Choosing the moreno category signals aesthetic embrace of color tied to whiteness-linked privilege

Evidence

The readiness of many Brazilians of all stripes in poll after poll to identify as moreno or pardo – basically, as mixed in one way or another – reveals more than just an avoidance of blackness and a “somatic preference” for whiteness, as Sansone puts it, although it clearly represents that. It reveals also, and increasingly, an aesthetic appeal for that touch of color noted above, tied to the preference for the elevated structural conditions identified with whiteness. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1188

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes my reading on the politics of skin-tone hierarchy in Latin America more broadly — mestizaje as nation-building ideology.