[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?