Racial democracy () is a concept that denies the existence of racism in Brazil. Some scholars of race relations in Brazil argue that the country has escaped racism and racial discrimination. Those researchers cite the fact that most Brazilians claim not to view others through the lens of race, and thus the idea of racial discrimination is irrelevant.
Many sociologists and anthropologists, however, view the idea of racial democracy as myth or ideology that seeks to validate the ideal that Brazil is a place where people of all races can participate in society equally. They instead emphasize the compelling evidence of inequalities motivated by racism as well as cultural, social, and political structures that privilege white Brazilians.Nascimento, Abdias do. "Racial democracy: myth or reality?" Geledés, 20 April 2009Sanz, Beatriz & Rodrigues, Paula. "The myth of racial paradise: The idea of racial democracy was widely adopted by post-slavery Brazil and helps explain current racism". Ecoa / UOL, 12 June 2020, special reports seriesD'Adesky, Jacques. "The ideology of racial democracy on the threshold of universalist anti-racism". In: Revista de Comunicação e Cultura Semiosfera, 2005 (5)
History
It was a common view among Brazilian elites, from the end of the Second Reign until the beginning of the Republic, that Brazil had escaped the problem of racial prejudice, based on the theory that in Brazil there had been a kind of mild slavery and harmony between masters and slaves. It was also common to compare the racial situation observed in the United States at that time with the image that was formed of the national reality, concluding that in Brazil black people were treated much better.Silva, Mateus Lôbo de Aquino Moura e. "Casa-grande & senzala e o mito da democracia racial". In: 39º Encontro Anual da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais. Caxambu, 26–30 October 2015
But this was not true, and several authors contested this view already in the 19th century. Later research reaffirmed the falsity of the ideas of social harmony and mild slavery, showing how black people lived in rustic and often unhealthy housing, performed heavy labor in long working hours, received little medical assistance and low-quality food, and were systematically abused physically, morally, psychologically and sexually. Resistance to domination frequently resulted in brutal repression with humiliations and severe physical punishments that often led to mutilation, deformation, disfigurement or death.Queiroz, Suely Robles Reis de. "Brandura da escravidão brasileira: mito ou realidade". In: Revista de História — USP, 1975, 52 (103)Nogueira, Luiz Fernando Veloso. "Expectativa de vida e mortalidade de escravos: Uma análise da Freguesia do Divino Espírito Santo do Lamim – MG (1859-1888)". In: Revista Histórica, 2011 (51)Amantino, Márcia. "As condições físicas e de saúde dos escravos fugitivos anunciados no Jornal do Commercio (RJ) em 1850". In: História, Ciências, Saúde — Manguinhos, 2007; 14 (4)Boff, Leonardo. "A história foi escrita pela mão branca". Revista do Instituto Humanitas — Unisinos, 16 January 2020 As noted by Leonardo Boff, "history was written by the white hand".
At the same time, the whitening of the Brazilian population was desired, supported by theories of eugenics and selective miscegenation and implemented through state colonization programs with populations of European immigrants.Seyferth, Giralda. "Colonização, imigração e a questão racial no Brasil". In: 25º Encontro Anual da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais. Caxambu, 16–20 October 2001Vainfas, Ronaldo. Dicionário do Brasil Imperial. Objetiva, 2002, p. 152 The whitening theory was regarded as a scientific truth and was widely disseminated until the mid-20th century.Ennes, Marcelo Alario. "Imigração e Direitos na Região Noroeste Paulista". In: Estudos de Sociologia — Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia da UFPE, 2008; 12 (1): 58–59 It was based on the presumption of white superiority, understanding miscegenation as a way to make the population lighter, based on the belief that the gene of the white race would prevail over the others and that people in general would seek partners lighter than themselves. Thus it was asserted that whitening would produce a healthy mixed-race population capable of becoming ever whiter, both culturally and physically. For this reason, the ideal of miscegenation was seen as an effective mechanism for the absorption of the mestizo and the long-term elimination of traits of the black ethnic group in the population. The objective of these mechanisms was neither to promote the social advancement of a certain portion of blacks and mulattos nor to establish racial equality, but, on the contrary, to preserve the hegemony of the dominant race. Reflecting the aforementioned ideal, João Batista de Lacerda, director of the National Museum, and the only Latin American to present a report at the First Universal Races Congress in London in 1911, went so far as to state:
"In Brazil one has already seen children of mixed-race individuals presenting, in the third generation, all the physical characteristics of the white race [...]. Some retain a few traces of their black ancestry through the influence of atavism [...] but the influence of sexual selection [...] tends to neutralize that of atavism and remove from the descendants of mixed-race individuals all the traits of the black race [...] By virtue of this process of ethnic reduction, it is logical to expect that in the course of another century the mixed-race population will have disappeared from Brazil. This will coincide with the parallel extinction of the black race in our midst".
Martiniano Silva explains that miscegenation is an ancient process of ethnic and cultural enrichment of peoples, capable of producing civilizations, and that it occurs spontaneously. He states that historically racial miscegenation in Brazil "was never treated and never existed as a free, spontaneous, and therefore natural process of union between two peoples". On the contrary, the black woman was exploited, dishonored and morally and sexually violated through forced unions imposed by fear and insecurity, producing children conceived without a legally recognized father, remaining in the status of slaves, thus producing no racial and cultural enrichment of any civilization. He concludes by saying that one must not confuse the discharacterization of a people through sexual violence with the myth of a racial democracy. However, there are numerous cases of black women married to white men, black women who slept with masters on their own initiative, and black women treated like princesses by white masters. What was not very common during the period were black men with white women.
The myth of racial democracy also gained strength from narratives pointing to the existence of many successful mixed-race individuals, but ignored the fact that these cases were a small minority and concealed a reality of discrimination even among mixed-race people, who, in view of the heavy burden of prejudices that fell upon blacks, often tried to hide their origins or deny them as a strategy for social survival. In this context, mixed-race individuals were often more or less accepted by white society by identifying them as "blacks with a white soul", which fit into the ideologies of population whitening.Bernardino, Joaze. "Ação Afirmativa e a Rediscussão do Mito da Democracia Racial no Brasil". In: Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, 2002; 24 (2)
However, according to the sociologist Oracy Nogueira, one of the first scholars of racism in Brazil, the presence of mixed-race individuals in the middle classes in Brazil is extremely widespread, yet the great majority of these people neither perceive themselves nor are perceived as mixed-race, but rather as white.
When it was observed that even after the abolition of slavery in 1888 blacks and pardos remained in an inferior situation, it was justified by saying that, since the legal impediments to their advancement had been dissolved and since in Brazil there was no prejudice, if success did not occur it was due to their own fault, reiterating racist ideologies that viewed the black person as lazy, morally degraded, averse to work, ignorant, intellectually inferior and incapable of taking advantage of the opportunities that opened up. In the words of Petrônio Domingues, "according to this conception, the black person would come to conceive freedom as the opposite of work. Freedom as the opposite of responsibility. Freedom as the opposite of discipline. In addition, scientific racism endorsed the hypothesis according to which such deficiencies were more biological than cultural in nature". This scientistic discourse exempted former slave masters and the state from responsibility for the situation of blacks and gained official status, and its propaganda was so efficient that it was accepted even by part of the black and mixed-race population.Domingues, Petrônio José. "O mito da democracia racial e a mestiçagem em São Paulo no pós-abolição (1889-1930)". In: Revista Tempos Históricos, 2003–2004; 5–6
With the work Casa-Grande & Senzala (1933), by the historian and sociologist Gilberto Freyre, the theories of racial democracy and social harmony were systematized and gained prominence in reaffirming an idyllic image of Brazilian reality. Although the author did not deny the existence of violence and inequality, he tended to describe them as circumstantial rather than fundamental, and gave greater importance to the contribution of blacks and indigenous peoples to culture and to miscegenation itself in the formation of the population as a dynamic, adaptive, democratizing and non-conflictual process that tended to balance antagonisms.Costa, Valeriano Mendes Ferreira. "Vertentes democráticas em Gilberto Freyre e Sérgio Buarque". In: Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política, 1992 (26) According to Clóvis Moura, Gilberto Freyre characterized slavery in Brazil as composed of flexible masters and conforming slaves. Freyre's myth of the "good master" would be an attempt to interpret the contradictions of slavery as an unimportant episode that would not have the power to nullify the supposed harmony between masters and slaves.Barros, Adelson Florêncio de & Silveira, Regina Célia Pagliuchi da. "O papel da negra escrava e sua representação como objeto sexual no nordeste patriarcal-escravocrata a partir da obra Casa Grande & Senzala". In: Soares, Neiva M. M. & Almeida, Socorro Viana de (orgs.). Percursos semióticos e discursivos em gêneros textuais contemporâneos. Letra Capital, 2020 The work received immediate acclaim from a significant part of the intelligentsia, but soon also began to be criticized as a fanciful reading of the national past, while some critics understood it as a utopian project of a profoundly racist society.
During the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985) the myth of racial democracy was once again emphasized, as the government understood struggles against discrimination as a threat to the project of maintaining order, social peace and national security. The manual of the Escola Superior de Guerra included black movements among the agents of "antagonism", considering that they could introduce "subversive" ideas of incitement to hatred or racism in the country. Black movements were monitored, repressed and persecuted, and after the institution of the AI-5 meetings of activist groups became practically impossible.Ribeiro, Tairane & Ribeiro, Gabriel. "Somos todos miscigenados? O mito da democracia racial imposta no período da ditadura civil-militar no Brasil". In: Ofícios de Clio, 2016; 1 (1)
Present day