Brazil Racial Democracy

Whilst social media platforms have become an increasingly ubiquitous presence in people's lives across the globe within the past fifteen years, hate speech, racism and varied forms of bigotry have also been on the rise within the same timeframe.

This essay analyzes the historical and aesthetic significance of the visual art project Assentamento(s) (2012-2013)  by  Rosana  Paulino.  Her  work  re-inscribes  the  black  female  body  into  the  historical  narrative  of  Brazil, complicating  long-established  notions  of  “Brazilianness”.  By  using  art techniques and materials that combine lithography, digital printing, drawing, sewing,  video,  and  sculpting,  Paulino  develops  a  multi-layered  artistic assembly  that  she  describes  as  a  process  of  refazimento  (“remaking”). Paulino pushes the boundaries of the historical archives, highlighting both the struggles and agency of black women within Brazilian society. I argue that,  as  a  contemporary  black  woman  visual  artist,  Paulino  engages  in  a method of historical interpretation that Saidiya Hartman defines as “critical fabulation”.  My  study  explores  how  Paulino’s  refazimento  represents  a method of inquiry that confronts the legacies of Brazil’s racial democracy and its  ideology  of  mestiçagem.  Paulino’s  visuality  reclaims  Afro-Brazilian ancestral memory and black female complex subjectivities.

In October 2018, after a prolonged economic and political crisis and a ruthless presidential election campaign, Jair Bolsonaro, an ex-military right-wing extremist, was elected the new president of Brazil. In my work, I analyze material from Bolsonaro's election campaign with the help of the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis. In doing so, I work out narratives and interpretative frames of his election campaign in relation to the crisis in Brazil. With the help of decolonial and feminist approaches, I analyze and contextualize the empirical findings. On the one hand, I focus on intersectional structural categories such as race, class, gender and sexuality. On the other hand, I analyze the campaign material with the help of concepts such as coloniality of power and Eurocentrism with regard to its colonial continuities. The analysis shows that the developed interpretative frames, 'gender ideology', 'racial democracy' and 'communism', make use of colonial as well as historical and transnational references. They often refer to myths and conspiracy theories popular in Brazilian and Global conservative and right-wing circles. What they have in common is that they strengthen current (colonial) power structures in Brazil and naturalize socially constructed power structures. The Politics of Belonging expressed in the material is nationalist and colonial in character and reifies existing intersectional inequalities.

Esta pesquisa propôs-se a investigar as representações sociais de indivíduos afro-descendentes retratados em anúncios publicitários de revistas dentro do recorte temporal compreendido entre 1968 a 2006. O objetivo principal residiu em pesquisar de que forma os anúncios publicitários impressos em revistas têm retratado os indivíduos afro-descendentes, a fim de identificar possíveis progressos, retrocessos ou estabilização na forma de represetações sociais.

A situação em que se encontrava Abdias do Nascimento em 1977 na Nigéria faz uma síntese solar das contradições que estruturam as condições de articulação para um sujeito negro na modernidade “morena” brasileira. Sabemos muito bem que justamente é essa impossibilidade que nos define. Como adverte Edson Cardoso: “Negro, não!” (2015).

Brazil has been lauded as a racial democracy. However, this concept has been severely criticised and a simple look at income inequality between whites and non-whites in Brazil seems to cast legitimate doubts on this assertion. This economic gap is often solely explained in terms of class differences. However, it remains to be questioned whether this inequality is not a consequence of Brazil’s colonial heritage and is accompanied by a racist discourse. In order to explore this issue, I will draw on Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and argue that it is a useful analytic tool to understand Brazil’s colonial heritage and the persisting racism in Brazil.

Oftentimes hailed as a unique model of post­racial society (i.e. the so­called 'racial democracy'), the Brazilian elite has an enduring resistance to acknowledging the existence and the pernicious effects of racism in shaping the country's contemporary social relations.

For many people, Brazil is still considered a 'racial democracy,' which implies the idea of a land of harmonious racial relations and exempt from racism, prejudice and racial inequalities. Proponents of this idea claim that the core of Brazil's enduring social problems is solely due to social class inequalities. However, there is evidence revealing a different picture.

O objetivo principal da presente pesquisa residiu na investigação da freqüência e formas de representações sociais de indivíduos afro-descendentes em anúncios publicitários ao longo de um recorte temporal de 38 anos. Por intermédio da técnica de análise de conteúdo, foram analisadas 1.279 propagandas presentes em 76 exemplares de 06 revistas de grande circulação nacional (Veja, O Cruzeiro, Exame, Pequenas Empresas Grandes Negócios, Cláudia e Nova).

Este artigo analisa as críticas de Guerreiro Ramos à proposta da Unesco de patrocinar uma série de pesquisas sobre as relações raciais no Brasil no início dos anos 1950. O estudo analisa os trabalhos de Guerreiro Ramos entre 1946 e 1950, considerando suas críticas à tradição de estudos afro-brasileiros, suas abordagens acerca do preconceito de cor sob o prisma das intersecções entre sociologia e psicologia social e as reflexões do cientista social sobre a necessidade de formação de uma intelligentsia negra com o objetivo de combater a discriminação racial no país. Apesar da proposta de Guerreiro Ramos de um Congresso Internacional sobre Raças, ao invés de uma pesquisa acadêmica, não ter vingado, ela gerou um efeito não previsto com a ampliação e diversificação dos estudos da Unesco. Concorreu para tal mudança a existência de um cenário em aberto que foi sendo construído a partir da atuação autônoma de uma rede transatlântica de cientistas sociais progressistas, com experiências diversas de ensino e/ou pesquisa no Brasil e sensível às demandas apresentadas no 1º. Congresso do Negro Brasileiro, patrocinado pelo Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN).

The aim of the present study lays in the investigation of the frequency and forms of social representations of afro-descendant individuals' advertisements along a time frame of 38 years. Through the content analysis technique, it was analyzed 1,279 advertisements out from 76 issues of 06 nationwide large circulation publications – <em>Veja, O Cruzeiro, Exame, Pequenas Empresas Grandes Negócios, Cláudia e Nova</em>. Among the study's main results it can be highlighted that the average frequency of those individuals on pieces of advertisements has reached 4.2% along the 38 years period, whereas Caucasian individuals represent 94.55% out from 2,312 characters identified on the advertisements analyzed. The remaining 1.25% comprises other minority ethnic groups. Therefore, it is possible to notice a picture of high asymmetry among the ethnic groups in the context of advertisements – taking into account that 45.01% of the Brazilian population is made up of afro-descend...

Este artigo desenvolve uma análise crítica de discursos de ódio de cunho racistas proferidos nas redes sociais contra três jovens jogadores negros da seleção de futebol da Inglaterra por ocasião da final da Eurocopa 2020. O artigo evidencia que, lamentavelmente, esta prática tem se tornado muito mais frequente do que se imagina e impacta negativamente na vida não somente de celebridades e pessoas famosas mas, sobretudo, de inúmeros jovens negros(as) anônimos na Inglaterra, no Brasil e em outras parte do mundo.

In 2019, former Vogue Brasil style director, Donata Meirelles, posted a photograph on her personal Instagram, celebrating her fiftieth birthday, where she sat in between two standing Black women, dressed in gowns reminiscent of slavery. The image immediately went viral as activists, academics, and civil society protested the photo’s depiction of persistent structural racism, proclaiming that the Black women were hired as mucamas, or house slaves, for a slavery-themed party. The Black women in the photograph are baianas de receptivo, who work as hosts for private and public events; a livelihood that is little understood. This article argues that the baianas’ agency was negated in the polemical discourse surrounding the photograph, which suggested that these women contribute to their oppression by performing this kind of labor. Through interdisciplinary research, including ethnography and semi-structured interviews, and advocating for the careful and political act of listening, this article centers the voices of the baianas to reveal the daily complexities of the baiana de receptivo livelihood, their cultural specificity, and how they operate in the current social and economic spheres of Bahia, Brazil. Ultimately, the baianas experienced a double erasure of agency rooted in both the long history of Brazilian racialized and gendered narratives and this polemical instance in which baianas were not invited to the conversation, despite being the subjects of debate.  By analyzing the political efficacy that baianas have attained in contemporary Brazil, this article provides a more nuanced understanding of the photograph and proposes listening, as a frame for more equitable debates.

Nesta história do pensamento e da militância dos intelectuais negros, Paulina Alberto mostra que esses pensadores e ativistas tiveram um impacto fundamental nos discursos sobre a “democracia racial” e outros termos de inclusão cultural e política no século XX. Com base em uma grande variedade de fontes, incluindo a prolífica imprensa negra, a autora constata que os intelectuais negros em São Paulo, no Rio de Janeiro e em Salvador mudaram as formas de se engajar nos discursos raciais oficiais na medida em que, devido a processos históricos mais amplos, o horizonte para a verdadeira inclusão parecia expandir-se, num primeiro momento, para logo depois se estreitar.  Paulina argumenta que essas estratégias políticas distintas, no entanto, faziam parte dos contínuos esforços dos intelectuais negros de dar seu próprio significado às ideologias de harmonia racial à luz da evolução política do país e de transformações nos discursos locais, nacionais e internacionais sobre cidadania no século XX.

This essay analyzes the historical and aesthetic significance of the visual art project Assentamento(s) (2012-2013) by Rosana Paulino. Her work re- inscribes the black female body into the historical narrative of Brazil, complicating long-established notions of “Brazilianness”. By using art techniques and materials that combine lithography, digital printing, drawing, sewing, video, and sculpting, Paulino develops a multi-layered artistic assembly that she describes as a process of refazimento (“remaking”). Paulino pushes the boundaries of the historical archives, highlighting both the struggles and agency of black women within Brazilian society. I argue that, as a contemporary black woman visual artist, Paulino engages in a method of historical interpretation that Saidiya Hartman defines as “critical fabulation”. My study explores how Paulino’s refazimento represents a method of inquiry that confronts the legacies of Brazil’s racial democracy and its ideology of mestiçagem. Paulino...

Esta dissertação dedica-se a tentar entender o que seria fazer movimento negro em Duque de Caxias (RJ), cidade esta que é palco e referência histórico-cultural para a atuação de pessoas, grupos e instituições que se dedicam, à sua maneira, ao combate à discriminação racial. Com base num olhar orientado para a micropolítica dos processos sociais, possibilitado pelo método etnográfico de pesquisa de campo, busca-se compreender os principais desafios para quem faz o movimento negro de Duque de Caxias, especialmente no que concerne à relação entre este movimento e o Estado. Tais desafios esbarram em múltiplos significados do que seria fazer parte desse movimento (ou movimentos), que se conectam, por sua vez, também a diferentes significados do que seja a política e as relações raciais.

The article deals with the delicate theme of historical memory and its relevance, not only for Brazilian society, but for all societies in general. By following Brazilian history of slavery, which was abolished in 1888, the author discusses the work of the recently introduced Truth commissions, whose role is to guarantee social reconciliation and to pay back somehow the victims of forms of violence and abuse by totalitarian regimes. The author takes the Black Slavery Truth Commission (2014) as example. He uses extensively the bibliography and the documents made available by the Commission, which highlight the importance of evoking the memory of slavery and the struggles of the black movement against the mythical construction of the racial democracy in Brazil. It is also discussed the fundamental role played by Black lawyers and members of Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB) fighting against structural forms of racism in contemporary Brazilian society. In closing his article, the author calls for a wider engagement with empirical research in order to produce reliable indicators for assessing the work of the Commission and their objectives.