“ARE WE ALL BROWN”? SELFCLASSIFICATION, RACIAL HETEROCLASSIFICATION AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICIES IN CEARÁ

Abstract

The discussion around “pardo” (brown) as a racial category has been considered central to the improvement of affirmative action policies throughout the country (Costa and Schucman, 2022; De Jesus, 2021; Rios, 2018). In Ceará, the issue becomes even more important, as the state has the third largest self-declared “pardo” population in the country (64.7%). This article focuses on the analysis of the specificities of the social construction of “negro/pardo” in Ceará and its recent resignifications in view of the actions of heteroidentification commissions. It begins by analyzing cases made public in the Ceará press, in which the self- and heterodeclarations of racial identities of those entering through quotas were challenged. It continues with a theoretical discussion on how the issue of the “pardo” has been elaborated in Brazil and Ceará. It analyzes testimonies of sixteen undergraduate and graduate students from Ceará who self-identify as Black, who point to new problematizations and local specificities of being “pardo”. It concludes that theories about “pardo” should take seriously the importance of Afro-indigenous miscegenation in Ceará, the meaning of Whiteness in Ceará, and the emergence of vibrant Black Culture in its urban peripheries.