Whitening operates through geographic and cultural mobility as much as biology

Evidence

Whitening or blanqueamiento/branqueamento, it should be stressed by extension, is not simply reproductive in the biological or phenotypical sense, the sort of lightening up through successive generations discussed above. It also involves socio-cultural “enlightenment,” acquiring the morals and customs, the sensibilities associated with whiteness. And such sensibilities more often than not are to be acquired by shedding the skein of darkness facilitated by socio-geographical movement. Cultural mobility – the movement away from cultural commitments identified as Indian or black – is considered most directly enabled by geographic mobility from areas marked as Indian or black and therefore seen to be lacking urbanity, sophistication, and prospect to areas identified not just demographically but culturally and expressively as white. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1183

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that blanqueamiento is both reproductive-biological and socio-cultural, a two-track definition useful against reductive readings.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing interest in space/place as infrastructure and race as spatial sorting; also resonates with scholarship on racialized urban-rural divides.