Just a comment on a column

[Silo]

Was just poking through some old columns and saw this:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_098.html

Cecil bases this statement on his anthropological researches in Brazil, where he conducted a combination field trip and all-night beach party several years ago. Racial mixing in Brazil is very common and in fact has come to be a point of national pride there. This apparently traces back to the rabbitlike sexual proclivities of the original male Portuguese settlers, who liked dark-skinned women and who also were accustomed to assembling vast hierarchies of wives, mistresses, and concubines, with whom they cheerfully begat kids by the cartload.

National pride eh? Perhaps that’s what the government would like people to think.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

Morning, Silo. Um, and your point is? [look of polite inquiry] Sorry, I haven’t had coffee yet, not really awake. [insert groggy face emoticon]

[Kyberneticist]

I’m more thinking that if ever a thread was appropriate to the “Properly Describe Your Threads in the Title” pit rant, it would be this one.
Good think this section doesn’t tend to long columns that take ages to load.

DDG, I feel your pain, I’ve no clue either. I’ve had some heavily steeped green tea, but hasn’t helped enough for my 2.5 hours of sleep last night. Maybe if I had some white tea in the house…

[Louie]

*Originally posted by Kyberneticist *
I’m more thinking that if ever a thread was appropriate to the “Properly Describe Your Threads in the Title” pit rant, it would be this one.

Well, he said “Just a comment on a column”. That doesn’t necessarily means the comment was suppose to make sense

Although, I find it amusing that Cecil compares the Portuguese settlers to rabbits. I guess that’s where the last name Coelho came from. (coelho is is the word for rabbit in Portuguese.)

[Silo]

The comment was regarding Cecil’s statement that racial mixing had come to a point of national pride in Brazil.

I’m saying he’s off base. Unless you consider the truth to be what the government of Brazil would like people to think.

[waterj2]

Are you going to back up that assertion, or should we just all assume that whatever the government of Brazil says is wrong? Actually, are you going to provide evidence that Cecil was basing his claim only on the word of the Brazilian government, or even that the Brazilian government has ever said what you say they did? I mean, you’re going to need more than “you’re wrong” when dispting something said by the world’s smartest human. Really, you’ve been around here long enough to know that.

[Silo]

http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/un/chr/chr96/thematic/72_add1.htm

[Arnold_Winkelried]

Silo, I have read with interest the report from the UNHCR concerning racial relations in Brazil. The report mentions that racial integration in Brazil is not perfect, which is what one would expect. I also notice however several comments indicating that racial relations seem to be better than in many other countries. Some quotes from the article:

Miscegenation has created so many gradations of skin colour that it has become difficult to classify the Brazilian population according to race and to estimate precisely the size of the various ethnic and racial groups in the population.

…

… the races had no recognition as such but merged to form a unique people of a hundred subtle tones over whom racial prejudice had no hold. This is why the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro with its splendid colours is regarded as expressing the Brazilian authorities’ idea of national harmony better than any integrationist pronouncement. In its 1995 Carnival song, the Viraduro Samba School echoed this idea by referring to the amazement of French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret when he discovered Brazil in 1815 in the company of a French artistic mission: “Quel bonheur! Je suis venu de France à l’invitation du Roiporteur de mon art et j’ai été surpris de découvrir un paradis enchanteur, où Indiens, Blancs et Noirs vivent en parfaite harmonie raciale,mettant ainsi en évidence la nature profonde de ce pays tropical” [What bliss! I came from France at the invitation of the Kingbearing my art and surprised was I to discover an enchanted paradise, where Indians, Whites and Blacks live in perfect racial harmony,living proof of the true nature of this tropical land".]

Brazilians are said to feel no racial prejudice, although they apparently have a keen awareness of colour, which is reflected in an ambivalent attitude towards miscegenation and which barely conceals a certain ideological preference for whiteness. (emphasis mine)

etc…

I notice in particular that a French artist’s impression in 1815 was of a country where people lived in “perfect racial harmony”, which same statement would very probably not have applied to many other countries at the time. In European literature from the 19th or even early 20th century, one often sees the “half-breed” pictured as being shifty, devious, traitorous, etc…

As a comparison, here’s the unhcr report on the United States of America:
http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/un/chr/chr95/country/78add1.htm

You will notice that many of the issues mentioned in the USA report seem to me to be more significant than the problems mentioned in the report on Brazil.

Finally, I will add that the statement by Cecil Adams echoes the sentiment that I have read in several articles on Brazil, namely that the population is proud of its diversity.