This article investigates the phenomenon of whitening, in its population and ideological aspects. It analyzes how the so-called "whitening ideology" entered in the Negro areas of São Paulo in the period after the abolition. The main focus is to show that this ideology, in spite of its racist characteristic, was legitimated and assimilated by parts of this black population in everyday life. The assimilation of this ideology has become a mechanism of psycho-social insertion of black people in a world ruled by white ones.
Negro; racism; whitening; prejudice
