Article: Schwartzman, Luisa Farah. “Does Money Whiten?” American Sociological Review. , December 2007.
Summary: So does money whiten in Brazil? In a word, Schwartzman argues yes. This is for two reasons. First, more educated nonwhite parents are more likely to marry white and less likely to marry nonwhites. Second, more-educated interracial couples label their children white more often than do less-educated interracial couples.
The most interesting aspect of this article in my opinion is the structural buffer the upper-class, and especially the white upper-class, has erected. As the author notes, “By maintaining rigid class boundaries with poor nonwhites (by both marrying within their social class and imposing restraints on upward mobility of nonwhites…), the white elite isolates itself from nonwhites and imposes its standards (and incorporates into its families) the few nonwhites who share their elite status. For the same reason, nonwhites who move up are not able to break the system of racial hierarchy in the long run, because their children are often incorporated into the white group.” 958-9
***It is important to note that, in Brazil, educational attainment is a proxy for socio-economic status as we understand it in the U.S. Therefore, the dependent variable used by Schwartzman is parent education.