[12] The American historian Muriel Nazzari specifically pointed out the "pardo" category absorbed those of Native American descent in São Paulo: "This paper seeks to demonstrate that, though many Indians and mestizos did migrate, those who remained in São Paulo came to be classified as pardos"[13] The question about race reappeared in the 1940 census.

When the census data was tabulated, all responses with horizontal lines were collected into the single category of "pardo".

The term "pardo" was not used as an option as an assurance to the public that census data would not be used for discriminatory purposes due to rising South European racist sentiment at the time.

In the 20th century, a growing number of Brazilians who used to self-report as Black in earlier censuses chose to move to the Pardo category.

This indicates not so much a changing of demographics but an evolution of perceptions and ideologies prevalent at each historical moment, and a growing racial and social awareness.

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 "blacks" and "pardos" in the same category".

[15] Another autosomal DNA study has confirmed that the European ancestry is dominant throughout in the Brazilian population, regardless of complexion, "pardos" included.

"A new portrayal of each ethnic contribution to the DNA of Brazilians, obtained with samples from the five regions of the country, has indicated that, on average, European ancestors are responsible for nearly 80% of the genetic heritage of the population.

The results, published by the scientific magazine 'American Journal of Human Biology' by a team from the Catholic University of Brasília, show that, in Brazil, physical indicators such as skin, eye, and hair color have little to do with the genetic ancestry of each person, as has been shown in previous studies".

In this work we analyzed the information content of 28 ancestry-informative SNPs into multiplexed panels using three parental population sources (African, Amerindian, and European) to infer the genetic admixture in an urban sample of the five Brazilian geopolitical regions.

"[17] It is important to note that "the samples came from free of charge paternity test takers, thus as the researchers made it explicit: "the paternity tests were free of charge, the population samples involved people of variable socioeconomic strata, although likely to be leaning slightly towards the ‘‘pardo’’ group".

[22] According to geneticist Sérgio Pena, "with the exception of immigrants of first or second generation, there is no Brazilian who does not carry a bit of African and Amerindian genetic".

The high ancestral variability observed in whites and blacks suggests that each Brazilian has a singular and quite individual proportion of European, African and Amerindian ancestry in his/her mosaic genomes" (geneticist Sérgio Pena).

[25] This sexual asymmetry is marked on the genetics of the Brazilian people, regardless of skin color: there is a predominance of European Y chromosomes, and of Amerindian and African MtDNA.

Only autosomal DNA testing can reveal admixture structures, since it analyzes millions of alleles from both maternal and paternal sides.

In the Brazilian "white" and "pardos" the autosomal ancestry (the sum of the ancestors of a given individual) tends to be largely European, with often a non-European mtDNA (which points to a non-European ancestor somewhere up the maternal line), which is explained by the women marrying newly arrived colonists, during the formation of the Brazilian people.

European and Asiatic immigrants who came to Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries (Portuguese, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Arab, Japanese, etc.)

The populations in the North consisted of a significant proportion of Native American ancestry that was about two times higher than the African contribution.

According to africanologist Alberto da Costa e Silva, many mixed-race politicians were perceived as white due to being part of the elite, including presidents Nilo Peçanha, Rodrigues Alves, and Washington Luís.

Senator Marina Silva is a descendant of Portuguese and black African ancestors in both her maternal and paternal lines.

Other remarkable writer includes Lima Barreto (a novelist, master of satire and sarcasm, and pioneer of social criticism).

[52][53][54] In daily usage, Brazilians use the ambiguous[55] term moreno, a word that means "dark-skinned", "dark-haired", "tawny", "swarthy", "Brown" (when referring to people), "suntanned".

[56] Moreno is often used as an intermediate color category, similar to pardo, but its meaning is significantly broader, including people who self-identify as black, white, yellow or Amerindian in the IBGE classification system.

A predominantly self-identified "pardo" state like Goiás turned out to be mostly European in ancestry according to an autosomal study from the UnB undertaken in 2008.

[59] In Fortaleza, for example, both "whites" and "pardos" displayed a similar ancestral composition, according to a 2011 autosomal study: a predominant degree of European ancestry (>70%) was found out, with minor but important African and Native American contributions.