Interesting read: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/ Despite the fact that the vast majority of the Brazilian population are of mixed descent, to some extent or another, an informal caste system still exists. But instead of Black or White, it's more how Black or White a person is. This is causing dicey issues with affirmative action policies, with many student applicants to public universities taking advantage of the quota allocation system by claiming to be Black because they had a Black great-grandmother somewhere way back in their family tree. In 1872, whites made up only 38 percent of the population in Brazil. And by the time slavery was abolished in 1888 an estimated 4 million slaves had already been imported from Africa. Brazil’s government then launched a full-on propaganda and policy effort to “whiten” Brazil. It closed the country’s borders to African immigrants, and subsidized the voyage of millions of German and Italian workers, providing them with citizenship, land grants, and stipends when they arrived. Instead of trying to get rid of Africans, the Brazilian government hoped to "mix them away", and actively encouraged men to marry Black women so that the next generation would be less Black. It's interesting to contrast the experience of race in Brazil with that in the United States. This isn't all just history, it could have implications for the future in the U.S. There are a lot of people who think mixing, and whites constituting a minority, is going to make racism go away, but as the experience in Brazil shows, that's not the case at all.
Yes I completely agree with your takeaway. If anything, additional "colors" just become new groups to cause divisions. The same lessons can be learned from South Africa.
Picture that clearly illustrates the divide in the country, a favela (slum) sitting right besides a luxury condo development:
Kids stealing stuff from unsuspecting people in crowds, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil kids stealing on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Brasil, Olympic Games city, Aug 12, 2016, TVMUN
I would not take over the narrative, that its racism, which leads to these hierarchy in Brazil. Brazil has for a very long time been a country, in which the distribution of wealth was very unequal, which lead to powerful dynasties which had definitely more White DNA in them, but because of that mixtures ideologies of White Supremacy as well as the woke ideology of Black Supremacy are not all too popular in Brazil. It can backfire on too many people. Thus its a completely different situation in the US, Black people or people with a visible darker skin than average are not overwhelmingly soaked into this woke left-wing ideology. Many of them identify a lot with their religion, but whether its Catholocism or the unstoppable expanding evangelical Christians (I heard its expected to hit the 50% mark all over Brazil in 2030, dont know if thats accurate), many of them are absolutely distrustful of their government, think politicians are corrupt, some of them would even tend to give the control rather to the military than the politicians. I dont say Brazilian Blacks or people who call/identify themselves as Black spreading hate on White people dont exist at all, but their impact is much lower than in the US. If there is a group which is more into that woke ****, I think its rather indigenous people than people with more African roots. As for White Supremacy, it doesnt work that well to emphazize that you are so much superior, because your DNA is only 30% sub-human insulting 90%+ of the overall population as well. There will of course be some groups like that, but I would doubt they have a big impact as well.
