This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on the increasingly important and controversial subject of race relations in Brazil. North American scholars of race relations frequently turn to Brazil for comparisons, since its history has many key similarities to that of the United States. Brazilians have commonly compared themselves with North Americans, and have traditionally argued that race relations in Brazil are far more harmonious because the country encourages race mixture rather than formal or informal segregation. More recently, however, scholars have challenged this national myth, seeking to show that race relations are characterized by exclusion, not inclusion, and that fair-skinned Brazilians continue to be privileged and hold a disproportionate share of wealth and power. In this sociological and demographic study, Edward Telles seeks to understand the reality of race in Brazil and how well it squares with these traditional and revisionist views of race relations. He shows that both schools have it partly right--that there is far more miscegenation in Brazil than in the United States--but that exclusion remains a serious problem. He blends his demographic analysis with ethnographic fieldwork, history, and political theory to try to "understand" the enigma of Brazilian race relations--how inclusiveness can coexist with exclusiveness. The book also seeks to understand some of the political pathologies of buying too readily into unexamined ideas about race relations. In the end, Telles contends, the traditional myth that Brazil had harmonious race relations compared with the United States encouraged the government to do almost nothing to address its shortcomings.

A novel exploration of racial attitudes in contemporary Brazil using large-sample surveys of public opinion.

Bringing together U.S. and Brazilian scholars, as well as Afro-Brazilian political activists, Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil represents a significant advance in understanding the complexities of racial difference in contemporary Brazilian society. While previous scholarship on this subject has been largely confined to quantitative and statistical research, editor Michael Hanchard presents a qualitative perspective from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, and cultural theory. The contributors to Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil examine such topics as the legacy of slavery and its abolition, the historical impact of social movements, race-related violence, and the role of Afro-Brazilian activists in negotiating the cultural politics surrounding the issue of Brazilian national identity. These essays also provide comparisons of racial discrimination in the United States and Brazil, as well as an analysis of residential segregation in urban centers and its affect on the mobilization of blacks and browns. With a focus on racialized constructions of class and gender and sexuality, Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil reorients the direction of Brazilian studies, providing new insights into Brazilian culture, politics, and race relations. This volume will be of importance to a wide cross section of scholars engaged with Brazil in particular, and Latin American studies in general. It will also appeal to those invested in the larger issues of political and social movements centered on the issue of race. Contributors. Benedita da Silva, Nelson do Valle Silva, Ivanir dos Santos, Richard Graham, Michael Hanchard, Carlos Hasenbalg, Peggy A. Lovell, Michael Mitchell, Tereza Santos, Edward Telles, Howard Winant

This collection of writings comes from Brazilian researchers on issues of race in their country. They include race and colour classification systems; access to education, employment and health; and inequalities in the judiciary and politics.

Race on the Move takes readers on a journey from Brazil to the United States and back again to consider how migration between the two countries is changing Brazilians' understanding of race relations. Brazil once earned a global reputation as a racial paradise, and the United States is infamous for its overt social exclusion of nonwhites. Yet, given the growing Latino and multiracial populations in the United States, the use of quotas to address racial inequality in Brazil, and the flows of people between each country, contemporary race relations in each place are starting to resemble each other. Tiffany Joseph interviewed residents of Governador Valadares, Brazil's largest immigrant-sending city to the U.S., to ask how their immigrant experiences have transformed local racial understandings. Joseph identifies and examines a phenomenon—the transnational racial optic—through which migrants develop and ascribe social meaning to race in one country, incorporating conceptions of race from another. Analyzing the bi-directional exchange of racial ideals through the experiences of migrants, Race on the Move offers an innovative framework for understanding how race can be remade in immigrant-sending communities.

This book provides an insight into the Afro-Brazilian experience of racism in Brazil from the 19th Century to the present day, exploring people of African Ancestry’s responses to racism in the context of a society where racism was present in practice, though rarely explicit in law. Race and Afro-Brazilian Agency in Brazil examines the variety of strategies, from conservative to radical, that people of African ancestry have used to combat racism throughout the diaspora in Brazil. In studying the legacy of color-blind racism in Brazil, in contrast to racially motivated policies extant in the US and South Africa during the twentieth century, the book uncovers various approaches practiced by Afro-Brazilians throughout the country since the abolition of slavery towards racism, unique to the Brazilian experience. Studying racism in Brazil from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the present day, the book examines areas such as art and culture, politics, and tradition. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Brazilian history, diaspora studies, race/ethnicity, and Luso-Brazilian studies.

In Racism in a Racial Democracy, France Winddance Twine asks why Brazilians, particularly Afro-Brazilians, continue to have faith in Brazil's "racial democracy" in the face of pervasive racism in all spheres of Brazilian life. Through a detailed ethnography, Twine provides a cultural analysis of the everyday discursive and material practices that sustain and naturalize white supremacy. This is the first ethnographic study of racism in southeastern Brazil to place the practices of upwardly mobile Afro-Brazilians at the center of analysis. Based on extensive field research and more than fifty life histories with Afro- and Euro-Brazilians, this book analyzes how Brazilians conceptualize and respond to racial disparities. Twine illuminates the obstacles Brazilian activists face when attempting to generate grassroots support for an antiracist movement among the majority of working class Brazilians. Anyone interested in racism and antiracism in Latin America will find this book compelling.

A comparative study of slavery in Brazil and the United States, first published in 1971, looking at the demographic, economic, and cultural factors that allowed black people in Brazil to gain economically and retain their African culture, while the U.S. pursued a course of racial segregation.

This book examines US President Barack Obama’s characterizations in the Brazilian media, with a specific focus on political cartoons and internet memes. Brazilians celebrate their country as a racial democracy; thus the US works as its nemesis. The rise of a black president to the office of the most prominent country in the global, political, and economic landscape led some analysts to postulate that the US was living in a post-racial era. President Obama’s election also had a tremendous impact on the imaginary of the African Diaspora, and this volume investigates how the election of the first black US president complicates Brazilians’ own racial discourses. By focusing on three events—Barack Obama's election in 2008, his visit to Brazil in March 2011, and the aftermath of the US espionage on the Brazilian government in 2013—Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte analyzes Barack Obama's shifting portrayals that confirm and challenge Brazilian racial conceptions projected upon his figure.

Robin E. Sheriff spent twenty months in a primarily black shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, studying the inhabitants's views of race and racism. How, she asks, do poor African Brazilians experience and interpret racism in a country where its very existence tends to be publicly denied? How is racism talked about privately in the family and publicly in the community--or is it talked about at all?