[AntonioMQ]

I can't say for for sure the precise composition of Brazil, even though I have traveled around Brazil very much, far more than most people here have. Most people who come to our cities come to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, or São Paulo, in short, our large coastal cities, which gives an incomplete and partial view of the country. They pass it to others when they come back. Most Brazilians haven't traveled all over the country, so many of them have many misconceptions on how our country is like or what other regions look like.

Having said all this, from what I have seen the concentration of pred. SSA African looking individuals is in our coastal areas where they were most used in colonial times. Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, coastal Pernambuco, mining areas of Minas Gerais, coastal areas of Maranhão are the places where they are most likely to be found. People who would score 100% SSA African would be a very small minority, probably not even 1% or 2%. Pred. SSA African individuals are more common, but they are mainly restricted to the areas I mentioned above. Overall, they are large in absolute numbers but small in % since there are many people living in Central West, North and South Brazil, which have a very small number of pred. SSA African individuals IMO, not to mention many areas in the Southeast and the Northeast where pred. SSA African individuals are not that important, like in the interior of São Paulo state.



According to this study from 2011, with "pardo", "white" and "black" samples from all over the country, according to their respective proportions, Southern and Northern Brazil are about 90% non African, and the Southeast and the Northeast somewhere around 68% to 74% (the Northeast results are skewed with the inclusion of Bahia, which is significantly much more African than the other Northeastern Brazilian states). And by it I mean the African contribution to the genetic make-up of these populations.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...l.pone.0017063



---------- Post added 2012-03-18 at 14:17 ----------

Genetically, Brazilians as a whole have European, African and Native American ancestries, all of the categories, "whites", "pardos" and "blacks". Having said that, European ancestry is still more important than any other in São Paulo state (which has ~40 million people by the way). The ancestral make-up of São Paulo state according to a genetic study from 2006:

79% European
14% African
7% Amerindian
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...20474/abstract

I live in São Paulo (the biggest Brazilian city), it is mostly Pardo. Whites are common but in high-and middle classes]

---------- Post added 2012-03-18 at 14:19 ----------

Sure, that's what I invite you to do. Or else try to find pics of crowds of Brazilians who look overwhelmingly African in these regions: Northern Brazil, Central West Brazil, Southern Brazil, interior of São Paulo state, and also Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte and ParaÃ*ba (states in the Northeast of Brazil). You won't find them, since they are a very small minority there!

Interesting, that is why i always empathize visiting the country instead of going by photos from the internet..

[RedImmik]

Brazil is very diverse. Any sample could be drawn giving 100% Euro-looking people or 100% African-looking people. Heck, some samples could give you 100% Native American people (go to some of the native reservations or to the palafitas in big cities in the Amazon) or 100% East Asian looking people (in some cities, in some schools or in some parties you can find this). And all the things between are possible as well.

The only word possible to describe Brazil is diverse.

---------- Post added 2012-03-18 at 14:30 ----------

Look at this video ofanother show of Michel Teló, but now in Salto, state of Sao Paulo, in the Southeastern region of Brazil. There's a difference between the crowd of this show and the one in the OP, which was done in the Southern region of Brazil, I think.

[Kghikeds]

Indeed. But Brazil is often claimed as a 2nd Nigeria, which it is not, unless you apply the one drop rule. But if you did that, the US and Mexico wouldn't be too far behind. Especially if you add in the US the crowd of Latinos (who usually have at least a drop of African ancestry), the white Americans who also have it (not that rare), not to mention African Americans, Haitians and African immigrants. According to a Yale professor, in an academic book about Brazil, the pred. culture in Brazil would be African, which is a lie. Not that there is no significant African culture, ancestry, etc. There is. But there are also European and Native American cultural and ancestral influences. Brazil is a country with multiple cultural influences.

Brazil is very diverse. Any sample could be drawn giving 100% Euro-looking people or 100% African-looking people. Heck, some samples could give you 100% Native American people (go to some of the native reservations or to the palafitas in big cities in the Amazon) or 100% East Asian looking people (in some cities, in some schools or in some parties you can find this). And all the things between are possible as well.

The only word possible to describe Brazil is diverse.

[pMJWFoAWD]

Interesting, that is why i always empathize visiting the country instead of going by photos from the internet.

Exactly. Internet can get useful to get a slightest idea but at the end of the day anybody who tries to lecture other people or act as authority based on his 'web' findings is just making a fool of himself. I only take seriously the info coming from a person living or who has lived in a particular place.

[endulundaSauh]

Does the Washington Red Skin crowd from the photo i posted mirrors the demographic percentage above, obviously not. Therefore, whenever someone post internet photos of crowds, i take it as a grain of salt until i visit the country and its many different regions, and have a basic understanding of the actual demographics.
.

Yes i think even crowd pictures can be misleading if you want to get a perfectly representative view of population composition in one particular place or region. It depends on the popularity of the sport with all social segments and also if their incomelevel allows them to buy tickets. In case of Brazil, football is king of course . I think ticket prices are generally low and affordable in Brazil except maybe for the extremely poor segments of society.

Expensive ticket prices for the upcoming Worldcup might however produce unrepresentative crowd pictures

However, i am not suggesting the poster is actual wrong, because he knows his country better than me obviously, and i also heard southern brazil is far more European influence than most of the country, but at the same time it is better to visit the country and see things for yourself and get a better perspective of the people, culture and demographics of the nation.

True, personal observation when travelling is valuable but even then you might get wrong impressions depending on which exact places/neighboorhoods you visit and even at which times The phenotypical composition of the people you would see on the streets etc. might change susbstantially accordingly.

For example there's a big Bolivian migrant community (estimated 200.000) in Sao Paulo, they are usually employed in illegal textile sweathops making long hours. These sweatshops are often run by brazilian Koreans and i suspect they would be concentrated in a particular neighboorhood (maybe Liberade?). And probably most of the Bolivians would also be living nearby.

I imagine because of their long working hours and also their concentration within certain neighboorhoods Bolivian visilibility on the streets might not correspond with their actual share in population. Any unsuspecting tourist staying in Sao Paulo for a couple of days could very well never meet any Bolivian and never be aware of their presence. Maybe any of our resident Paulistano posters can jump in and give more info

[Squeernemergo]

Indeed. But Brazil is often claimed as a 2nd Nigeria, which it is not, unless you apply the one drop rule. But if you did that, the US and Mexico wouldn't be too far behind. Especially if you add in the US the crowd of Latinos (who usually have at least a drop of African ancestry), the white Americans who also have it (not that rare), not to mention African Americans, Haitians and African immigrants. According to a Yale professor, in an academic book about Brazil, the pred. culture in Brazil would be African, which is a lie. Not that there is no significant African culture, ancestry, etc. There is. But there are also European and Native American cultural and ancestral influences. Brazil is a country with multiple cultural influences.

Ubirajara, do you think African influence in Brazil is exaggerated and Native influence underestimated??

[Amomiamup]

Ubirajara, do you think African influence in Brazil is exaggerated and Native influence underestimated??

It depends on the source. Usually African influence is greatly exaggerated in the international media. The BBC, f.e, did a DNA special programme only with the most African looking Brazilians. I've seen people here who got the impression, from that programme, that most Brazilians - in most of our regions - were like that. I am not downplaying African influence, which is wrong IMO. I am just trying to give a fuller picture of the country I belong to and where I have always lived. Brazil is largely African indeed, it has European and Native American contributions as well however.

[petrarkaponye]

Having said all this, from what I have seen the concentration of pred. SSA African looking individuals is in our coastal areas where they were most used in colonial times. Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, coastal Pernambuco, mining areas of Minas Gerais, coastal areas of Maranhão are the places where they are most likely to be found. People who would score 100% SSA African would be a very small minority, probably not even 1% or 2%. Pred. SSA African individuals are more common, but they are mainly restricted to the areas I mentioned above. Overall, they are large in absolute numbers but small in % since there are many people living in Central West, North and South Brazil, which have a very small number of pred. SSA African individuals IMO, not to mention many areas in the Southeast and the Northeast where pred. SSA African individuals are not that important, like in the interior of São Paulo state.

Agreed, but of course there has also been regional migration in the meanwhile (esp. to Sao Paulo) visibility of pred. SSA brazilians might be more pronounced because they tend to concentrate in the big coastal cities and also certain areas of coastal NE Brazil. That's also where the bulk of brazilian population lives though. If you'd add the populations of all the biggest metropolitan areas of Brazil like Sao Paulo, Rio, Salvador, Recife you would get a big share of total brazilian population.






Unlike distribution of pred. SSA people, I assume more evenly mixed Pardo people (incl. amerindian mixed ones) can generally be found all over Brazil. Here's 2009 statistics from IBGE

Genetically, Brazilians as a whole have European, African and Native American ancestries, all of the categories, "whites", "pardos" and "blacks". Having said that, European ancestry is still more important than any other in São Paulo state (which has ~40 million people by the way). The ancestral make-up of São Paulo state according to a genetic study from 2006:

79% European
14% African
7% Amerindian

Genetical studies are starting to provide valuable insights about actual ancestral components for brazilians. I think in the near future as sampling and techniques steadily improve we will get an even more definite overview.

However genetical composition of average brazilians will turn out eventually it doesn't necessarily correspond with their phenotypical range. This has already been established by many genetic studies done on brazilians. Especially skin color doesn't seem to correlate much with actual african ancestral %.

And of course it's phenotype (aside from socio-cultural background) and not genotype which actually determines how most people would selfidentify. And also how that country's diversity would be seen by outsiders. Not to mention it's also actual appearances and not genetical % of european admixture which determines any possible racial discrimination within society.


Here's a nice table contrasting selfidentification with actual genotype. It's from this 2011 study. You can see that their sample of selfidentified " blacks" only have a maximum of 50% african ancestry, for Bahia it's even as low as 36% , this seems to be a little bit off though to be honest...





Other source for the table and link to article on Gene Expression which has an interesting discussion about that 2011 study.

Brazilians, more European than not?

[pouslytut]

^ The genetic studies agree with what I see at 23andme:

Comprehensive data on all that I have gathered so far from 23andme:


A list of Brazilians I have shared with and their locations (I myself scored about ~97% European ~3% non European, the 3% split between African and Native American; my ancestry is 31/32 colonial Brazil and 1/32 German):

Here is a list of the 23andme results of Brazilians I have shared with:

From the Northeast of Brazil:

From Pernambuco:

* 94,52% European, 1,39% Asian, 4,09% African
* 97,27% European, 2, 17% Asian, 0,56% African

From Ceará (both my cousins according to 23andme):

* 80,07% European, 6,19% Asian, 13,74% African
* 99,56% European, 0,25% Asian, 0,18% African (ancestry also from PiauÃ*, also in the Northeast of Brazil next to Ceará)

From Rio Grande do Norte (family from the city of Caicó, in the interior of that state):

* 98,29% European, 1,58% Asian, 0,13% African

From Bahia:

* 76.46% African 18.68% European 4.85% Asian

------

From the Southeast of Brazil:

From Rio de Janeiro (my cousin according to 23andme):

* European 71.06% African 19.67% Asian 9.27%

From São Paulo:

* European 96.41% Asian 2.62% African 0.97% (from São Paulo)
* From the interior of São Paulo, city of Taquaritinga (Italian and Spanish great grandparents who arrived in Taquaritinga in 1891; Taquaritinga is a small town in the western part of São Paulo state), 100% European

From Minas Gerais:

* European 95.11% Asian 2.18% African 2.71%
* European 94.59% Asian 4.92% African 0.49%
* European 99.54% Asian 0.46% African 0.00%
* European 98.62% African 0.80% Asian 0.58%
* European 99.01% African 0.70% Asian 0.29%
* European 98.33% African 0.23% Asian 1.44%

From EspÃ*rito Santo:

* European 99.71% Asian 0.00% African 0.29%
* European 99,79% Asian 0.00% African 0.21%

----------

From Southern Brazil:

From Rio Grande do Sul:

* 98.30% European 0.99% Asian 0.71% African
* European 86,62% African 8.00% Asian 5.38%
* European 90.55% African 4.68% Asian 4.77%

From Santa Catarina (my cousins according to 23andme):

* 96,78% European, 3,22% Asian, 0,00% African
* European 96.00% Asian 2.60% African 1.40%

From Paraná:

* European 94,63%, Asian 3,69%, African 1,68%
* European 84.81% Asian 11.45% African 3.75% (this one is interesting, his yDNA is E1b1a8a, Bantu speaker signature, the first paternal SSA African haplogroup in a Brazilian I have seen at 23andme; his mtDNA is B2, which is Native American; and yet his autosomal ancestry is pred. European)
* European 82.80% African 15.60% Asian 1.60%

Unknown regions or multiple regions:

* European 93,39% African 3.67% Asian 2.93%, unknown region
* European 96.09% African 1.01% Asian 2.91%, multiple regions
* European 88.80% African 7.00% Asian 4.20%, unknown
* European 99.76% African 0.00% Asian 0.24%, unknown
* European 86,87% African 7.80% Asian 5.33%, Maranhão and Goiás
* European 98.25% African 1.20% Asian 0.00%, unknown
* European 71.38% African 16.10% Asian 12.52%, unknown
* European 98.69% African 0.15% Asian 1.17% (from São Paulo and Minas Gerais)
* European 100% (unknown region)
* European 99.82% European, African 0.18%, Asian 0% (from Minas Gerais and EspÃ*rito Santo)
* 100% European
* European 97.52% African 1.49% Asian 0.99% (multiple regions ancestry, from Ceará, Northeast of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro in the Southeast and Santa Catarina in Southern Brazil):
* 89.52% European, 5,41% African, 5,06% Asian
* 100% European (from São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul)
* 96.01% Asian 0.61% African 3.38% (from Minas Gerais & Rio de Janeiro);
* European 96.12% African 2.76% Asian 1.12%

Results posted by others, people I have not shared with:

From São Paulo, Southeast Brazil:
European 79.82% Asian 17.01% Africa 3.17%
European: 38.17% Asian 55.51% African: 6.33%

From São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Southeast Brazil:
80.79%European, 14.02% African and 5.19% Asian

From Amazonas, North Brazil:
89.52% European 5.41% African 5.05% Asian

From Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil:
100% European

From Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil:
84.64% European 8.70% Asian 6.66% African

From Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil:
100% European

From Espirito Santo, Southeast Brazil:
89.12% European 6.46% African 4.42% Asian

From Rio Grande do Norte, Northeast Brazil:
91.02% European 5.90% African 3.08% Asian

From Rio de Janeiro:

54% African, 38% European, 8% Asian

Unknown:

94,72% European 1,84% SSA African 3,44% Asian
99% European

[ashleyjoseph]

There you get full picture.

^You're not getting my point. I'm saying that ancestral components as shown by DNA studies or (limited) 23&me results don't matter IRL, because Genotype does not equal Phenotype. especially in Brazil with its large segment of multigenerational mixed Pardo's.

Of course genetical studies provide us with valuable insights about ancestry but when discussing a country's diversity actual appearances matter most i would say. Plus you have to keep in mind that 23&me results can only represent a very limited sample biased towards people with interest in DNA testing and financial means to afford one. Of course they can provide valuable insights as well but you have to be careful to extropolate these individual results to the dna make up of the average brazilian.

[fkisjjdhh]

Their samples came from Ilhéus in the interior of Bahia (even though it is a coastal town). Most people from Bahia live in the interior, which is significantly less SSA African than the capital Salvador.

You can see that their sample of selfidentified " blacks" only have a maximum of 50% african ancestry, for Bahia it's even as low as 36% , this seems to be a little bit off though to be honest...

---------- Post added 2012-03-18 at 18:25 ----------

Try to find pics of crowds of regular mainstream Brazilians who look overwhelmingly African in these regions: Northern Brazil, Central West Brazil, Southern Brazil, interior of São Paulo state, and also Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte and ParaÃ*ba (states in the Northeast of Brazil). You won't find them, since they are a very small minority there!

^You're not getting my point. I'm saying that ancestral components as shown by DNA studies or (limited) 23&me results don't matter IRL, because Genotype does not equal Phenotype. especially in Brazil with its large segment of multigenerational mixed Pardo's..

[alexbookhyip]

Try to find pics of crowds of regular mainstream Brazilians who look overwhelmingly African in these regions: Northern Brazil, Central West Brazil, Southern Brazil, interior of São Paulo state, and also Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte and ParaÃ*ba (states in the Northeast of Brazil). You won't find them, since they are a very small minority there!

why should I ? i never said these regions were overwelmingly african. I think you need to read my posts more carefully, i'm not disagreeing with you about how presence of black brazilians is generally overestimated and exaggerated...

All i'm saying is that mixed/pardo brazilians even if they score 70% euro in DNA studies, will still not selfidentify as european or be regarded by outsiders as such (of course they are brazilians first of all). And when you look at their faces instead of their 23&me results you will observe a big part of brazilian's diversity. According to latest census they make up about 43% of total population that might not be entirely accurate but it still gives a fair indication of their presence in brazilian population.

[smazibummigue]

I agree with you, I wouldn't claim otherwise, Brazil is very far off from Europe, even those 23andme results show it clearly too. It is just very far off from Africa too. It is a "mixed" country in culture and ancestry, somewhat similar to Cape Verde.

All i'm saying is that mixed/pardo brazilians even if they score 70% euro in DNA studies, will still not selfidentify as european or be regarded by outsiders as such (of course they are brazilians first of all).