Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães

Depois da democracia racial

In this article, I trace a scenario that is becoming increasingly actual and close to Brazilians. In that scenario racial inequalities coexist with a popular state regime in which Black NGOs participate in the implementation of multicultural policies and racial democracy ceases to be a hegemonic discourse. We have acquired consciousness of the limitations of our democracy, of the multicultural nature of our national formation, and of our invidious system of racial inequalities, but we are not successful in stopping it from reproducing itself. I take this scenario as an occasion to point to two current misinterpretations in the sociological literature: neither are racial inequalities in Brazil the product of racial democracy, neither can racial inequalities result from the mere existence of racial categories.

Acesso de negros às universidades públicas

Neste artigo, restringirei a analise do movimento por acoes afirmativas ao sistema de educacao superior do pais, setor mais visado pelas demandas dos militantes e, por isso mesmo, responsavel pelo carater de classe media dessas acoes. Como veremos, tais demandas encontraram respostas quase que imediatas do sistema politico brasileiro, tanto por parte do governo quanto por parte dos politicos, ainda que continuem despertando fortes resistencias da sociedade civil. Meu proposito e compreender os motivos de reacoes tao dispares. Antes, porem, farei uma rapida apresentacao dos problemas educacionais do pais e tambem das medidas que vem sendo adotadas pelo governo e pelo sistema politico, em geral, para enfrenta-los.

The scholar denied

While Marx had argued that the basic dynamic of modern society was the class struggle, Weber insisted it was the process of bureaucratic rationalization that was sweeping the world in tandem with modern capitalism. As Du Bois surveyed the globe, he focused on a specific phenomenon that enabled European societies to build capitalist empires: the colonization, exploitation, and domination of peoples of color (p. 155).

The Brazilian system of racial classification

Michael Banton’s text belongs to the long tradition of European social sciences which rejects the conceptual use of the term ‘race’ in sociological analyses. His work is also linked to the school this time a minority that uses individualist and logico-analytic methodologies, largely shunning historical, structuralist or holistic analyses. The real novelty of his approach, though, resides in bringing the natural concept of ‘colour’ to the centre of sociological analyses of the kinds of social differentiation and hierarchization that arise from the encounters between distinct peoples and cultures. However my comments in this short text will not address any of these aspects head on. Instead I shall concentrate on clarifying what seems to me to be the weak point of the empirical example used by Banton in his argument, namely, the Brazilian system of racial classification, which, according to the author, is based not on race but on colour, by which he means skin colour or tone. To allow the reader to follow my comments, it is worth briefly recalling what we know about the Brazilian system of racial classification, a topic systematically studied by sociologists and anthropologists between the 1940s and 1970s (Frazier 1944; Pierson 1945; Hutchinson 1952; Wagley 1952; Zimmerman 1952; Azevedo 1953; Fernandes 1955; Bastide and Berghe 1957; Harris and Kottak 1963; Harris 1970; Sanjek 1971; Nogueira 1985), with the aim of deciphering its classificatory principles. From 1872 onwards the Brazilian census classified the ‘colours’ of Brazilians on the basis of the theory that mestiços ‘revert’ or ‘regress’ to one of the ‘pure races’ involved in the mixture an ideology that shaped both common-sense and academic knowledge at the end of the nineteenth century. The 1872 census, for example, created four ‘colour groups’: white, caboclo, black and brown (branco, caboclo (mixed indigenous-European), negro and pardo). These groups were always defined by the same formula: Colour group members of a pure race phenotypes of this race in the process of reversion (Guimarães 1999). Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 35 No. 7 July 2012 pp. 1157 1162

O insulto racial: as ofensas verbais registradas em queixas de discriminação

O objetivo do artigo e investigar o insulto racial, como forma de construcao de uma identidade social estigmatizada. Para tanto, o autor toma como fonte as queixas registradas na Delegacia de Crimes Raciais de Sao Paulo entre maio de 1997 e abril de 1998 procurando analisar os estereotipos socialmente aceitos, tanto pelas vitimas quanto pelos policiais. O autor argumenta que a funcao do insulto racial e institucionalizar um inferior racial, sendo capaz nao so de simbolicamente dirigir a pessoa discriminada a seu lugar inferior historicamente constituido, como tambem de reinstituir esse lugar.

A recepção de fanon no Brasil e a identidade negra

Neste artigo, uso fontes bibliograficas e testemunhos para analisar a recepcao de Fanon pelo meio intelectual brasileiro, assim como sua influencia sobre a formacao de identidades negras. Enquanto observo uma recepcao morna, argumento que isso se deveu a tres fatores: primeiro, a especificidade da esquerda latino-americana nos anos 1960; em segundo, uma constituicao racial e nacional totalmente oposta a conflitos raciais; e, em terceiro, o numero reduzido nas universidades brasileiras de professores e pesquisadores negros que abordem a formacao da identidade negra ou a afirmacao de sujeitos racialmente oprimidos.

Entrevista com Carlos Hasenbalg

In this article, I trace a scenario that is becoming increasingly actual and close to Brazilians. In that scenario racial inequalities coexist with a popular state regime in which Black NGOs participate in the implementation of multicultural policies and racial democracy ceases to be a hegemonic discourse. We have acquired consciousness of the limitations of our democracy, of the multicultural nature of our national formation, and of our invidious system of racial inequalities, but we are not successful in stopping it from reproducing itself. I take this scenario as an occasion to point to two current misinterpretations in the sociological literature: neither are racial inequalities in Brazil the product of racial democracy, neither can racial inequalities result from the mere existence of racial categories.

Cidadania e retóricas negras de inclusão social

As sociedades modernas sao herdeiras das revolucoes dos seculos XVII, na Inglaterra, e XVIII, na Franca. Foram tais acontecimentos historicos que estabeleceram os padroes de sociabilidade e de civilizacao que se alastraram e ainda se alastram por todo o mundo pos-colonial, cujo pilar e o Estado de direito que protege individuos e cidadaos. T. H. Marshall (1977), em texto classico, classificou a cidadania a partir dos direitos que a garantiam – civis, politicos e sociais –, e mostrou como eles foram conquistados progressivamente na Inglaterra. Em outros paises, como ficou claro no debate das ideias seminais de Marshall (Turner, 1990; Carvalho, 2002), a historia seguiu diversos outros cursos. Mas, se o desenvolvimento e conquista da cidadania nao seguiram um padrao evolutivo ou uniforme em todos os Estados-nacao, e incontestavel que esses processos seguem em cada pais uma certa periodizacao para a qual, para fins analiticos, a classificacao sugerida por Marshall continua util.

Frantz Fanon’s reception in Brazil

How was Fanon received among intellectuals and what was his influence on the formation of black identities in Brazil? His work took time being noticed, because of the particularities of the Latin-American left of the 1960s, because of a racial and national system totally opposed to racial conflicts and because of the limited number of black researchers addressing the subject of the formation of the black identity or the assertion of the rights of the racially oppressed. It was Sartre’s preface to his book “The Wretched of the Earth” that circulated widely among non-blacks, rather than the books themselves. Fanon remained a black revolutionary wearing the white masks imposed on him by European universalist culture.There have been three decisive moments in Fanon’s reception in Brazil. The first was in the 1960s amid the riots of the Black Panthers. The second was his reception by Abdias do Nascimento and young black students and professionals in the 1970s. The third is going on today through postcolonial and subaltern studies.

Racialisation and racial formation in urban spaces

In this paper, I try to clarify the notions of racialisation and racial formation and how they operate in the framework of nation states like Brazil. My main argument is that these processes are al...ABSTRACT In this paper, I try to clarify the notions of racialisation and racial formation and how they operate in the framework of nation states like Brazil. My main argument is that these processes are always constrained by the formation of social classes and national cultural repertoires even if transnational forces are important in nurturing them. I conclude by making a preliminary effort to unravel mechanisms and institutions which allow these processes of racialisation and racial formation to form part of the daily lives of black Brazilians in the context of class-structured urban spaces.