Racial capital and white middle class territorialization in Salvador, Brazil

ABSTRACT

In this article we seek to first conceptualize whiteness as racial capital and then apply this conceptualization to analyze how whiteness functions in structuring social space in Salvador, Brazil. This article thus seeks to put into conversation different bodies of literature, namely race and racialization, critical whiteness studies, class analysis, gender analysis, and territorial analysis. In other words, we seek to provide an intersectional territorialization of how race, class, status, and gender work together to structure urban living space in general and in private, middle-class condominiums in particular. We do so by focusing on the intersection between whiteness and belonging to the middle to upper-middle classes and the mechanisms by which the approach to a white identity functions as a factor of racial capital and socioeconomic mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil
• gender
• racial capital
• territory
• whiteness

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Also see Guimarães (2012), Nogueira (2006), Skidmore (1989), Telles (2014), and Viana (2007) for discussions about mixed race categories and the construction of national identity in Brazil, and Guimarães (2019) for a recent reassessment of the implications of racial democracy in Brazil.

2. Loteamento Aquarius is the real name of the neighborhood, but the names of the specific condominiums and of people interviewed are fictional.

3. The nearly five million European immigrants who came to meet labor demands and fulfill the nation’s ‘whitening’ project were concentrated in the coffee region, while Bahia remained in relative isolation from outside influences. See Owensby (1999) and Lesser (1999) on the formation of the Brazilian middle classes.

4. In an amalgam between public and private interests, construction companies were awarded contracts that directly incentivized them to develop urban land far from the city center. The National Housing Bank (BNH) and the Housing Finance System (SFH) were used to transfer state resources to the middle classes, particularly during the military dictatorship (1964-1985) (Porchaman 2012; Quadros 1991).

5. These demographic statistics were shared with Suzana Maia in personal communications with the IBGE Supervisão de Disseminação de Informações office. Personnel from this office provided supplemental data from a published report (Santos et al. 2010) disaggregated by neighborhood.

6. For discussions about the new configurations of the Brazilian middle classes, see Cardoso and Préteceille (2017), Porchaman (2012), and Salata (2016).

7. On the occasion of the 2014 World Cup, the city government devoted attention and resources to develop a pocket of land near the Aquarius Residential Community, locally known as ‘Favelinha’ (little slum), a cluster of working class housing and informal businesses occupied mainly by poor black people. The operation attempted to ‘clean up’ and augment the ‘value’ of the area as it sat along the road corridor between the new financial center and the waterfront. The project also addressed complaints made by white neighbors about the noise made by black boys and young men who worked in the various car wash services there.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suzana Maia

Suzana Maia is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the Center of Arts, Humanities, and Literature at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, Brazil. She is the author of Transnational Desires (Vanderbilt University Press 2012) and of a number of articles on whiteness in Brazil.

Bernd Reiter

Bernd Reiter is a Latinamericanist and professor of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University. He is the editor of the Routledge Decolonizing the Classics Special Book Series as well as of the Routledge Handbook of Afro Latin American Studies.