White in Brazil is applied as a term to people of European descent, and Middle Easterners of all ethnicities. The census shows a trend of fewer Brazilians of a different descent (most likely mixed) identifying as white people as their social status increases. Nevertheless, light-skinned mulattoes and mestizos with Caucasian features were also historically deemed as more closely related to the "branco" Middle Easterner and European descendants' group than the "pardo" "grayish-skinned" multiracial one by a sort of unique social constructs, especially among those multiracials with non-Portuguese European ancestry, and such change of identities actually can mean more of a westernization of the concept of race in Brazil (mixed ancestry, as explained below, is not a factor against in historical definitions of whiteness in Brazil) than a change in the self-esteem of "marginalized and unconscious multiracial populations trying to paint themselves as white in a hopeful attempt to deny their unprivileged person of color status", as common sense among some Brazilians and foreigners is used to state.