Racism in a Racial Democracy

In Racism in a Racial Democracy, France Winddance Twine asks why Brazilians, particularly Afro-Brazilians, continue to have faith in Brazil's "racial democracy" in the face of pervasive racism in all spheres of Brazilian life. Through a detailed ethnography, Twine provides a cultural analysis of the everyday discursive and material practices that sustain and naturalize white supremacy.

This is the first ethnographic study of racism in southeastern Brazil to place the practices of upwardly mobile Afro-Brazilians at the center of analysis. Based on extensive field research and more than fifty life histories with Afro- and Euro-Brazilians, this book analyzes how Brazilians conceptualize and respond to racial disparities. Twine illuminates the obstacles Brazilian activists face when attempting to generate grassroots support for an antiracist movement among the majority of working class Brazilians. Anyone interested in racism and antiracism in Latin America will find this book compelling.

"This wonderfully engaging study explodes the myth of racial democracy in a pathbreaking analysis of Brazilian style." -- Karen Brodkin, author of How Jews Became White Folks

"Twine offers one of the most sophisticated analyses to date of the intransigence of Brazilian racism. Her nuanced account of the complex interplay of gender, race, and class is particularly exciting. This book will have a powerful impact not only on the field of Brazilian racial studies, but on the whole burgeoning literature on the African Diaspora." -- Howard Winant, author of Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons

"A revealing and sharply observed dissection of how racism works 'on the ground' in Brazil." -- George Reid Andrews, author of Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988

France Winddance Twine is an associate professor of international studies at the University of Washington in Seattle and an associate professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara.