Mapping the Terrain of Brazilian Racism (original) (raw)

Brazilian anti-racism debate: multiscale reflections

2020

Human rights mechanisms range from the domestic, transnational and international scales and policy-making is often impacted by one or all these scales. This article presents an overview of articulations of the Black Movement in Brazil within these scales, aiming to exemplify how these forces are at work. Taking into consideration the transformations the involved actors have suffered in the period along with their own specificities and how they impact each other and policy-making, this is illustrated in practice by four laws promulgated in the last decades that resulted from these dynamics in different ways, namely laws against racial discrimination and other affirmative action measures. The goal is, through this discussion, to propose a reflection upon the tools involved in the decision-making process regarding anti-racism measures in Brazil in the last decades.

(Re)veiled racism in Brazil: recognition as a means of confronting it through anti-racist actions

V. 13, n. 03, 2020

The present work studies racism in Brazil, thinking about its reproduction over the years until the way it is revealed today. Alarming data in studies indicate racism in physical violence, homicides, disrespect to culture and religiosity, among other manifestations. The objective is to highlight the reproduction of racism over the years until the way it is revealed in contemporary times, in order to point out that the recognition of this situation tends to be a means of confronting it. Thus, there is the following problem: in what way is it possible to confront racism in Brazil? To answer the question, the hypothesis - which has been confirmed - is that the recognition of this structural reality tends to be a means to think and manage anti-racist actions, including specific public policies against this violence, not only attributing to the past the responsibility for current attitudes. The deductive method was used, in addition to bibliographic and electronic research in books, theses, dissertations, journals and reports. The literature review focused on the search for authors who addressed the theme, enabling to reach the bibliographic review of structural racism and its consequences.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Race and Racism: Brazil Entry

Routledge Encyclopedia of Race and Racism

Brazil is commonly noted for its unique race relations. Imagined as a 'melting pot', it is cited as a place where people of different origins have mixed with one another to such an extent that racial classification takes place along a spectrum, with over one hundred ways of identifying one's race or colour besides Black and white. While this is true, this imagery has also been linked to persisting albeit contested myths about Brazil. One such myth is that, because it is no longer possible to identify who is Black, white, or Indigenous in Brazil, it is a country without racism. As the saying goes, Brazil is a racial democracy, or "Brasil, país de todos," "Brazil, a country for all." Nonetheless, socioeconomic and other structural indicators, incidents of interpersonal racism, and Brazil's history of racist thinking and policy challenge the myth of racial harmony. Since at least the 2001 UN Conference against Racism and Discrimination in Durban (South Africa) under the 1988 Constitution, Brazil has officially acknowledged this reality, passing anti-racism and affirmative action laws.

Racism and Sexism in Brazilian Culture

New Sociological Perspectives, 2021

This is a translation of Racismo e Sexismo na Cultura Brasileira, an oral presentation given at the meeting of the Working Group "Themes and Problems of the Black Population in Brazil", at the IV Annual Meeting of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (ANPOCS), Rio de Janeiro, 31 October 1980. It was later transcribed and originally published in the first issue of the collection Ciências Sociais Hoje, p. 223-244, in 1984, organized and published by the same association. Using political-cultural categories and concepts, such as Amefricanity, Pretoguês, Brazilian cultural neurosis and myth of racial democracy, Lélia Gonzalez, from an intersectional perspective, develops on the dynamics and specificities of racial relations in Brazil and the country's social and cultural formation, marked by racism and colonization. As a precursor of Afro-Latin American Feminism, the author analyzes the social and subjective condition of the Afro-Brazilian population, more specifically the material and symbolic bases of the oppression and exploitation of Black women, impacted by the double phenomenon of racism and sexism, and their role in resisting the pressures of erasing Brazil's African roots.

Race matters in Brazil

Social Identities, 2011

‘There are no blacks or whites in Brazil; only Brazilians’. This popular saying encapsulates the dominant view until recent years that race does not really matter in Brazil. The implication behind this assumption is clear: there can be no racism in Brazil. The saying illustrates the notion that Brazil is a racial democracy, product of the miscegenation and transculturation that defined the history of Brazil since the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500. The conceptualisation of Brazil as a hybrid nation is central to the denial of racism: hybridity is presented as the antidote to racism. This denial rests on the vehement rejection of racial differences sustained by the social construction of a supra-racial national identity that defines Brazilians of all colours as only Brazilians. Brazilianness [Brasilidade] would prevent the formation of racial identities and with it the very possibility of racism. However, studies on poverty, social mobility, access to health, housing, education and employment indicate the pervasive nature of racial inequality and racial prejudice in Brazil. The books reviewed here offer three different but complementary engagements with the apparent paradox that is the coexistence of racism and hybridity in Brazil.

Racial Paradise or Run-Around? Afro-North American Views of Race Relations in Brazil

American Studies, 1990

North American students of slavery and race relations have long used comparative approaches to examine the troubling phenomena of racial discrimination and violence in a society committed to democratic processes and equality. Implicit in these studies is the idea that understanding gained through a comparative perspective will facilitate action to reduce the gap between the ideals and the reality of North American life. Two societies in particular have been studied: South Africa and Brazil. 1 While the example of South Africa has provided insight into aspects of North American culture deplored by most Americans, the example of Brazil has traditionally offered a positive model, one worthy of emulation. Although people of African descent constitute a minority of the population, more Africans were brought to Brazil as slaves, slavery lasted longer, and today more black and brown people reside there than in any other Western Hemisphere nation. 2 Despite the heritage of slavery, Brazil has traditionally been perceived by North Americans and white Brazilians as a social or racial democracy. According to the myth of the racial paradise, slavery was relatively mild in Brazil, relations between masters and bondsmen were softened by extensive miscegenation, slavery was ended without bloodshed, and since abolition in 1888, skin color has played little if any part in social stratification since. 3 If there are relatively few dark-skinned Brazilians at the higher levels of society, it simply reflects disadvantages rooted in slavery. Above all, one finds no tradition of racial violence or of Jim Crow. While the image of Brazil as a social democracy is still common in North America and even more so in Brazil, it has been seriously challenged since the end of World War II. In the 1950s UNESCO sponsored a thorough re-examination of Brazilian race relations by international teams of scholars. Though such

The Presence of Structural Racism in Brazilian Culture and the use of Law as a tool of Domination

The present work is dedicated to the study of elements similar to the oppressive structure of the sociocultural relations developed in the Brazilian society that undertake structural racism and its social stains. Therefore, it is intended to rescue the ideas that postulate the cultural and universal identity, revealing the social forces that act in the construction of the Brazilian cultural framework. For this, the main understandings of authors such as Eric Wolf, Frantz Fanon and Lélia Gonzalez will be explored, who expose the hidden bases of national identity, namely, racism and coloniality, both agents in favor of the imposition of a model of Eurocentric culture designed to exclude the “different” and impose favorable behaviors on dominant groups, while silencing the cultural existence of subjugated peoples, as well as the way in which the Law is used to consolidate these relations of domination. Three topics will be presented in this work aimed at achieving the objective described above: at first, the reflection of culture as discourse, undoing the notion that it would arise spontaneously; then, through the exposition of phenomena resulting from structural racism impregnated in Brazilian culture, as well as the way in which manifestations of black culture are appropriated and silenced; finally, with the analysis of Law as a mechanism of power used by this ideology of domination to impose its ideals on individuals.