Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T19:21:50.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Two Faces of Racial Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Niyi Afolabi
Niyi Afolabi
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
Get access

Summary

To make believe color is not noticed in social situations is to end up permitting discrimination by default. To recognize that discrimination is an ever-present tendency in any society in which there is a physically identifiable group is to take the first step in guarding against prejudice.

—Carl Degler, Neither Black nor White

Analyzing today's [1968] reality we could almost say that the Golden Law was signed yesterday. The situation of the free Negro has changed a little in the 80 years since abolition: low social, educational, economic, political, and sanitary status, and the list of frustrations transformed into a strong potentiality of just resentments by the race.

—Abdias do Nascimento, O negro revoltado

Many are the masks of inequality in Brazil and limited are the strategies of resistance: Carnival, samba, capoeira, and the representation of the mulatta in Brazilian literature and culture are a few of the cultural manifestations competing for a place in the exportation of myth and the exploitation of the Afro-Brazilian experience. Even the most casual observer of Brazil is easily co-opted into believing that, somehow, it is possible to live in a world free of prejudices and inequalities given a racial mixture that facilitates harmony and racial blindness.

Type
Chapter
Information
Afro-Brazilians
Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy
 , pp. 22 - 50
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×