State-imposed whitening policy erased race from national law

Evidence

In the 1950s, a little later than Brazil and Argentina, for instance, Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez introduced the prevailing national ideal of whitening, both demographically and culturally, importing significant numbers of Western European immigrants. The accompanying europeanizing of local culture as the national imperative underpinned the subsequent erasure of race from explicit national reference and policy with the end of the dictatorship in 1958. This simultaneously silenced any attempt to penalize racial discrimination. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1171

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the neighborhood-level Mexican and Brazilian cases and Argentina’s self-censoring census in prior passages — whitening as institutional erasure recurring across nativity/labor axes. — connects to: Venezuelan whitening policy enabled the later erasure of race from national policy — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1171; Erasing racial categories from public accounting also erases the discrimination they record — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1772

Broader Connections

• Venezuelan whitening policy enabled the later erasure of race from national policy #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1171
• Erasing racial categories from public accounting also erases the discrimination they record #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1772