Race and Nation in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Brazil

Abstract

Race and Nation in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Brazil Kia Lilly Caldwell (bio) White Negritude: Race, Writing, and Brazilian Cultural Identity. By Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. 194. $69.95 cloth. Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia. By Patricia de Santan Pinho. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. x + 266. $84.85 cloth. $23.95 paper. Brazil’s New Racial Politics. Edited by Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2010. Pp. viii + 251. $59.95 cloth. Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States. By Micol Seigel. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp. xxii + 386. $89.95 cloth. $24.95 paper. These four books provide important insights into Brazilian racial dynamics from both traditional and contemporary perspectives. Each contributes to the recent surge in scholarship on race in Brazil and moves this scholarship in interesting and exciting new directions. Together, the books examine the ideologies of racial democracy, racism, and antiracism through various disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods, including literary, cultural, historical, and social-science approaches. They also situate Brazilian racial dynamics in the context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century social and political dynamics, and they raise important questions about the roles of race and racism in Brazilian society. Brazil’s New Racial Politics was inspired by Michael Hanchard’s edited volume Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (1999). Edited by political scientists Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell, Brazil’s New Racial Politics is an innovative and timely collection of multidisciplinary research by Brazil- and U.S.-based sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and scholars in the field of communication studies. Several contributors map the advent of affirmative action policies for Brazilians of African descent in the early 2000s, how governmental discourses and policies related to race have unfolded, and the impact of those changes on social and political dynamics in the country. Seth Racusen, Mónica Treviño González, and Renato Emerson dos Santos examine these policies and university entry (preparatory) courses for black and poor students, illuminating the role of race in access to education and the challenges of creating public policies to combat racial inequalities. Racusen’s masterful analysis of university admissions offers useful suggestions for improving the process of [End Page 201] selecting students of African descent. Treviño provides important background on shifting forms and strategies of black mobilization, particularly among women; this mobilization has moved from ideological resistance to racial prejudice and discrimination to calling for the state to combat racism. Treviño finds that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played an increasingly important role in developing policies such as affirmative action for Afro-Brazilians. At the same time, however, the lack of support from the broader public threatens the sustainability of these new measures. Santos provides additional insights into the politics of race and higher education. His analysis of university entry courses focuses on Pré-Vestibular para Negros e Carentes (PVNC), a network for black and poor students established in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense in the early 1990s. Santos traces such preparatory institutions to 1976 and to the inspiration of the renowned black activist Abdias do Nascimento and the Center of Brazil-Africa Studies. (Indeed, Nascimento and members of the Black Experimental Theatre first proposed affirmative action and other public policies to combat racism in the 1940s.1) This background to recent developments is useful, as it makes clear the long-standing challenges that Afro-Brazilians have faced in the effort to achieve educational equity, particularly at the postsecondary level. Several essays in Brazil’s New Racial Politics look instead at formal politics and political institutions. Mitchell focuses on how black voters perceive black candidates for electoral office. Using survey data from the cities of Salvador and São Paulo, she argues that voters who embrace blackness by identifying themselves as preto (black) or pardo (mixed race and/or brown) tend to vote for black candidates in higher numbers. This analysis challenges most scholarship on race and politics in Brazil by pointing to the existence of an untapped “black vote.” Cloves Luiz Pereira Oliveira examines the 1996 election of Celso Pitta, the first black mayor of S...