Becoming Arab and White in Oracy Nogueira’s Brazil

Abstract

This essay explores how Middle Eastern immigrants became Arab and white in Brazil, according to what Oracy Nogueira has called prejudice of mark or color. Nogueira makes some observations about Middle Eastern immigrants and descendants who, for their part, wrote about Itapetininga, the city where Nogueira did his most notable research. In particular, Hehil Abuázar, a descendant of Lebanese, published Um adeus em cada esquina: recordações de gente nossa (1974). Set at the time when Nogueira studied color or mark prejudice in the mid-twentieth century, Abuázar’s memoir shows how ethnicized origins like Arab, Lebanese, Syrian, or Turkish came to complement, rather than compromise, white racialization. Benefiting from the prejudice of mark, Middle Easterners in Itapetininga gained influence in both government and the marketplace, as their white racialization culminated in marriages not with Afro-Brazilians but with Portuguese-Brazilians or other immigrants. In Oracy Nogueira’s Brazil, Arabness and whiteness converged through mixed marriages, anti-black racism, and a mythical racial egalitarianism.