This interdisciplinary volume brings together a prominent group of scholars to examine Brazil's ‘new racial politics’. In so doing, it offers a timely and important contribution to the study of race in Brazil and Latin America more generally. Indeed, the radical shift in the Brazilian state's discourse on race, as well the adoption of affirmative action and other policies starting in the mid-1990s, calls for a systematic analysis of these developments. With a foreword by Michael Mitchell, this book includes an introduction and conclusion written by its co-editors as well as three substantive sections.
While the book does not lead with this, the contributors do seem to be interested in how racism and racial inequality can be addressed in a country where ideologies of racial democracy have been so pervasive. If we depart from here, the contributors can be seen as providing cases that focus on three specific sites of racial politics in Brazil: formal politics, everyday social relations, and social movements. In this view, Mitchell, Pereira Oliveira and Racusen all examine how race and colour figure in electoral politics and policy debates, Reiter's and Figueiredo's chapters offer insights into the reproduction of racial hierarchy through micro-interactions, and the remainder of the book's chapters focus on different kinds of black mobilisation.
As in most edited volumes, some chapters are more successful than others. Perry, for example, offers a theoretically engaging ethnography of urban renewal (displacement) and mobilisation mostly by black women from the poor neighbourhood of Gamboa de Baixo. She shows the complex ways that race, class and gender intersect in the urban space of Salvador, something that is also embedded in the nature of black women's resistance in this neighbourhood. Perry's chapter, together with those of Augusto dos Santos and Emerson dos Santos, challenges the boundaries around what one might call black politics in Brazil in ways that are important both analytically and in the practice of politics.
In another chapter located in the city of Salvador, Figueiredo analyses an important but overlooked social group, the black middle class. She argues that because race and class are so entangled in the Brazilian context, this upwardly mobile group of blacks offers key insights into the nature of racial discrimination and the reproduction of racial inequality in Brazil. Drawing on interview data with black entrepreneurs, Figueiredo finds that while they did experience racial discrimination, they dismissed such acts as signs of bad manners or as a coping strategy. Rather than argue that money whitens this group, her chapter gives a more nuanced account of the relationship between racial consciousness and social mobility in Brazil.
Another chapter that stands out is a well-researched piece by a legal scholar, Seth Racusen. He examines racial ambiguity and the politics of newly adopted affirmative action in Brazilian universities. Given the backlash against such policies as well as the complexities of what he calls ‘the grammar of color identity’, he advocates a configuration of both race- and class-based policies that employ an interview method of verification. His analysis is both rigorous and acutely aware of its political implications.
Yet, much like any edited volume, this book does lack some cohesion. This problem may have been best addressed in the introduction and conclusion. More specifically, the editors might have included a discussion of the racial/colour terminology used by Brazilians in different contexts, and more importantly by contributors to the volume. Those unfamiliar with race in Brazil will probably find the very different ways the contributors use ‘Afro-Brazilian’, ‘Afro-descendant’, ‘black’, ‘brown’, ‘negro’, ‘pardo’ and ‘preto’ somewhat confusing. Moreover, while some chapters seem to take subjective racial identities very seriously, others show a clear tension between the racial categories that people use to identify themselves and those used by the authors. This is evident at different points throughout the book including Mitchell's article, where she discusses ‘Afro-Brazilians that identify as white’, raising interesting analytical questions.
Another missed opportunity concerns regional variation in racial politics in Brazil. Most of the chapters focus specifically on the cities of Salvador and São Paulo. This is not inherently problematic, particularly because some contributors explicitly situate their analyses in the local politics of those cities (for example, Mitchell, Figueiredo, Perry and Conceição). However, the analytical scope of the other chapters is not always clear. In the absence of a synthesis in either the introduction or conclusion, the book leaves many unanswered questions about the extent to which the dynamics uncovered in each chapter are unique to particular cities or regions, or representative of Brazil.
While the volume is surprisingly comprehensive given its short length, there are at least two notable gaps. In the foreword, Michael Mitchell alludes to the one that I think is particularly glaring: the context of Brazil's changing political landscape and economic position in the world. Scholars of democratisation are analysing a dynamic political shift in Brazil with the rise of the PT, new modes of political participation and civic engagement, and the expansion of the welfare state with pro-poor policies. These developments have arguably also shaped debates around racial inequality as well as the nature of anti-racism struggles. One example is the fact that many former black activists have become absorbed into the state via the Lula administration, radically changing the relationship between black movements and the state. While one might argue that this new political and economic context is a key aspect of Brazil's new racial politics, it is absent from much of the analysis in this book.
Second, the book seems inadvertently to show more continuities than discontinuities over time, begging the question of what is ‘new’ about Brazil's racial politics today. Indeed, despite some limited policy advances, the authors show how racial inequalities persist, how black movements still confront problems of collective identity, and how racial democracy ideologies are still very much alive, shaping how people identify, how they elect officials, and how they perceive affirmative action policies. In fact, the only thing that seems ‘new’ about racial politics in Brazil is that the state does not seem to be playing the same discursive role as it once did in perpetuating ideologies of racial democracy. Even so, the book's title and the conclusion, ‘After the Racial Democracy’, seem to suggest a more decisive break with the past.
As such, the book might be better understood as offering new perspectives on contemporary racial politics in Brazil. Unlike any previous work it takes seriously the agency of a diverse array of black Brazilians in challenging racial inequality; a few exceptions notwithstanding, scholarship on race in Brazil has overlooked or understated the role of black mobilisation. It also provides nuanced insights into why black and brown Brazilians do not always identify as black or engage in anti-racist struggles. Its success further stems from the fact that it brings together a unique group of Brazilianists as well as Brazilian scholars, many of whom also identify as activists. By bringing some new evidence and theoretical perspectives to important questions, the book makes significant contributions to the broader study of race in Latin America. In the end, it merits space on the bookshelves of scholars, policy-makers and even activists interested in racial politics in Brazil and Latin America more generally.
