Post-slavery Brazil retained a white aristocratic caste dependent on Black labor

Evidence

Many patterns and attitudes formed [during slavery] persist even today… There is the aristocratic group of white descendants of the senhores de engenho - who form almost a caste, marrying among themselves and living out their own social life apart from the Negro and racially mixed population of the community. Just as the slave owners in the past,… they depend upon the Negro and the mestifo for labour. A Negro cannot became a member of the aristocracy,… Negro ancestry is without doubt a grave disadvantage in economic and social mobility,… [O]nly a few Negroes have moved into high political or economic positions. There is only one plantation owner who is a Negro, and Negroes and mesticos hold only minor bureaucratic and political positions in the community. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3570

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Slavery’s Legacies’ theme and to stratification ironed into caste-like structures seen in other post-plantation societies.