Brazil: Ethnic groups

Brazil has a population of 190 million, according to data released by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – IBGE) for 2008, and is considered the fifth most populated country in the world. The National Survey of Sampling of Households (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios – PNAD), performed by the IBGE, has identified the percentage distribution of the Brazilian population as being the following:

• White – 48.4%

• Black – 6.8%
• Colored – 43.8%

• Oriental or Native Brazilian – 0.9%

In the ethnic classification used by the PNAD, all mulattoes, caboclos and cafuzos come under the Colored category. Mulattoes are people of mixed ancestry, white and black; caboclos are people of mixed Native Brazilian and European descent, and cafuzos are people with mixed black and Native Brazilian ancestry.

There is a long-standing discussion about the concepts of ethnic grouping and race. According to the Houaiss dictionary, an ethnic group can be defined as “a group of individuals that stands out for their social and cultural specificity, mainly brought out in language, religion and customs”. In contrast, race is “a traditional and arbitrary division of human groups, established by a set of hereditary physical characteristics”.

Some specialists believe that the concept of ethnic grouping has a biological background and can be defined as a race, a culture or both. Due to this imprecise concept, anthropologists avoid using the term. In many cultural studies, the concept of race is not considered because many people feel that cultural proximity is more relevant than the racial factor, or, it is understood that cultures within the same race are not necessarily closer together than cultures of different races.