{"id":8337,"date":"2010-08-18T02:56:29","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T02:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8337"},"modified":"2011-10-07T00:32:32","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T00:32:32","slug":"the-race-construct-and-public-opinion-understanding-brazilian-beliefs-about-racial-inequality-and-their-determinants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8337","title":{"rendered":"The Race Construct and Public Opinion: Understanding Brazilian Beliefs about Racial Inequality and Their Determinants"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Race Construct and Public Opinion: Understanding Brazilian Beliefs about Racial Inequality and Their Determinants<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The American Journal of Sociology
\nVolume 108, Number 2 (September 2002)
\npages 406\u201339<\/p>\n

Stanley R. Bailey<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Sociology
\nUniversity of California, Irvine<\/em><\/p>\n

Researchers hold that the racial democracy ideology fosters a rejection of discrimination-based explanations for racial inequality, thereby affecting antiracist mobilization. This study finds that Brazilians<\/a> understand the discriminatory basis of inequality and that an attitudinal dimension associated with racial democracy strongly increases the likelihood of that understanding. Negative stereotyping produces a smaller opposite effect, and \u201crace\u201d is not a significant predictor. Finally, Brazilian and American racial attitudes differ considerably in explaining black disadvantage. These findings question perceptions of Brazilian racial attitudes and the efficacy of
\ndominant theories for their analysis, suggesting a context-driven approach to theorizing and for antidiscrimination strategizing.<\/p>\n

…BRAZILIAN RACIAL ATTITUDES AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL DEMOCRACY<\/strong>
\nHistorical Background<\/p>\n

Gilberto Freyre<\/a> (1946) is credited with popularizing the notion of racial democracy in Brazil in the 1930s. Confronted with scientific racism beliefs in the superiority of a white race and that \u201cmixed\u201d blood created degeneracy, Freyre proposed instead that \u201ccross-breeding\u201d produced hybrid vigor<\/a> in humans, thereby enabling a bright future for the otherwise condemned \u201cdark\u201d Brazilian nation. He emphasized an uncommon flexibility on the part of Portuguese colonizers that made possible extensive miscegenation<\/a>, and he claimed that \u201cmixed\u201d Brazilians (of three races: Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous) gave birth to a new metarace, constituting a new world in the tropics (Freyre 1959).<\/p>\n

In this ideological construct, miscegenation became the motor behind Brazilian racial dynamics and racial democracy. Due to the extensive mixing, potential group boundaries blurred, rendering racism in the manner of U.S. segregation and polarization unintelligible. Unlike nations where ethnic and racial identities were stubbornly ascribed or asserted, in Brazil a universal national identity transcended particularist racial identification. What in other societies were considered incompatible social segments, and where group interests were national organizational principles, in Brazil they were united into Brazilianness. In sum, Brazilians viewed their society through \u201canti-racialism\u201d lenses, as opposed to those of \u201cracialism\u201d in the United States (Guimar\u00e3es 1999)<\/strong>…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Race Construct and Public Opinion: Understanding Brazilian Beliefs about Racial Inequality and Their Determinants The American Journal of Sociology Volume 108, Number 2 (September 2002) pages 406\u201339 Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology University of California, Irvine Researchers hold that the racial democracy ideology fosters a rejection of discrimination-based explanations for racial inequality, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,83,21,8,394],"tags":[440,3018,199,3534],"class_list":["post-8337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-american-journal-of-sociology","tag-stanley-bailey","tag-stanley-r-bailey","tag-the-american-journal-of-sociology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8337","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=8337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}