The Rise and Fall of the Anti-Racism Agenda in Brazil from Lula to Bolsonaro (original) (raw)

Changing State Policy on Race in Brazil

2015

Abstract: By analyzing the Brazilian government’s surprise endorsement of affir-mative action in 2001, this article explores how the state constructs race in society and how ideas drive policy change. After decades defending the myth of “racial democracy, ” the state admitted to racism and endorsed an extreme form of affirma-tive action—quotas—for Afro-Brazilians in government service and higher educa-tion. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2002, this article explains the recent policy turnaround as a dialectic between social mobilization and presidential initiative framed within unfolding international events. The presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso nurtured a transformation in political action on race at the same time that the president himself initiated major shifts in official discourse; later, preparations for the World Conference on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, pro-voked national soul-searching on racial inequalities. The conference itself provided an occas...

From" racial democracy" to affirmative action: changing state policy on race in Brazil

Latin American Research Review, 2004

By analyzing the Brazilian government's surprise endorsement of affirmative action in 2001, this article explores how the state constructs race in society and how ideas drive policy change. After decades defending the myth of "racial democracy," the state admitted to racism and endorsed an extreme form of affirmative action-quotas-for Afro-Brazilians in government service and higher education. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2002, this article explains the recent policy turnaround as a dialectic between social mobilization and presidential initiative framed within unfolding international events. The presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso nurtured a transformation in political action on race at the same time that the president himself initiated major shifts in official discourse; later, preparations for the World Conference on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, pro-voked national soul-searching on racial inequalities. The conference itself provided an occasion, and a moment of reckoning, for Brazil to jettison past policies and embrace a new approach. I conclude that ideas emerging from social networks, made salient by presidential interest, and legitimized by international agreements may account for discursive policy change, but that implementation of affirmative action will require attention to material interests and electoral incentives.

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.

The Challenges for Anti-racists in Bolsonaro's Brazil

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 2021

What should we make of the recent neo-racist turn in Brazil-the eruption of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous hate-speech on the part of senior government officials, including President Jair Bolsonaro, combined with institutional attacks on the multi-culturalist consensus of the last two decades? While symptomatic of Bolsonarismo's determination to reverse the previous forty years of social justice reforms, the far Right's attacks on multiculturalism and the collapse

ETHNIC-RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN BRAZIL: BOLSONARO ERA

Revista Disruptiva – UFP (Pernambuco) , 2020

This paper critically reflects on a series of social and political changes in Brazil, the impact of Labor Party erosion after twelve years in power, the deviation of public money, the deteriorating of civil-law jurisdictions, it follows the analytical method and is structured in real facts. The analysis uses contemporary bibliography to explain the growing protests of the organized civil society in Brazil since 2013, bringing the idea of transforming the system with a far-right political candidate, a former military officer Jair Bolsonaro. The movement known as the Brazilian Spring, advocates for new contemporary aspirations and patterns of political alliances, the environmental protection of the Amazon. My findings suggest that questions have been put to the fore concerning political corruption, defense and security focused on gangues in shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro, showing changes brought by the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil. Bolsonaro's challenges encompass a devastating recession, massive corruption among the country's business and political elite, an ailing economy that is grappling with mounting debt, slow growth, and high unemployment. In the aftermath of the latest presidential elections, the president failed to make true his promises to crackdown on crime and corruption, as well as facing civil protests by members of the defeated Labour Party. The debate is focused on political theories encompassing the statutory provision of social services and questioning the confidence in institutions, especially the police. Bolsonaro's solution is zero tolerance, the use of police torture on drug traffickers and kidnappers. Brazil is a majority non-white country, a multicultural mix of ethnicities, religious, gender and sexual minorities, facing daily hostility against them and threats to social inclusion and the promotion of human rights. Institutional changes should promote equitable patterns of economic growth, especially education, employment, and transportation. Human rights reforms should not only be rooted in a transnational legal culture, but approach local social situations in which human rights have been accentuated after the presidential elections, promoting a cohesion, eliminating violence. DISCRIMINAÇÃO ÉTNICO-RACIAL NO BRASIL BOLSONARO ERA 2019 RESUMO: Este trabalho reflete criticamente sobre uma série de mudanças sociais e políticas no Brasil, o impacto da erosão do Partido Trabalhista após doze anos no poder, o desvio do dinheiro público, a deterioração das jurisdições civis, segue o método analítico e é estruturado em fatos. A pesquisa usa uma bibilografia contemporânea documentando e explicando os crescentes protestos da sociedade civil organizada no Brasil desde 2013, trazendo a idéia de transformar o sistema com um candidato político de extrema direita, o ex-oficial militar Jair Bolsonaro. O movimento conhecido como a primavera brasileira, defende

Confounding Anti-racism: Mixture, Racial Democracy, and Post-racial Politics in Brazil

Critical Sociology, 2014

In this article, I analyze the particularity of post-racial ideology in Brazil. I examine recent deployments of mixture and racial democracy as re-articulations of historically hegemonic versions of these ideologies that minimize the problem of racism, deny its systemic nature, and deem ethno-racial policies as threats to achieving nonracial belonging and citizenship. Drawing on scholarship on race and racism from the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere in Latin America, I delineate a relational framework for analyzing the post-racial and apply this framework to three examples of post-racial ideology. Through these examples, I illustrate the problematic logics shaping aggressive investments in the post-racial as future promise to the detriment of addressing the unequal effects racial difference presents for inclusion/exclusion today. The article asserts the necessity of mounting transnational and interdisciplinary theoretical, epistemological, and practical strategies to challenge ...