A Whiter Shade of Pale

In 1911 Brazil participated in the First International Congress of Races in London. The delegate that Brazil sent, Joao Batista de Lacerda, was a brilliant scientist who headed their National Museum in Rio. He presented a paper in which he argued that by the year 2,000, Brazil would be entirely white. Black people and mestizos, then about 90% of the population, would disappear. 

When word of this paper reached Brazil, the country's leaders were upset by Joao's claim that achieving total whiteness would take as long as ninety years.

Why people believed in a coming whiteness isn't clear to me. Joao Batista de Lacerda is considered the father of pharmacology in Brazil--perhaps that explains it. According to the Internet, the man lived for 171 years, dying in 2017, so he did have a chance to see how his prediction turned out. Supposedly.