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In terms of racial composition, immigration,
internal migration, and regional concentration by race, the four countries vary substantially. Brazil and the United States have a number of demographic characteristics and trends
in common: both countries
increased their population greatly by large-scale immigration from overseas; until the mid-n
ineteenth century immigration was mostly
involuntary and from
Africa; thereafter it became voluntary and was mostly of European and secondarily of Asian orig
in. The pattern of regional concentration and
internal migration by race was also similar
in Brazil and the United States.
In both countries the Negro population was heavily concentrated
in a major region (the Northeast
in Brazil, the
Southeast
in the United States), and start
ing
in the late n
ineteenth century there was a progressive dispersion of the Negro population to other regions. When we exam
ine racial distribution macroscopically, we note an
increas
ing spacial homogenization by race, although
in the United States and to some extent
in Brazil this regional dispersion was accompanied by local concentration by race
in urban work
ing-class slums. Both Brazil and the United States are predom
inantly "white" accord
ing to the respective social def
initions of that term, even though this was not true for Brazil prior to the twentieth century.