Blanqueamiento

Common card · No. 209243

Blanqueamiento in Spanish (pronounced [blaŋkeaˈmjento]), or branqueamento in Portuguese (pronounced [bɾɐ̃kjaˈmẽtu]; both meaning 'whitening'), was a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.

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