After racial democracy: Contemporary puzzles in race relations in Brazil, Latin America and beyond from a boundaries perspective

Abstract

This article uses the boundaries theoretical framework to analyse Brazilian race relations. The author argues that the apparent paradox of race relations in Brazil and in parts of Latin America, i.e. the persistency of racial inequality without blatant racial conflict, can be better understood as the coexistence of strong social boundaries and weak symbolic boundaries between racial categories. Not only does the boundaries literature allow us to understand race relations in Brazil through a different lens, but the Brazilian case can also contribute to further develop this theoretical framework. Differently from most cases discussed by the boundaries literature where strong symbolic boundaries lead to strong social boundaries, in Brazil weak symbolic boundaries have played a key role in the reproduction and transformation of strong social boundaries between blacks and whites. Taking into account the different ways these two types of boundaries interact – social and symbolic – is a key challenge for the comparative literature on race relations. In order to develop the argument the author draws on recent studies about Brazil to discuss two traditional issues in the race relations literature in Latin America and beyond: the measurement of racial discrimination and the consequences of racially mixed identification for debates on racial inequality.

Conviviality on the Brink

“…Weak symbolic boundaries between race categories coincide with strong social ones, i.e. socio-economic inequalities are strong (Silva 2016). This analysis contrasts with Seyferth's who showed how a popular reduction of racism to classism or colour is misleading since race in most cases defines class rather than being merely correlated with it (Seyferth 1989: 28).…”

Post/Colonial Reconfigurations. The Disregarded, Renewed Arrival of Spaniards in Rio De Janeiro

“…Understanding the historical configuration of Rio de Janeiro is crucial to explain some of the contradictions I encountered regarding the current positionality of Spanish in Rio de Janeiro. The various pasts of Rio de Janeiro's social formation, from colonialism and slavery over episodes of whitening politics and European immigration at the turn of the 20 th century, to the formation of the myth of a new Brazilian race and racial democracy during the last century each produce their particular effects (Guimarães, 2002;Schwarcz, 1999;Silva, 2016).…”

Issues of Nation-Building in the Latin American Intellectuals and Elites Rhetoric: From the Past to the Prese

“…Тем не менее идеи о расе и категориях людей, называемых индейцами, африканцами или метисами, не были исключены из государственной повестки. В дебатах об идентичности новых государств центральную роль начинают играть понятия метисации (Edwards, 2014), мулатизации (Adamovsky, 2017), «беления» (Geler, 2016; Telles and Flores, 2013), «расовой демократии» , то есть расово-культурных смешений (Silva and Saldivar, 2018). В целом направленность официальной риторики о нации была антирасистской и гомогенизирующей.…”