Skin Color, Racial Identity, and Life Chances in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil has long held a special place in comparative studies of race relations and identity. The attention the country has received, especially in the annals of North American social science, derives from its lack of legally sanctioned discrimination since slavery was abolished in 1888 and its long history of widespread miscegenation, resulting in an elaborate system of multiracial classification. These unique characteristics contributed to the widely held view that Brazil, unlike the United States, could be described as a racial democracy, free of violence, segregation, and discrimination. This image, although accurate in some respects, has eroded in recent years, largely because of the findings of empirical research and increased public awareness of the discrimination that occurs in everyday life. After decades of silence, race has emerged as a legitimate topic of research and as a rallying cry for a host of cultural and political organizations. For all of the nuance and complexity embedded in the social meaning of skin color in Brazil, there is a growing body of empirical evidence that offers important insights into its relationship to identity, inequality, and discrimination. These findings draw heavily on census and survey data, which are hardly ideal sources of information on topics of such extraordinary intricacy. In the face of some obvious limitations, however, with appropriate caveats it is possible to derive meaningful conclusions from the large samples afforded by national censuses and surveys. In assembling the available data into a meaningful story, we found it useful to think of inequality and discrimination as subtle interrelated processes that impinge on Brazilians of African descent throughout the life course. The image of the life course immediately draws the eye to those critical junctures