Expanding Perspectives on Race in Brazil

Abstract

Scholars of race relations in Brazil have turned a critical corner in advancing understanding of the ways in which racial discrimination has been both sustained and challenged. The seven recent publications to be discussed here present methodological and theoretical approaches that challenge two longstanding assumptions: that public institutions not explicitly discriminatory are racially neutral; and that the Afro-Brazilian polity has not participated in the social struggle for racial justice. The emerging views show that the definition of racial systems is implicit in the process of nation 188