Racial Discrimination In Brazil Research Articles

O poder das palavras: relações de alteridade no seio do povo brasileiro, entre branquitude e negritude

O presente artigo trata da maneira como, na sociedade brasileira, as relações de alteridades se traduzem no discurso cotidiano atual, no que diz respeito às relações raciais. Tais discursos revelam, além da existência de uma base teórica racista profundamente enraizada, uma falta de consciência da realidade concreta da discriminação racial no Brasil e a persistência da ideia segundo a qual a sociedade brasileira não é racista. A análise qualitativa desenvolvida parte da visão de brasileiros afrodescendentes, estudada através de um questionário googledoc, tratado pelo Programa Iramuteq, e fundamentada nas teorias do círculo de Bakhtin em diálogo com Bourdieu. O estudo aponta de que modo a linguagem influencia as relações pessoais, especialmente como a palavra e suas valorações potencializam as tensões vividas entre grupos cada vez mais antagônicos.

Economic Pessimism and Racial Discrimination in Brazil

When studying Black politics, Brazil is an important country to consider because of its large Afro-descended population, its history of slavery, and persistent racial and economic inequality. In this article, I examine the role perceptions of racial discrimination play on the economic well-being of the Black Afro-Brazilian population. I test the hypothesis that, as Afro-Brazilians’ perceptions of racial discrimination increase, the more likely it is they will hold a pessimistic view of their economic situation. I rely on 2010 national data to conduct an ordered logit regression analysis which shows that Black and Brown Brazilians who have experienced racial discrimination are more likely to be pessimistic about their economic situation when compared with Blacks and Browns who have not experienced racial discrimination. In addition, ordered logit regression analysis demonstrates that respondents who admit experiencing racial discrimination are more likely to be women, identify as preto, and have more education.

Is the Brazilian Tale of Peaceful Racial Coexistence True? Some Evidence from School Segregation and the Huge Racial Gap in the Largest Brazilian City

Summary Brazil has always been considered to be a land free of racial and ethnic tensions. However, despite Brazil being famous for miscegenation, racial discrimination in Brazil has been documented in the literature, especially in light of the huge disparity between Brazil’s racial groups with respect to economic outcomes and education levels. The objective of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the economics of racial discrimination in Brazil. To this end, the effect of segregation on the income of workers is estimated using data from elementary schools in Sao Paulo, the largest city in the country. Measures of segregation in the educational system are evaluated using economic data obtained from the 2010 census. It is shown that segregation plays a fundamental role on the wage gap among racial groups. This effect may be attributed to the virtual absence of pretos and pardos in private schools. In public education, however, there is little separation along racial lines, which suggests that lack of access to social networks and to higher quality public schools may be the most important element in explaining wage differences. In Brazil, racial discrimination seems to work indirectly through socio-economic factors.

Challenging Racism in Brazil. Legal Suits in the Context of the 1951 Anti-Discrimination Law

Abstract This article examines efforts to define the nature of racial discrimination in Brazil, within an environment shaped by perceptions of the meaning of racism in the United States and perceptions about the nature of race relations in the lusophone world. The article asks how did black Brazilians work to define discrimination, and what opportunities did they find to mount challenges? This study elucidates reactions to discrimination, looking for these acts where they occurred rather than where the U.S. experience tells us to find them, exploring efforts to define discrimination and to create means to challenge it. Though these efforts often dialogued with ever-present perceptions about race in the U.S., they were adapted to particular legal, political, social and cultural circumstances in the Brazil of their time. In particular, I examine challenges to discrimination through criminal suits brought under Brazil's 1951 anti-discrimination law.

Guerreiro Ramos interpela a Unesco: ciências sociais, militância e antirracismo

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).

Donald Pierson e o Projeto do Vale do Rio São Francisco: cientistas sociais em ação na era do desenvolvimento

The article analyzes Guerreiro Ramos’ criticisms of the UNESCO proposal to promote a series of studies on race relations in Brazil in the early 1950s. Focusing on the scholar’s work from 1946 to 1950, the article explores his criticism of the tradition of African-Brazilian studies, his approaches to color prejudice from the perspective of the intersection of sociology with social psychology, and his thoughts on the need to forge a black intelligentsia in order to combat racial discrimination in Brazil. Although Guerreiro Ramos’ proposal to replace the UNESCO academic research agenda with an International Conference on Race was not embraced, the idea had the unexpected effect of contributing to the expansion and diversification of UNESCO studies. The latter changes were facilitated by an openended scenario made possible by the autonomous work of a Transatlantic network of progressive social scientists who had diverse experiences in teaching and/or research in Brazil and who were sensitive to the demands presented at the First Brazilian Black Congress, sponsored by the Black Experimental Theater (TEN).

O antirracismo da ordem no pensamento de Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar o contexto de elaboração e promulgação da primeira lei contra a discriminação racial no Brasil, de autoria do deputado Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, no início dos anos 1950. Trata-se de explorar as diferentes formas de recepção da lei; sua tramitação no Congresso; o debate racial em curso e, por fim, o sentido e justificação que Arinos confere à lei. Partimos da hipótese de que, ao transformar o preconceito racial em objeto de contravenção, sob penas da lei, Arinos procurou esvaziar politicamente a questão racial ao deslocá-la para o plano da moral. A luta contra o racismo, traduzida nos termos de um imperativo ético, inspirado na tradicional visão de um país racialmente harmônico, teria a função de evitar a crescente atmosfera de tensão racial, mais do que de reconhecer as demandas sociopolíticas do movimento negro.

Black Social Movements and State in Brazil: The Issue of Co-Optation

This paper explored the relationship between Brazilian Black Movement organizations and the State in order to create new institutional instances to fight racial discrimination in Brazil. Using discourse analysis, we analysed the discourses produced by several players regarding the implementation of the Special Secretariat for Promotion of Policies for Racial Equality (SEPPIR) in the widest context of the debate concerning public policies to fight racial inequality in Brazil throughout the years. We understood the role of co-optation in the process of making sense and constructing institutional spaces to implement public policies to overcome racial inequalities in Brazil. Traditionally regarded as an organization dysfunction, co-optation may be viewed as a process that emphasizes change in participation and representation.

Disciplinary Divides: New Work on Race in Latin America

Disciplinary DividesNew Work on Race in Latin America Micol Seigel (bio) Legacies of Race: Identities, Attitudes, and Politics in Brazil. By Stanley R. Bailey. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pp. 293. $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. By Arturo Escobar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi + 435. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil's Northeast. By Jan Hoffman French. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Pp. xxii + 245. $59.95 cloth, $22.50 paper. Waves of Decolonization: Discourses of Race and Hemispheric Citizenship in Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. By David Luis-Brown. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 339. $89.95 cloth, $29.95 paper. The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatán. By Matthew Restall. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pp. 456. $65.00 cloth. "Anthropology," writes Arturo Escobar, "wants to remain a discipline" (xi). Escobar sets this drive against the profound inter- or "undisciplinarity" of his own Territories of Difference, thereby gesturing to a tension between, among, and across disciplines that inspires and distorts work on race in Latin America today. Students of sociology, anthropology, history, literature, and the various "studies" (Africana, American, Latin American, ethnic) all struggle to reconcile disciplinary training and norms with ubiquitous calls for interdisciplinarity in the U.S. academy. Whether one chooses to heed, refuse, or ignore these calls, it is striking how notions of race remain resolutely grounded in specific disciplines. Stanley Bailey's Legacies of Race introduced me to the useful schema of bright versus blurred, hard versus soft, and thick versus thin boundaries. As we shall see, researchers in the humanities and in the social sciences often speak to one another across the hard-bright boundary between qualitative and quantitative paradigms and between definitional and disciplinary camps. [End Page 251] These differences arise despite the good number of concerns shared by recent books that, centrally or tangentially, address race. Of the five books reviewed in this essay, two engage racial boundaries directly and as their main interest, with illustratively different methodologies. Jan French's deft and engaging Legalizing Identities focuses an anthropological gaze on descendants of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans in Brazil's northeastern state of Sergipe. Bailey's Legacies of Race uses polling data about everyday attitudes to make policy suggestions for fighting racial discrimination in Brazil. Both are interested in the relationship between law and identity, exploring the role of the state in the formation of racial categories, as Escobar also does in Territories of Difference. Escobar comes to the question of identity as part of a larger project: to decenter conventional forms of knowledge in deference to those promoted by indigenous activists. The literary scholar David Luis-Brown shares this "decolonizing" project. His Waves of Decolonization undertakes a literary analysis of anticolonial novels, essays, and ethnographies from the early twentieth century. In a work that provides background for all the aforementioned studies, Matthew Restall's The Black Middle reveals the rich African heritage of a region—the Yucatán—not usually assigned a place of prominence in the African slave trade. Restall's book is a useful starting point because of the light that it sheds on the emergence of Afro-inflected racial identifications, the phenomenon treated by French, Escobar, and Bailey. Restall documents the tracks of Afro-American culture and presence laid by the slave trade, yet erased in collective memory by cultural absorption and racial mixture. Although the number of Africans brought involuntarily to Yucatán was less than that brought to other New World colonies, they were still a significant presence. Through exhaustive archival gleanings in Mérida, Campeche, small Yucatecan towns, Mexico City, London, Madrid, and Seville, Restall unearths the importance that these migrants and the tens of thousands of their descendants had for racial and cultural mixture in the region. He argues that "not only are Hispanic Yucatecans also Afro-Yucatecans" today but also "the Mayas of Yucatán must now be viewed as Afro-Mayas" (285). To this bold conclusion, Restall adds nuanced consideration of Afro-Yucatecans' roles in colonial...

AÇÃO AFIRMATIVA NO EMPREGO COMO COMBATE À DISCRIMINAÇÃO RACIAL INDIRETA: O CASO DAS AÇÕES AFIRMATIVAS JURÍDICAS DO MINISTÉRIO PÚBLICO DO TRABALHO

O artigo descreve a principal política institucional de promoção da igualdade racial do Ministério Público do Trabalho (MPT). Trata-se da primeira tentativa de reconhecimento jurídico da discriminação racial indireta no Brasil. O MPT propôs que o Judiciário reconhecesse a discriminação indireta e referendasse ações afirmativas para reparar prejuízos causados aos interesses da coletividade dos negros. A ação analisada possibilitou observar quais as características dos discursos jurídicos a respeito da igualdade racial e da possibilidade de promovê-la a partir de ações afirmativas. O artigo se ocupa não apenas de descrever as características dessa política pública inovadora, como também delineia os principais discursos jurídicos produzidos pelo Judiciário ao receber novas demandas por promoção da igualdade. PALAVRAS-CHAVE Poder Judiciário, direitos coletivos, discriminação racial, ação afirmativa. ABSTRACT The paper analyses de main racial equality promotion policy of the Public Labour Attorney Office (MPT). This is the first attempt of legal recognition of indirect racial discrimination in Brazil. MPT proposed to the Judiciary the recognition of the indirect discrimination concept and the support of the adoption of affirmative action policies to repair the collective interests of the black population. The policy analyzed permitted the observation of what are the characteristics of judicial discourses about racial discrimination and of the possibility of promotion of racial equality by affirmative action policies. The paper is not only dedicated to describe the characteristics of this innovative policy, but also to depict the main juridical discourses produced by the Judicial System while judging new demands for equality promotion. KEYWORDS Judiciary branch, collective rights, racial discrimination, affirmative action.

Normas e redistribuição: um estudo sobre condicionantes internacionais das políticas de combate ao racismo no Brasil

Neste artigo, examina-se como a exposição do Estado a normas internacionais pode condicionar a implementação de políticas redistributivas, a partir de estudo de caso relativo ao combate à discriminação racial no Brasil, no período 1995-2005. Conclui que o processo de preparação e de seguimento da Conferência de Durban teria viabilizado equilíbrio propício à implementação de políticas de ação afirmativa.

Racial Discrimination in Access to Health: The Brazilian Experience

The Brazilian version of race is quite different from the American version. In Brazil, blacks account for almost half of the population, while they are only a little more than one tenth of the United States population. Racial discrimination in Brazil is based on phenotype and not on ancestry. De jure discrimination (although not de facto discrimination) has been banned in Brazil practically since the end of slavery in 1888. However, even among these differences, we do find some similarities between the two social constructions of racism. Both societies have supported slavery; both have discriminated against blacks and other colored people; and both have attempted to avoid guilt and

Aspectos semânticos da discriminação racial no Brasil: para além da teoria da modernidade

Este artigo pretende ser uma contribuição para o entendimento da discriminação racial no Brasil. Para tanto, o autor analisa os aspectos semânticos dessa prática social, aos quais não foi dada devida importância na literatura contemporânea das ciências sociais. Em um primeiro momento, o texto explora as lacunas da tese, corrente nessa literatura, de que o conteúdo do preconceito contra os negros foi significativamente redefinido, após a abolição da escravidão, com o advento da modernidade no Brasil. Com o auxílio de uma tipologia das formas de desrespeito, o autor ilumina aspectos da discriminação racial pouco explorados pela literatura e apresenta um argumento alternativo para explicar o racismo no Brasil moderno.

Racial discrimination in the Brazilian labour market: wage, employment and segregation effects

AbstractThe social science literature has done much to document pervasive racial discrimination in Brazil and there is little doubt that a very dark colour is a handicap to social advancement. Nevertheless, very few empirical economic studies have attempted to quantify the impact of ethnic discrimination in Brazil. Using data culled from the Pesquisa National por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD), this paper fills this void by analysing ethnic wage and employment gaps, as well as occupational segregation in Brazil, using the Oaxaca decomposition methodology. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Group Dominance and the Myth of Racial Democracy: Antiracism Attitudes in Brazil

Group dominance perspectives contend that ideologies are central to the production and reproduction of racial oppression by their negative affect on attitudes toward antiracism initiatives. The Brazilian myth of racial democracy frequently is framed in this light, evoked as a racist ideology to explain an apparent lack of confrontation of racial inequality. Data from a 2000 probability sample of racial attitudes in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contradict this long-held assertion, showing that most Brazilians in this state recognize racism as playing a role in Brazilian society, support the idea of affirmative action, and express interest in belonging to antiracism organizations. Moreover, opinions on affirmative action appear more strongly correlated with social class, as measured by education level, than race. As compared with results from the United States regarding opinions on similar selected affirmative action policies, the racial gap in Brazilian support for affirmative action is only moderate. Results also show that those who recognize the existence of racial discrimination in Brazil are more likely to support affirmative action. Implications for race theorizing from a group dominance perspective in Brazil as well as for antiracism strategies are addressed.

Desigualdade salarial entre raças no mercado de trabalho urbano brasileiro: aspectos regionais

Este artigo insere-se na incipiente literatura sobre discriminação racial no Brasil. De modo análogo à contribuição de Soares (2000), utilizamos a decomposição de Oaxaca-Blinder ao longo da distribuição de salarios na PNAD de 1996 para mensurar o componente de discriminação no diferencial de salários entre brancos e negros, incluindo controles para persistência de desigualdades educacionais. De outra parte, reconhecendo as diferenças econômicas e de composição racial entre regiões no Brasil, estabelecemos um perfil comparativo da discriminação no Nordeste e no Sudeste. Os resultados confirmam o perfil ''elitista'' da discriminação racial, identificado por Soares, mas esclarecem que parte do componente atribuido à discriminação no mercado de trabalho deve-se à persistência de desigualdades educacionais entre raças. Quanto ao perfil regional, conclui-se que o mercado de trabalho é um locus mais importante do problema racial no Sudeste do que no Nordeste, embora o perfil elitista esteja presente em ambas as regiões.

Racial Insult in Brazil

In 1988, the fight against racial discrimination in Brazil gained tremendous impetus following the enactment of a law that made racism a crime subject to penal law. Black activists complained about the effectiveness of such a law when 70 percent of all Black complaints were systematically typified by the police as verbal offenses. Based on this, in 1997, parliament reformed the law in order to include racial verbal abuse as a crime. In this article I analyze the complaints forms filed at the São Paulo Police Station for Racial Discrimination, between May 1997 and December 1998. My goals are threefold: to understand the context in which verbal abuse is used; to determine the importance of this type of discrimination; and to evaluate the impact on combating racism in Brazil of making verbal abuse a crime.

The Geography of Economic Development and Racial Discrimination in Brazil

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the relationship between unequal resource and population distribution and racial wage inequality in Brazil. Using sample data from the 1980 Brazilian census, monthly wages were estimated for white and Afro‐Brazilian men working in nine metropolitan areas. Estimates showed that racial disparities in wages existed across all regional labour markets. Regression‐based decomposition analysis found that a substantial portion of the racial wage gap was due to discrimination (unequal pay), while estimates of the magnitude of labour market discrimination indicated considerable variation by geographical area. Discrimination was higher in the predominantly white and highly developed areas of the South than in the former slave and underdeveloped regions of the Northeast.

Racial Inequality and Child Mortality in Brazil

This paper addresses the issue of racial inequality in Brazil. The authors apply demographic techniques to sample data from the 1980 census to estimate survival probabilities of children born to white and nonwhite mothers in metropolitan areas. Because mortality bears a direct and obvious relationship to human welfare estimates of the probability of death are useful for comparing living standards of whites and nonwhites in Brazil. The results of applying the Brass method to 1950 and 1980 census data indicate the magnitude and the persistence of racial inequalities in length of life in Brazil. In 1940/1950 the mortality experience of children born to white mothers was equivalent to an average expectation of life at birth of 47.5 years. The comparable figure for nonwhite children was 40 years. By 1970/1980 whites reached an average expectation of life of 66.1 years. The rate for nonwhites rose to 59.4 years. Because both groups experienced about the same rate of improvement over the 30-year period the gap between the 2 remained high. The findings of this study only imply the presence of exclusionary practices that deprive nonwhite children of health services that are otherwise available to white children. Still the discrimination hypothesis--which is admittedly speculative--is indirectly strengthened by 3 observations: 1) the interpretation is consistent with the conclusions of earlier studies that document the presence of other forms of racial discrimination in Brazil; 2) there is no evidence that nonwhite mothers endorse sharply different ideas about nutrition child rearing or about modern medical care; and 3) residential segregation by race in Brazil is not nearly as pronounced as 2 of the alternative explanations necessarily imply. The authors conclude that discrimination is a plausible interpretation of the observed racial differences in child mortality in metropolitan Brazil. Yet additional data are required to document whether discrimination exists and to identify the precise mechanisms through which exclusionary practices differentially affect the proximate determinants of child mortality among whites and nonwhites in urban areas.

The Brazilian Black Guard Racial Conflict in Post-Abolition Brazil

The existence of racial democracy in Brazil has long since come into serious question. The work of sociologists like Florestan Fernandes and historians like Carl Degler has demonstrated the fact of racial discrimination in Brazil, yet the history of race relations in Brazil still seems to stand in contrast to that of the United States. Occurrences of widespread racial violence and the organization of militant movements for social, economic, and political equality take up little space in the historical literature dealing with Brazil. The apparent lack of endemic racial conflict in Brazil has been explained as the result of the marginalization of black people in Brazilian capitalism or as the result of a social mechanism like Degler's “mulatto escape hatch,” which separates the mass of black people from their natural leaders. Consequently, a consciousness of racial solidarity did not develop as the basis for political organization. Without such organization, black people could not effectively confront the white power structure on the issues of race, and, ultimately, class discrimination.