Racial Whitening Policies: Seven Histories of Erasure and Segregation

The expression “racial whitening policies” refers to projects and practices that have sought, through different means, to impose white supremacy, reduce the visibility of Black or Indigenous populations, or exclude them from citizenship, land, and resources. These mechanisms do not all describe the same reality: some took the form of state-supported European immigration, while others involved segregation, forced displacement, control of marriage, mass violence, or administrative erasure.

Seven historical trajectories illustrate the scale and diversity of these policies. They also show that a national narrative claiming racial homogeneity may rest on enduring exclusions.

Argentina: the gradual erasure of Afro-Argentines

At the end of the 18th century, more than 30% of Buenos Aires’s population was Black, while some inland provinces had an even larger proportion of Black people. Yet Argentina is frequently portrayed as a predominantly European and white country.

This transformation took place in an ideological context in which thinkers such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento associated European whiteness with civilization and Blackness with barbarism. The civil wars and the War of the Triple Alliance, from 1864 to 1870, severely affected Black men mobilized for combat. The 1871 yellow fever epidemic in Buenos Aires also struck poor southern neighborhoods where many Black families lived.

Article 25 of the 1853 Constitution provided for encouraging European immigration. The massive arrival of Italians and Spaniards profoundly changed the country’s demographics. In the 20th century, the disappearance of Afro-Argentines from censuses contributed to their statistical and symbolic invisibility.

Brazil: branqueamento and the myth of racial democracy

Brazil received more enslaved Africans than any other country in the Americas and abolished slavery in 1888. After abolition, part of the elite promoted branqueamento, or whitening, an ideology based on the pseudo-scientific belief in supposed white superiority.

Racial mixing was then presented as a way to gradually reduce the Black presence within the population. In 1911, anthropologist João Baptista de Lacerda presented a projection in London claiming that the Black population could disappear from Brazil by 2012. This prediction did not come true.

At the same time, migration policies favored the settlement of Portuguese, Italian, German, and Spanish Europeans, while African and Asian immigration was restricted. New arrivals benefited from opportunities to access land and employment that formerly enslaved Black people were largely denied.

The project of demographic elimination failed, but its social effects endured: the valorization of lighter skin, inequalities, and the spread of the myth of a “racial democracy” in which racial mixing would be enough to eliminate racism. Discrimination can also have a lasting effect on living conditions, employment, and integration, including in international mobility journeys, as this article on the criteria to examine before moving abroad points out.

Dominican Republic: anti-Haitianism and the 1937 massacre

In the Dominican Republic, national identity was long constructed in opposition to Haiti. This logic, often described as anti-Haitianism, associated Haiti with Blackness and poverty while promoting a Hispanic, Catholic, and Taíno Dominican identity.

Under the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, this policy culminated in the 1937 massacre near the Haitian border. Victims were notably subjected to a pronunciation test involving the Spanish word perejil, meaning “parsley.” Estimates cited for this massacre range from 15,000 to 30,000 deaths.

The regime also encouraged the settlement of white refugees, notably Spaniards and Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. On identity documents, categories such as indio or trigueño could replace the word “Black,” contributing to an administrative denial of African ancestry.

Cuba: selective immigration and the destruction of a Black organization

Afro-Cubans played a major role in the war of independence against Spain. Antonio Maceo, a Black general, became a leading military figure. After independence, however, the white elite feared the political influence of these former fighters.

Between 1902 and 1931, the Cuban state financed the arrival of more than 700,000 Spanish immigrants. At the same time, Black immigration from Haiti and Jamaica was prohibited, although some sugar companies circumvented these restrictions to recruit low-cost labor.

In 1908, Afro-Cuban veterans created the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC), which advocated, among other things, agrarian reform and an end to discriminatory migration policies. The party was banned. During the repression of 1912, between 3,000 and 6,000 Afro-Cubans were reportedly killed by the army and white militias, according to the figures cited.

Australia: the Stolen Generations and forced assimilation

Australia is a distinct case: racial policies primarily targeted Indigenous peoples. The White Australia policy, introduced through the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, aimed to preserve a country conceived as British and white.

Authorities believed that Aboriginal people described as “full-blooded” would eventually disappear. They especially sought to control the future of mixed-race children. Children were separated from their families, placed in institutions, deprived of their language, and directed toward domestic or subordinate work. They are now referred to as the “Stolen Generations.”

In Western Australia, A. O. Neville defended a program of assimilation through the control of unions and forced integration into white society. These practices continued into the 1970s and left deep trauma in the communities concerned.

United States: eugenics, segregation, and social dispossession

In the United States, interracial marriage was criminalized in many states until 1967. The system therefore did not seek racial mixing, but relied on eugenics, segregation laws, racial violence, and the territorial isolation of Black populations.

Figures such as Madison Grant and Charles Davenport helped spread eugenic theories. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 then severely restricted immigration from countries outside northwestern Europe. Tens of thousands of people were also subjected to forced sterilization; in the South, Black women were particularly exposed to these practices.

Lynchings and the destruction of Black communities, such as Greenwood in Tulsa and Wilmington in North Carolina, fueled the Great Migration. But redlining policies then confined many Black families to under-resourced neighborhoods. These historical realities call for a distinction between enduring institutional mechanisms and simplistic representations of formal equality.

South Africa: apartheid and the removal of citizenship

In South Africa, the apartheid regime introduced after the National Party came to power in 1948 organized a racial hierarchy through law. The Black population, though the majority, was divided according to tribal categories and relegated to bantustans, or “homelands.”

These territories accounted for 13% of the land, often the most arid and fragmented areas, while the white minority retained the cities, fertile land, and mining areas. The 1970 Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act stripped Black people of South African citizenship by administratively assigning them to territories where many had never lived.

Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million Black South Africans were forcibly displaced. Black workers could return to white areas only as migrant laborers, subject to pass laws and frequently separated from their families.

Understanding different mechanisms without erasing histories

These seven cases are not interchangeable. Argentina experienced demographic and memorial invisibilization; Brazil promoted whitening through immigration and racial mixing; South Africa stripped a Black majority of its citizenship; Australia separated Indigenous children from their families. Yet all of them reveal the same issue: state power is exercised not only through direct violence, but also through administrative categories, control of land, settlement policies, schools, work, and national narratives.

Studying these policies also helps explain why present-day discrimination cannot be reduced to individual behavior. It can be rooted in long-standing institutional and social legacies. To explore further how racism can affect housing, employment, and integration, see also this article on practical integration, social connections, and financial planning when moving abroad.

FAQ

Does racial whitening refer only to racial mixing?

No. It may refer to very different policies: encouraging European immigration, forced assimilation, migration restrictions, erasure in statistics, control of marriage, sterilization, segregation, or the removal of citizenship.

Why speak of administrative erasure?

Because the categories used by the state can make a population less visible: by stopping its enumeration in censuses, replacing one racial category with another, or forcibly assigning a different citizenship.

Did these policies actually make the populations concerned disappear?

No. They did not make Black or Indigenous populations disappear, but they could reduce their visibility, weaken their rights, fragment their communities, and produce lasting inequalities.