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The Race Construct and Public Opinion: Understanding Brazilian Beliefs about Racial Inequality and Their Determinants

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 406–39

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, thereby affecting antiracist mobilization. This study finds that Brazilians 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 “race” 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
dominant theories for their analysis, suggesting a context-driven approach to theorizing and for antidiscrimination strategizing.

…BRAZILIAN RACIAL ATTITUDES AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL DEMOCRACY
Historical Background

Gilberto Freyre (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 “mixed” blood created degeneracy, Freyre proposed instead that “cross-breeding” produced hybrid vigor in humans, thereby enabling a bright future for the otherwise condemned “dark” Brazilian nation. He emphasized an uncommon flexibility on the part of Portuguese colonizers that made possible extensive miscegenation, and he claimed that “mixed” Brazilians (of three races: Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous) gave birth to a new metarace, constituting a new world in the tropics (Freyre 1959).

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 “anti-racialism” lenses, as opposed to those of “racialism” in the United States (Guimarães 1999)…

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