Year: 1990
Type: article
Abstract: North American students of slavery and race relations have long used comparative approaches to examine the troubling phenomena of racial discrimination and violence in a society committed to democratic processes and equality.Implicit in these studies is the idea that understanding gained through a comparative perspective will facilitate action to reduce the gap between the ideals and the reality of North American life.Two societies in particular have been studied: South Africa and Brazil. 1 While the example of South Africa has provided insight into aspects of North American culture deplored by most Americans, the example of Brazil has traditionally offered a positive model, one worthy of emulation.Although people of African descent constitute a minority of the population, more Africans were brought to Brazil as slaves, slavery lasted longer, and today more black and brown people reside there than in any other Western Hemisphere nation. 2 Despite the heritage of slavery, Brazil has traditionally been perceived by North Americans and white Brazilians as a social or racial democracy.According to the myth of the racial paradise, slavery was relatively mild in Brazil, relations between masters and bondsmen were softened by extensive miscegenation, slavery was ended without bloodshed, and since abolition in 1888, skin color has played little if any part in social stratification since.3 If there are relatively few dark-skinned Brazilians at the higher levels of society, it simply reflects disadvantages rooted in slavery.Above all, one finds no tradition of racial violence or of Jim Crow.While the image of Brazil as a social democracy is still common in North America and even more so in Brazil, it has been seriously challenged since the end of World War II.In the 1950s UNESCO sponsored a thorough re-examination of Brazilian race relations by international teams of scholars.Though such
Author: David J. Hellwig
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1939186678