Discrimination as a relational matrix of analysis: race, gender, age, social class, immigration, religion, politics, and civil identification: a case study of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

The general objective of this research is to analyze how and to what extent racist, patriarchal, classist and political arguments are interlocked and mutually reinforced in multiple residual forms today. This article adopts Foucault’s concepts of biopower and normalization to analyze the persistence of racism surrounding unequal and discriminatory power relations and the oppression of racialized, gender, and social inequalities (Foucault 1994; Koopman 2013). A representative survey was applied to 759 urban inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who answered a questionnaire asking for their socio-demographic characteristics, perceptions, expectations, attitudes, practices, and intergroup relationships regarding racism, patriarchalism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, class discrimination and political-ideological self-identification. The multivariate method of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied, and the results show the predominance of patriarchal values against women, LGBTQ+, Black, youth and poor persons, through explicit racism and the legitimation of the use of violence for both, men and women. Women primarily reject providing sex education at school, agree with their domestic role as wives and with the idea that females’ behavior causes their own rapes, reject LGBTQ marriage, and discriminate against youths, while men rank first the domestic role of women, explicit racism and criminalization of Black people.