Brazilian racial categories shift with a white person’s disposition toward you

Evidence

There is a saying in Brazil: “If you’re not white you’re black.” That’s not really true, you know. Here, you can be other things, like me, I’m a moreno. But to a white man, I’m a moreno only if he likes me; if he doesn’t like me, I’m a mulatto, or I’m even a preto. They play that game, you know? I guess the real saying should be, “If you’re not white, you lose.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3635

Categorization

• CANDY: Manuel’s line ‘if you’re not white, you lose’ is a quotable, self-contained one-liner about how racial categories hinge on white approval.
• XREF: Recalls the flexible, interlocutor-dependent racial labeling described in Latin American colorism literature (Tanya Katerí Hernández), and echoes claims about Afro-descendant identity instability.