Currently, there is no society or social group that does not have a mixture of different ethnicities. There are exceptions such as very few indigenous groups that still live isolated in Latin America or elsewhere on the planet.
In general, contemporary societies are the result of a long process of miscegenation of their populations, whose intensity varied over time and space. The concept “miscegenation” can be defined as the process resulting from the mixture from marriages or cohabitation of a man and a woman of different ethnicities.
Miscegenation occurs in the union between whites and blacks, whites and yellows, and between yellows and blacks. Common sense divides the human species into whites, blacks and yellows, who are popularly known as "races" based on a peculiar trait – skin color. However, whites, blacks and yellows do not constitute races in the biological sense, but human groups of sociological significance.
In Brazil, there is the “Myth of the three races”, developed both by the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and by common sense, in which the Brazilian culture and society were constituted from the cultural influences of the "three races": European, African and indigenous.
However, this myth is not shared by several critics, as it minimizes the violent domination caused by Portuguese colonization over the indigenous and African peoples, putting the colonization situation as a balance of forces between the three peoples, which in fact does not there was. Anthropological studies used, between the 17th and 20th centuries, the term “race” to designate the various classifications of human groups; but since the first genetic methods for studying human populations biologically appeared, the term race has fallen into disuse.
Finally, "the myth of the three races" is criticized for being considered a simplistic and biologizing view of the Brazilian colonizing process.
Orson Camargo
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Sociology and Politics from the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo – FESPSP
Master in Sociology from the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/sociologia/o-brasil-varias-cores.htm
