A homogenized Brazilian national identity could be achieved by recruiting white immigrants to bleach out the native multiracial masses, eventually creating a modern, Europeanized society; thus spake the eugenics-intoxicated policy planners and the scholars who followed their lead. Now here comes Jeffrey Lesser. Having previously explored the non-white, non-black image imposed upon Jewish immigrants in Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question, Lesser next put his emerging theoretical framework at the service of the pathbreaking comparative study, Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities. The present work builds on this earlier research, expanding the realm of immigration history into an exploration of the psycho-jungle awaiting those who confuse biology with culture. Categorizing individuals according to their racial origin, with its corollary belief that culture is biologically determined, resulted in some astonishing non-sequiturs: the Portuguese “discovery” of both Brazil and Japan would cause those two...
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