Whiteness, Maleness, and Power

A study in Rio de Janeiro

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2178013
AutoresValeria Ribeiro Corossacz (0000-0002-7143-3722, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen10
Número2
Páginas157-179
Fecha de publicación2015-05-04
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLatin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1744-2222 • E-ISSN: 1744-2230
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17442222.2015.1055889
OpenAlexW1481841098
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas42

This article discusses the accounts of a group of upper-middle-class white men of Rio de Janeiro about their sexual access to domestic workers (empregada) during their adolescence. After a brief discussion of the specific characteristics of whiteness in Brazil, the interviewees' sexual experiences are discussed in relation to Freyre's description, in Casa-Grande e Senzala, of the sexual relationship of the white slave master's son with the mulata slave. This sexual relationship was recognized by the interviewees as a symbolically dense site for understanding their own experiences with empregadas even if the empregada's skin color is considered less relevant than her class. I argue that these sexual relationships contribute to shaping the interviewees' experiences of whiteness. In particular, interviewees' silence about empregadas' skin color is also a silence about their own skin color and part of the larger silence surrounding whiteness understood as a site of class and color privilege

Aesthetics · Art · Political science · Power (physics · Privilege (computing · Race (biology · Silence · Skin color · Sociology · White (mutation · White privilege · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Race, Identity, and Education in Brazil