Soon after the liberation of African-descendant Brazilians, in 1888, the largest country in South America promptly embarked upon a policy of explicit branqueamento, or whitening. The idea was to bring in white immigrants, and to breed the African blood out of the population through “miscegenation.” Newly freed slaves were intentionally left languishing in poverty, rather than paid to work in the new system. This approach was also what brought Ing Giok’s Japanese classmates to São Paulo. Brazilians deemed the Japanese, which they categorized as the “whites of Asia,” the most desirable Asian
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