{"id":18938,"date":"2011-12-12T03:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T03:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=18938"},"modified":"2013-06-16T21:25:33","modified_gmt":"2013-06-16T21:25:33","slug":"brazilian-racial-democracy-1900-90-an-american-counterpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=18938","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900-90: An American Counterpoint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1177\/002200949603100303\" target=\"_blank\">Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900-90: An American Counterpoint<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jch.sagepub.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Journal of Contemporary History<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/jch.sagepub.com\/content\/31\/3.toc\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 31, Number 3<\/a> (July 1996)<br \/>\npages 483-507<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1177\/002200949603100303\" target=\"_blank\">10.1177\/002200949603100303<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.pitt.edu\/faculty\/andrews.php\" target=\"_blank\">George Reid Andrews<\/a><\/strong>, Distinguished Professor of History<br \/>\n<em>University of Pittsburgh<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Brazil is one of the largest multi-racial societies in the world, and the home of the largest single component of the overseas African diaspora. During the first half of the 1900s, it was frequently described, both by native-born and foreign observers, as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=22166\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;racial democracy<\/a>&#8216;, in which blacks, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\">mulattoes<\/a>, and whites lived under conditions of juridical and, to a large degree, social equality. During the second half of the century, however, that description has been sharply revised. From 1940 to the present, national censuses have documented persistent disparities between the white and non-white populations in education, vocational achievement, earnings, and life expectancy. Survey research has shown racist attitudes and stereotypes concerning blacks and mulattoes to be widely diffused throughout Brazilian society, and Afro-Brazilians report being the victims of subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, racism and discrimination. Thus while observers writing in the 1930s and 1940s focused on the harmonious, egalitarian quality of racial interaction in Brazil, similar discussions in the 1980s and 1990s have emphasized &#8216;the perception, ever more widespread, that [the concept of] &#8220;racial democracy&#8221;, in its official and semi-official versions, does not reflect Brazilian reality&#8217;. &#8216;The myth of racial democracy appears to be definitively in its grave&#8217;, observed the news-magazine <em>Isto\u00e9<\/em> during the celebrations marking the centennial of the abolition of slavery, in 1988; &#8216;racial discrimination&#8217;, not racial democracy, &#8216;is the basis of Brazilian culture&#8217;, argued historian D\u00e9cio Freitas.<\/p>\n<p>What accounts for this transformation in characterizations of Brazilian race relations? I have argued elsewhere that the disagreements and debates surrounding the concept of racial democracy in Brazil are closely tied to the tensions surrounding the theory and practice of political democracy in that country. Racial democracy was originally conceived as part of a larger ideological&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jmu.edu\/lacs\/wm_library\/George_Reid_Andrews_An_American_Counterpoint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900-90: An American Counterpoint Journal of Contemporary History Volume 31, Number 3 (July 1996) pages 483-507 DOI: 10.1177\/002200949603100303 George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor of History University of Pittsburgh Brazil is one of the largest multi-racial societies in the world, and the home of the largest single component of the overseas African diaspora. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,83,21,459,8,394],"tags":[8672,6666,6667,6665,8673],"class_list":["post-18938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-g-r-andrews","tag-george-andrews","tag-george-r-andrews","tag-george-reid-andrews","tag-journal-of-contemporary-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}