Black Brazilian

Black Brazilians are Brazilians who are socially perceived to be Black, regardless of ancestry.
Brazilians, including Black Brazilians, do not use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves. The IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% considers themselves of "African origin". "Races" are social constructs, not objective realities. As such, the perception of "race" varies from society to society, as their social constructs are, of course, different. "Race" in Brazil is a matter of public perception of phenotypes, not of actual or perceived ancestry.
Albeit the relatively high levels of miscigenation, and though Brazilian society maintains a myth of “racial democracy”, widespread social prejudice against those perceived as non-White seems to be prevalent. Complexion is an important part of such perception, though by no means the only aspect taken into consideration.
Brazilians tend to perceive race through the concept of "Cor" (literally, colour). The complex phenotypic evaluation involved in the perception of individuals as being of a given "cor" include, besides skin pigmentation, hair type, nose shape, prognathism, and lip shape. The reason the word "cor" is preferred to "raça" (race) in Brazil is probably because it captures the continuous aspects of phenotypes. In contrast with the situation in the United States, there appears to be no racial descent rule operational in Brazil and it is eventually possible for two siblings differing in "cor" to be perceived as belonging to completely diverse racial categories. Brazilian emphasis on phenotypes instead of genealogy is shown by the results of a survey which asked about both "cor" and "origins": even though the question admitted multiple responses, only 9.64% of Brazilian Black individuals gave Africa as one of their answers.
History
Slavery
Black Brazilians are, for the most part, descendants of Africans kidnapped in Africa and sold in Brazil as slaves. Though for the few first years after Pedro Álvares Cabral took possession of the Brazilian coast on behalf of the Portuguese Crown there was little interest in effectively occupying the land, it soon became obvious that other powers, especially France and the Netherlands, would mark their presence in Brazil, if the Portuguese did not start colonisation. Initially, Brazil was regarded only as a source of the tree to which it owes its name, Brazilwood. This was usually bought by the Portuguese from Native tribes. With the need to occupy the land, and given the fact that no mineral riches such as gold or silver were easily found in the new territory, the Portuguese attempted agricultural exploitation. At first, attempts were made at using Natives as a source of forced labour; but, due to various factors, some logistic - the Natives knew the land better than their new lords, and could usually flee slavery and elude attempts to recapture them -, and some cultural - Natives were not used to intensive agricultural labour, and the limited agriculture they were acquainted with was usually regarded by them as part of the female sex-role - the Portuguese soon started to resort to the import of African slaves. This trend was reinforced by the fact that Portugal already had settlements in the African coast - namely São Paulo de Loanda (modern Luanda, founded 1575) and Benguela (founded 1587), in Angola, and Sofala, in Mozambique - and Portuguese merchants quickly started to deal in slave trade between Africa and Brazil.
From the middle of the XVI to the middle of the XIX centuries, millions of slaves were captured in Africa and sold in the Americas. Of these, Brazil probably received the biggest share than any other region taken in separate. According to the IBGE, about 4 million African slaves were brought into Brazil.
The Africans brought into slavery in Brazil mostly belonged to two major ethnic groups: the West African and the Bantu people.
West African people (previously known as Sudanese, and without connection with Sudan) were sent in large scale to Bahia. They mostly belong to the Yoruba people; Ewe, Fanti-Ashanti, Ga, Adangbe, Igbo, Fon, Mandinka, and other West African groups native to Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria were also subjected to slavery in Brazil.
Bantu were brought from Angola, Congo region and Mozambique and sent in large scale to Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and the Northeastern Brazil.
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