“Race and ethnicity in Brazil” is a fairly well developed Wikipedia page, but is by no means complete or without fault. There is irregularity in the quality of both citations and writing. Also, the content is heavily skewed toward topics that are easily supported with numerical data. The majority of the page discusses the figures surrounding immigration, genetic studies, and regional ethnicities with little emphasis on native nations or lived experiences.

The quality of citations in this Wikipedia article are highly variable. Some link directly to credible secondary sources, primarily books, where at least the abstract or introduction are available without the requirement of further access through a paywall. Those that do require further access still provide the book’s title, author, publisher, and other relevant information. Some citations also link to primary sources, such as census reports, where the cited information is easily confirmable. However, there are many links that do not work properly and lead to 404-error messages. There is little consistency in the accessibility of cited source material which provides a barrier to straightforward confirmation of claimed facts and access to further research on the topic. Also, there are sections where claims are made that should have citations but do not. This includes both statements that are assumed to be factual and general trends or ideas that are attributed to “some” or “others” but with no indication as to who those generalized groups may be. There is also a language barrier to checking the accuracy and relevance of cited sources. An individual without reading comprehension of the languages relevant to Brazil would find it difficult to assess the validity of sources to the claims made in the Wikipedia article.

The quality of writing is also highly variable. Some sections are well developed, include plenty of relevant information, are devoid of unsubstantiated claims, and are stylistically appropriate. However, other sections are disjointed, unsupported, and do not read like an encyclopedia. There are grammatical errors and sections with questionable word choice that distract from the article and could be edited to contribute to its flow and accuracy, rather than detract from it. The single largest section where these problems arise is “Race and class.” This section is filled with half-developed thoughts and what appears to be poorly synthesized material, which does little to contribute to a clear, fact-based, and unbiased understanding of the topic.

The content in this Wikipedia article is concentrated on statistics and heavily focuses on topics that can be supported with information from a census or other government markers. This is apparent in the extensive sections on the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and the controversy surrounding racial categories as well as the sections on DNA studies and regional ethnicities. These sections are significantly more complete than sections such as “Racial and ethnic theories,” which has room to expand. While there are other full Wikipedia pages on racism in Brazil and racial democracy, topics along those lines should have a space, however brief, on this page. There should be a condensed version of the topic with a link to the full page for more information. It would also be interesting to see the inclusion of lived experiences with regards to race in Brazil on this page. Finally, the overview section of the “Race and ethnicity in Brazil” page should also include a more comprehensive synopsis of the topic as many readers are most likely not going to finish the article in its entirety.

Everything was relevant in the Wikipedia article covering “Indigenous peoples in Brazil.” However, there were a few things that distracted me in this article. Under the first major heading (“Origin”), indigenous people were referred to as Amerindian people, but further in the article the term Native American was heavily used. I am unfamiliar with the Amerindian term and do not know if it differs significantly from Native Americans. Staying consist with terms used would have led to less confusion. There were also too many subheading underneath the heading of “Native people after European colonization,” which could have been broken down. Lastly, there were a few grammatical errors throughout the article, such as the failure of capitalization at the beginning of sentences.

For the most part, the article was neutral. The article started with a slight positive bias towards the indigenous people of Brazil, as it stated that they made huge contributions to medicine but did not give a citation. In addition, when talking about Cândido Rondon, only his accomplishments were touched upon with barely any autobiographical information. There were also multiple viewpoints that were underrepresented throughout the article. Firstly, the use of violence against the indigenous people of Brazil by the Portuguese colonists was understated, as the first mention of the decline of the indigenous population was only attributed to assimilation and disease and failed to mention wars. However, as the article continued, violence toward the indigenous people was referred to briefly. Elaboration of the religion of indigenous people was also underrepresented as it was barely addressed in the article. The only time religion was really talked about was how the Jesuits acted as protectors of the indigenous people. Lastly, the tribes in the interior of Brazil (the Caribs and the Nuaraque) were underrepresented in comparison to the coastal tribes of Tupi and Tapuia. The DNA aspect of where the indigenous people came from was a tad overrepresented as the article could have talked about more aspect of their culture instead.

All the links I checked in the references section worked. The sources do support the claims in the article accordingly. Sources included empirical articles, government websites, books, and websites of organizations. All sources appeared neutral. About a quarter of the citations were only five years old or younger, but the rest were as old as 1985. This is somewhat troubling as the source from 1985 cited a linguistic survey to count how many different indigenous languages currently exist. This number should be updated since it is over thirty years old and has most likely has changed. The report that cited how many different uncontacted tribes there are is also outdated, as it was conducted over ten years ago. In addition, although all the citations that were presented seemed reliable and functional, not all facts were cited within a paragraph. For example, under the “SPI failure and FUNAI” subheading, there were a few sentences that ended with “citation needed.” This article is rated as C-Class and is a part of WikiProject Indigenous people of the Americas and Wikiproject Brazil. The conversations on the Talk page of this article consists of questions clarifying some sentences, updating numbers, and discussing other potential topics to add on the article. Overall, this article has good aspects, but is missing some cultural information about the tribes that inhabited and still inhabit Brazil, such as their religion. It was interesting to see how Wikipedia tries to present information in a neutral way while in class and history courses in general we tend to examine different perspectives on an event and elaborate on the possible implications it has on society.

The Wikipedia article “Race & Ethnicity in Brazil” has some very well-written aspects while others need some work. In the article all of the categories and sub-categories of information seemed to all relate well to the topic, and the authors really tried to cover a wide range of material. Throughout all of this material, the most distracting aspects of the article was the vast amount of work that was uncited. Even some of the sources listed did not seem to work or did not provide a link to the material that was listed. Also, the author had the tendency to use various names and cite people without introducing them or why they are notable. A sentence would just include a person’s name with no context. It appeared that the article tried to cover many topics without sources to back up their statements. In many cases the evidence was put into tables that seemed to be more confusing than helpful. Grammar also was a major issue throughout the article and distracted from the content.

The section of the article dedicated to the historical background of the article was one of the most incomplete in my opinion. This section appeared to be very superficial and only focused on the European settlement aspect of history, while barely going into more aspects of the effects of the slave trade and history of slavery in Brazil. There are very few mentions of the indigenous tribes of Brazil as well which plays a part into the formation of race and ethnicity throughout history. After reading the article, I read the talk page which spoke to some of the same issues of biases and either lack of sources or poor sources. The current article is rated as a C-class article and is a part of various wikiprojects, which speaks to the large amount of critiques available on the talk page. It is also considered to be of top-importance.

Overall, this article was very different from how we approached the subject during our last class discussion. The article did touch on some of the same topics, such as DNA testing and racial categories that exist on census surveys, but overall deemed to lack mention of the cultural aspects of race and ethnicity in Brazil. Without definitions and cultural contexts much of the content of the article does not show the full picture. After reading this article, I am interested to learn more on the subject in class so I can better compare what we learn to how the article is presenting the information.

After reading the Wikipedia article, “Indigenous Peoples in Brazil,” the first things I noticed was how factual everything was as the article lists a ton of facts that are very interesting, however there is no real argument being made by the authors of the article. This is in stark contrast to the outside readings we had about indigenous people in Brazil such as the article, “Cannibals: Iberia’s Partial Truth.” This article is also jam packed with information however, the author, Patricia Seed, actually has an argument and does not just lay out fact after fact. In addition, there is some obvious bias in her writing which was not found in the Wikipedia article as that sort of language and tone is banned from Wikipedia. I found everything to be relevant and I feel like the subheadings helped guide me to different sections of the article that looked to be interesting. I am not familiar with the history of indigenous peoples in Brazil so I am unable to verify if the article contained information about all of the different groups that would have been indigenous to Brazil.

There are a few sections that need to have citations at the end of each sentence because they are obviously not original thoughts from the author. For example, at the beginning of the section, “The Jesuits: Protectors of the Indians,” writes ” The Jesuit priests, who had come with the first Governor General to provide religious assistance to the colonists, but mainly to convert the Pagan people to Catholicism, took the side of the Indians and extracted a Papal bull stating that they were human and should be protected.” This is most definitely not the author’s original thoughts so there is a citation needed at the end of the sentence.  In fact, the majority of the article does not have citations and the ones that do are not properly cited as they lead to invalid websites when clicked on such as the website listed for footnote 13. As stated earlier, the article is not written with any bias and the article is very neutral.  The article is within the scope of WikiProject Indigenous peoples of the Americas and it is also within the scope of WikiProject Brazil. It is rated as a C-Class on the project’s quality scale.

After reading Patricia Seed’s article and the article titled ” “Bandeirantes, Natives, & Indigenous Slavery” it looks as if the “Slavery and the bandeiras” section could use a lot more information. As of now, there are only 2 very small paragraphs which only contains information about the sugar trade and the Portuguese influence in the slave trade. The authors could have added information about  the other countries  that colonized Brazil that Patricia Seed mentioned in her article. It looks as if there has been a lot of activity on the talk page as some of the people who have viewed the site have expressed their thoughts via the talk page such as the one person who noted that the “Religion Figures are Wrong.” Overall, the page contains plenty of information about the indigenous peoples of Brazil and the content is very neutral, however there are some flaws as there are plenty of citation issues and the authors did not go into much depth into each section as there appears to be a lot of information that was left out.

For the Wikipedia Article called “Religion in Brazil,” I noticed that there is a lot of problems with citations. An instance of this occurring would be the sections about minority religions present in Brazil. I recall from the Wikipedia training session I did during the Colonial Latin America class, that you need to cite all information you put into Wikipedia. In the sections of minority religions, they are providing numbers and events without any type of source to back those claims. The language used in the Buddhism category is not straight to the point. The person who wrote this stated that it was “probably the largest of all minority religions”. It is either the largest or not the largest. That is only one example so far of encountering that.

Otherwise, aside from not citing everything, the table at the bottom of the page seems to me that it’s trying to give people in Brazil religious groups. I understand the importance of this, but it seems to be incredibly number heavy and it is from the year 2000. So the numbers could have changed since 18 years have gone by. The Talk Page of the article was quite short but I feel that they had improved the article from its original state.

Besides me hyper critiquing the article, I did find it interesting that there is a large number of minority religions. Some of which I never heard of such as the Baha’i Faith. The Afro-Brazilian polytheistic religions also have names and some even have their own Wikipedia pages. Which got me reading other Wikipedia articles about them and learning something that I did not know before.