellectual shift in the country (Schwarcz Reference Schwarcz1993). They analyzed Brazil through critical lenses and proposed solutions to identified problems. Blackness was seen as a national issue, if not the national issue. In this context, the “optimistic” liberal project, embodied in the First Republican Constitution (1891) and primarily associated with legal scholars, was considered entirely compatible with ideas of biological racial hierarchy. Legal scholars claimed that legal and political systems should strive to equalize what was considered biologically unequal (Maio and Santos, Reference Maio and Santos1996; Ramos Reference Ramos2023; Schwarcz Reference Schwarcz1993). This suggested different stances toward so-called inferior and superior races. Considering the predominant craving for progress and the general perception of a racial hierarchy, the period’s most infamous race theoretical innovation, racial whitening, had favorable conditions to gain wide political resonance.

João Batista de Lacerda was a highly respected scientist of his time. He is perhaps the only historical figure whose name has become interchangeable with the concept of racial whitening. De Lacerda was trained as a medical doctor and also made significant contributions to the study of anthropology, paleontology, and biology during his long scientific career. From 1895 until 1915, he served as scientific director of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, the institution was the oldest and one of the most influential research institutes in the country. Notably, de Lacerda rejected the racial pessimism prevalent among his medical colleagues. Echoing ancient ideas of Christianization and Lusofication and updating the strand of racial thinking that saw miscegenation as key to the racial improvement, de Lacerda argued that race-mixing in Brazil was positive. It caused not degeneration, but rather the predominance of White traits among Mixed-race individuals.

De Lacerda’s (Reference de Lacerda1911) most famous paper, “Sur les Métis au Brésil,” was presented at the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911, where he officially represented Brazil as the leader of the only Latin American delegation. In it, he rebutted the racial essentialism of American polygenists by arguing that his native country was on the path to becoming a fully White nation within 100 years due to widespread interracial marriages and mass European migration (de Lacerda Reference de Lacerda1911; see also Souza and Santos, Reference Souza and Santos2012). This argument echoed ideas of racial improvement through miscegenation formulated in the previous century by Blumenbach, Virey, Lamarck, and Darwin, as well as the theological tradition of racial thinking dating from colonial times. To better illustrate his point, de Lacerda brought an unusual resource with him to England: Ham’s Redemption (see Figure 1), a painting by Brocos y Goméz (1895) that won the Golden Medal at the 1895 National Fine Arts Exposition in Rio de Janeiro. According to the scientist, the artwork depicted his thesis concisely (Lotierzo Reference Lotierzo2017; Schwarcz Reference Schwarcz2024).

Figure 1.

Ham’s Redemption by Brocos y Goméz (1895).

Figure 1. Long description

From left to right, a woman with dark skin stands in front of a yellow wall, wearing a white headscarf, green jacket, and long pink skirt, with her hands raised. Next, a seated woman with lighter skin and brown hair, dressed in a white blouse and pink skirt, holds a small child in a blue dress who is holding an orange. To the right, a man with light skin and short brown hair sits on a stone step in front of a doorway, wearing a light shirt and gray pants, with his arms crossed and legs extended. Behind the figures, a large green palm frond arches over the group. The background includes a yellow wall with visible mortar lines and a dark doorway with hanging white laundry. The ground is uneven with stones and patches of grass.

Setting artistic considerations aside, Brocos’ painting depicts four characters. In the center is a Mixed-race mother sitting with her baby. The child is at the heart of the painting and is dressed in the whitest clothes possible, which reflect the baby’s intensely fair skin. To their right is a smiling father looking proudly at his offspring. The baby’s skin color is even fairer than his. In the left corner, a dark-skinned woman, presumably the mother’s mother, looks at the sky and prays with her hands wide open, as if giving thanks for a blessing. Behind her is a small, vibrant green palm tree in front of a golden wall, representing Brazil’s national colors. In the background, in the upper right corner, pristine white laundry is hung to dry. As if the point were not clear enough, Brocos chose to name the piece “Ham’s Redemption,” a direct reference to the historical justification of Black slavery in Christian theology.

Historical sociologists would term de Lacerda’s central position at the country’s most important research institution, his official participation as a government envoy at the Universal Races Congress, and the Golden Medal awarded to Brocos at the National Exposition—a state-sponsored salon for works of official relevance—a “smoking gun”: sufficient evidence to prove a point. In this case, these facts support the assertion that racial whitening had significant support among political decision-makers. The following section’s analysis of official policymaking will further support this argument.

However, it would be misleading to believe that racial whitening was only about changes in the biological or phenotypic composition of the Brazilian population, or that the whitening theory single-handedly determined the country’s political discrimination structures. It was a key “innovation” amid profound doubts about the nation’s future. Along with other elements associated with the “progressivism” of legal scholars and historical self-descriptions of the country, the theory of racial whitening helped make certain political decisions appear more reasonable than others. In other words, the desired racial “cleansing,” as depicted in Brocos’ painting, also served as an explanation for the political and legal promotion, or at times the imposition, of an ethnocentric civilizational ethos (Hofbauer Reference Hofbauer2006; Seyferth Reference Seyferth1985; Skidmore Reference Skidmore1993). According to de Lacerda’s racial transformism, even “upward” miscegenation was not immune to “atavisms.” The Brazilian masses, including White individuals, should become entirely White, both in skin color and in manners.

The preference for whitening, both politically and scientifically, was as much about improving the biological makeup of the country’s future population as it was about “civilizing” behavior and culture, primarily (though not exclusively) through political and legal means. De Lacerda’s scientific argument complemented the liberalism of his legal peers. The two were two sides of the same coin. Thus, the coupling between the theory and politics of racial whitening could have been a precursor to the mid-twentieth century transformation in the justification of racism, shifting from a primarily biological stance to a cultural or “ethnopluralistic” one.

During these debates on race, specific policies regarding so-called racially inferior people emerged in the polity. The race problem appeared to have a plausible “integrationist” solution. Consequently, the prevalent tone and structure of the arguments allowed for optimism. More important than that, however, was the ambivalent message it sent to “racially inferior” individuals. Their predicament could be solved and they could be integrated—but only by biologically and culturally eliminating Blackness. In the following section, I will argue that this ambivalence is key to understanding the institutionalization of racial discrimination in the First Brazilian Republic.

The Ambiguous Institutionalization of Racism

The attribution of race in Brazil is (and has been) complex and ambiguous (Freeman et al., Reference Freeman, Telles and Goldberg2025; Moraes Silva and Souza Leão, Reference Moraes Silva and de Souza Leão2012; Nogueira Reference Nogueira1954; Schwartzman Reference Schwartzman2013; Telles Reference Telles2004, Reference Telles2014). I believe studying the institutional embodiment of this ambiguity is the best way to understand the strength of racism in Republican Brazil and possibly in world society after World War II.

We need look no further than the theory of racial whitening and the policies it inspired to see an ambivalent understanding of racial relations. The government aimed to improve the national collective through racial conversion. On the one hand, the goal was to integrate all citizens, regardless of race, since all were considered part of the Brazilian people. On the other hand, the chosen means is the dissolution of inferior races. Black individuals must not be segregated or eliminated. However, they must act to eradicate Blackness through cultural and behavioral changes, as well as racial hypergamy (see Dávila Reference Dávila2003; Skidmore Reference Skidmore1993). So-called racially inferior individuals are not problematic per se, but rather if they choose to continue acting and reproducing as such. They could redeem themselves and the country in time. Thus, the polity promoted racial integration to put an end to “inferior races.”

The goal was not to maintain racial boundaries in a “separate but equal” manner based on racial essentialist notions. Rather, national whitening was to be achieved within a few generations. The “race problem” was not viewed as an unsolvable environmental fact whose maintenance was essential to the cohesion of the polity or “civilization.” This line of thinking led to the explicit institutionalization of discrimination in North America, which culminated in Jim Crow Era segregation policies. In Brazil, the question was not how to continuously segregate, but rather how to forcefully and unilaterally integrate the population culturally and biologically towards racial homogeneity. In conclusion, we have, on one side, self-justified discrimination, and on the other, compulsory, ethnocentric discrimination as a means of integration (Marx Reference Marx1998).

The aforementioned ambiguity of racial whitening coexisted with normative flexibility regarding racial discrimination and attribution. Depending on the context and individual biography, discrimination was sometimes not possible. This state of affairs was not new, but it was surely reinforced in this context (Skidmore Reference Skidmore1993).Footnote ¹¹ Therefore, being “racially inferior” was not a red flag, as it was in the U.S. South at that time. However, it was surely a disadvantage in several interactive, organizational, and institutional settings. In exceptional cases, the attribution of other factors, such as wealth, family ties, and educational or performance credentials, could soften the blow.Footnote ¹² Additionally, for Mixed individuals especially, social and self-perceptions of race could change radically depending on social status. Thus, it was technically possible to “redeem” oneself and “become White”—or at least “Whiter”—during one’s lifetime. Perhaps we could call this process “racial bleaching.”

In line with this ambiguity, political programs aimed at promoting Whiteness were not explicitly formulated: legally speaking, their goal was simply not stated. After all, all citizens had the same rights on paper, regardless of race.Footnote ¹³ Political structures could discriminate through subtlety and, simultaneously, appear non-discriminatory or avoid ruffling feathers. Interpretations of racial discrimination policies frequently depended on cultural knowledge of implicit prejudices not mentioned in the law but known to be in force (Schwarcz Reference Schwarcz2013). The First Republic’s constitution, for example, never mentions the subject. Instead, policies were relatively indirect in their goals and often used a third category as a proxy for race (dos Santos Reference dos Santos2022, Chapter 9). The result is the ambiguous institutionalization of discrimination.

To demonstrate the inner workings and effectiveness of the ambiguous institutionalization of discrimination in the First Brazilian Republic, the interplay between racial frames and public policies will now be examined. During its first few months, the new republican government passed legislation encouraging mass European immigration. The Decree 528 of 1890 is arguably the most explicitly discriminatory policy of that era. Nevertheless, the text does not mention race directly. Introduced a few months after citizenship and equal treatment before the law were granted to all Brazilians, regardless of race, the decree established the institutional framework for the biological project of racial whitening. It subsidized the importation of “full-bodied” men between the ages of eighteen and fifty. The preamble justifies the policy and its substantial travel cost subsidies by stating that it should protect immigrants and “aid the development of farms” throughout the country. Furthermore, these measures are considered “intimately tied to the progress of the nation.” The first article, a few lines below, states who can immigrate to the Republic. One must be “fit for work” and “not subject to criminal prosecution in their country,” except for those indigenous to Asia or Africa, who may only be admitted with the authorization of the National Congress under the conditions stipulated at the time. The reasons for such restrictions are not explained. However, they were widely known.

Attempts to promote European mass immigration were not new, but the effects were on a different scale at this time. Since 1837, imperial governments had also tried to bring in more expatriates, especially to work on farms. The immigrants were supposed to ensure a steady labor force for plantation owners as slavery was gradually abolished.Footnote ¹⁴ Yet, the scale of immigration at that time was unprecedented. From 1890 to 1900, for example, the number of foreigners increased from 351,545 to 1,074,511. This represented a percentage increase from 2.45% to 6.16% of the total population. Over the next decade, at least half a million more Europeans disembarked on Brazilian shores, primarily to work in the economically prosperous southern and southeastern states (Levy Reference Levy1974).

One key consequence for formerly enslaved people and their descendants was intense and unfair competition in the labor market, which reduced their chances of finding decent employment. Lawmakers foresaw this. After abolition, many people of color refused to work on plantations, rejecting the slavery-like conditions that immigrants had to endure. However, they did not fare much better in the cities. Even though Black Brazilians were often more qualified than immigrants (for example, they could speak the language), immigrants were preferred during the hiring process due to racial prejudice (Andrews Reference Andrews1991; Jacino Reference Jacino2013). At the same time, those who chose to live outside of subsistence farming could not claim ownership of their land. The only way to do so was to buy it from the state. The negative impact of this migration policy combined with the land policy on the economic inclusion of people of color cannot be overstated (dos Santos Reference dos Santos2022; Jacino Reference Jacino2013).

Finally, I would like to briefly review three political frameworks that were used to deal with Black people at the time. These frames had profound consequences for Black individuals and can still be seen in some institutional settings today. The frames were: (1) cultural practices associated with Black groups are inferior and undesirable; (2) people of color are politically incompetent or dangerous; and (3) Blacks have a propensity for criminality. During the First Republic, such frames informed and justified racially discriminatory policies that were nonetheless presented as color-blind, highlighting the physical and symbolic violence inherent in Brazil’s whitening policies (see do Nascimento Reference do Nascimento1978).

The official persecution of Afro-Brazilian religions is possibly the most palpable illustration of the first point. These religions were continuously accused of crimes of “quackery” (curanderismo) and “witchcraft”—vague charges that could apply to all religions on paper (Prandi Reference Prandi1996). Additionally, autonomous communities made up of people of color, such as Canudos, were accused of “monarchism” and “madness” and brutally eradicated by the federal government in the early years of the republic (Albuquerque Reference Albuquerque2009; da Cunha Reference da Cunha2010). Another example of racially biased political repression is the Whipping Revolt (Revolta da Chibata). In this rebellion, primarily Black non-commissioned Navy officers protested the continued use of corporal punishment, such as whipping, after slavery ended. The revolt resulted in a deceptive compromise and the imprisonment of those involved (dos Santos Reference dos Santos2022). Lastly, the criminalization of “vagrancy” and “capoeira practice,” both vaguely defined in Chapter 8 of the 1890 Penal Code, provided legal grounds for police profiling of Black individuals, as earning a living through “activities manifestly offensive to morals and good customs” (Art. 399) was considered criminal (Código Penal 1890). Therefore, Blackness and crime were implicitly associated,Footnote ¹⁵ a frame that continues to appear in legal decisions and police communications until today.

An interesting research question is how these frames and political structures have changed since the First Republic, as this can help us better understand the transformation of racial discrimination in the polity. However, this topic will have to be addressed at a later time.Footnote ¹⁶ For now, we can only assert that there are strong indications these three scripts are still used in various ways by governments, political parties, and law enforcement agencies. This persistence is evident in the local authorities’ neglect or tolerance of acts of religious intolerance against Afro-Brazilian temples, for example. This persistence is also evident in arguments about the political inability of Black-majority states and the acceptance of police brutality in favelas.