Du Bois and Brazil

Abstract

In this article, I discuss Black transnational solidarity and liberation in the Americas by analyzing the historical relationship between W. E. B. Du Bois and Brazil from 1900 to 1940. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Du Bois was studying, writing, and publishing about Brazil. He was interested in creating international solidarity and cooperation among Black people. However, Du Bois (as well as other African Americans) promoted the idea that Brazil was a place without racism, a racial paradise. This idea served as a basis for a theory that oppressed Afro-Brazilians—the myth of racial democracy. In this article, I explore Du Bois’s relationship with Brazil, highlighting possible reasons why Du Bois engaged with the myth of racial democracy. In addition, I argue that this historical event teaches us that an Afro-diasporic liberation project must seriously consider global and material inequalities among Black people.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Global Sociology and the Anti-racist Struggle for Democracy in Cuba (1931–1941)

“…Thus, in tracing race and class conflicts in Cuba to U.S. corporations, military power, and policies of control over the Cuban local economy, Du Bois did not look at the social sources of racism on the island. In this sense, the findings about Cuba not only mark a similar pattern to the case of Brazil, in which Du Bois appears to reproduce the myth of racial harmony (Góes 2022) but also takes the critique further. Even though the U.S. had not yet entered World War II by the time of Du Bois's first visit to Cuba, he emphasized American imperialism as a global menace.…”

“…Du Bois wrote about Latin America and the Hispanic Caribbean, but his writings about this region have not been analyzed in depth. Exceptions are Juliet Hooker's (2017) and Juliana Góes's (2022) analyses of Du Bois's writings on Brazil. Hooker reviews Du Bois in the light of what she calls 'mulatto fictions,' a form of speculative mestizo futurism, arguing Du Bois implied a notion of mestizaje that questioned the binary model of eugenic racism of his time while raising an alternative to the racial problems of the United States (Hooker 2017).…”

“…Hooker reviews Du Bois in the light of what she calls 'mulatto fictions,' a form of speculative mestizo futurism, arguing Du Bois implied a notion of mestizaje that questioned the binary model of eugenic racism of his time while raising an alternative to the racial problems of the United States (Hooker 2017). Góes (2022) points out how Du Bois framed Brazil as a racial paradise to promote different racial politics in his country. Du Bois contributed to disseminating the myth of Brazil's racial harmony created by white intellectual elites in order to challenge antimiscegenation discourses and biological conceptions of race.…”

Editors’ Note, 2024 to 2026: Looking to W.E.B. Du Bois

“…We also like Du Bois’s image as a representation of our discipline’s current place in history, where many colleagues (including some in our department at UMass) have forged a Du Boisian turn in sociology (e.g., de Leon and Rodríguez-Muñiz 2022; Góes 2022; Morris 2015; Vásquez 2023). In 1993, considerably prior to the current resurgence of interest in Du Bois, UMass sociology faculty member Edwin Driver—hired in 1948 as the first African American professor on our campus—with Dan.…”

W.E.B. Du Bois and Irene Diggs: Gender, Erasures, and Knowledge Production in the Sociology of the Global Color Line

“…Thus, race is a source to create and reproduce inequality: an inequality built along racial lines. While she agrees with Du Bois on how racism reproduces social inequalities, her critique departed from Du Bois's mistaken idea that a supposed racial harmony had been achieved through "miscegenation" (Góes 2022). Du Bois relied on the idea that historical miscegenation had eliminated racism in the Americas as a way to criticize formal segregation and racism in the united States (Vásquez 2023).…”