Afro-Brazilians are Brazilian people who have African ancestry. The term does not have widespread use in Brazil, where social constructs and classifications have been based on appearance; people with noticeable African features and skin color are generally referred to as negro or preto . Many members of another group of people, multiracial Brazilians, or pardos, also have a range of degree of African ancestry.Preto and pardo are among five color categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with branco , amarelo and indígena . In 2010, 7.6% of the Brazilian population, some 15 million people, identified as preto, while 43% identified as pardo. Pretos tend to be predominantly African in ancestry, while pardos tend to have a lesser percentage of African ancestry. On average pardos are predominantly European, with African or Native American ancestries.Since the early 21st century, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, have considered combining the categories preto and pardo , as a single category called negro , because both groups show socioeconomic indications of discrimination. They suggest doing so would make it easier to help people who have been closed out of opportunity. This decision has caused much controversy because there is no consensus about it in Brazilian society.Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase African Brazilian as a term of ethnic identity, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% identify as being of African origin; most identify as being of Brazilian origin. In the July 1998 PME, the categories Afro-Brasileiro and Africano Brasileiro were not chosen at all; the category Africano was selected by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 National Household Sample , none of these terms was used even once.Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping pretos and pardos in the same category. According to him, the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put pretos and pardos in the same category. As many pardos are primarily of European ancestry, Pena questioned studying them together with pretos, who are primarily of African ancestry. For example, an autosomal genetic study of students in a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the pardos among the students were found to be on average more than 80% European in ancestry. Before testing, the students identified as ⅓ European, ⅓ African and ⅓ Native American.According to Edward Telles, three different systems related to racial classification along the White-Black continuum are used in Brazil. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: branco , pardo, and preto. The second is the popular social system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term moreno . The third is the Black movement, which distinguishes only two categories, summing up pardos and pretos as negros , and putting all others as whites. More recently, the term afrodescendente has been adopted for use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the politically correct speech common in the United States.
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