Wealth shifts how people are perceived racially, literally whitening them

Evidence

The suppression of indianness also has a material implication, loosening as it does historical claims to the land, opening up the possibility that any family whose legacy in the country goes back more than a couple of generations is an indigene. A touch of Indian in the family profile can’t hurt, in that regard, though too much opens up the charge of degeneracy, of the Casta characterization of “returning backwards.” While conjuring a different genealogy of suppression and resistance than indianness, even black entrepreneurial self-advancement requires partnering with those not black. Money, the Brazilian saying reveals, whitens. This works both in the sense that as black people become wealthier they are perceived more readily as less black, more white, and they are more likely to socialize with those less likely (or less likely perceived as) black. They more probably will marry “up,” and will more often than not fraternize with whites or outside of black social circles. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1149

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the ‘Grafting & Growth’ theme of mixed identity but more so connects to complaints about status-signaling — the whitening-through-wealth mechanism is a status economy in race.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘money whitens’ as a universalizing economic-race principle across the Americas — how class mobility decouples but never erases racial perception.
• XREF: connects to: Whitening norms frame impoverishment as black and wealth as white — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1150; World Cup audience skews wealthy and white despite protest claims — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 531