States of Security, Democracy’s Sanctuary, and Captive Maternals in Brazil and the United States

Abstract

How might we understand the current political formations that emerged from the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the parliamentary coup in Brazil? Despite the U.S. disavowal for human rights violations in foreign policies, the victory of explicitly anti-black, anti-female, anti-gay, anti-poor forces in both democracies seems to be part of the vociferous restructuring of global racial capitalism, apartheid enforced by law and police violence. The more conventional analysis is that the Brazilian coup and Trump's election represent a threat to electoral democracy. Within this perspective, the protests generated by the outcomes of electoral politics in the United States and Brazil aimed to counter the reproduction of white supremacy and racial capital. We propose an alternative reading: the political conflicts that emerged in the aftermath of both events illustrate democracy's strength and its fulfilling promise to maintain racial domination and the political grammar that authorizes its reproduction. If we consider the continuum of racial violence—from slavery to democracy—that permeated the human rights–oriented Obama and Rousseff administrations, why would we unquestionably accept that liberal democracy is the pathway to racial integration and to control anti-black violence and police terror in Brazil and the United States?