Race in another America : the significance of skin color in Brazil

419 Pages·2006·4.08 MB·English

by  Telles

RACE IN ANOTHER AMERICA
RACE IN ANOTHER AMERICA
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SKIN COLOR IN
BRAZIL
E E. T
DWARD ELLES
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS · PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2004 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41
William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire
OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
Second printing, and first paperback printing, 2006
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12792-7
Paperback ISBN-10: 0-691-12792-1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Telles, Edward
Eric, 1956– Race in another America : the significance of skin color in Brazil / Edward E. Telles.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 0-691-11866-3 (cl : alk. paper) 1. Brazil—Race relations. 2. Racism—Brazil—History. 3.
Miscegenation— Brazil—History. 4. Blacks—Race identity—Brazil. 5. Race discrimination—Law
and legislation—Brazil. I. Title.
F2659.A1T45 2004
305.896’081—dc22 2004044288
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon
Typeface Printed on acid-free paper.∞
pup.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
CHAPTER ONE
1
Introduction
CHAPTER TWO
24
From White Supremacy to Racial Democracy
CHAPTER THREE
47
From Racial Democracy to Affirmative Action
CHAPTER FOUR
78
Racial Classification
CHAPTER FIVE
107
Racial Inequality and Development
CHAPTER SIX
139
Racial Discrimination
CHAPTER SEVEN
173
Intermarriage
CHAPTER EIGHT
194
Residential Segregation
CHAPTER NINE
215
Rethinking Brazilian Race Relations
CHAPTER TEN
239
Designing Appropriate Policies
NOTES 271
REFERENCES 293
INDEX 309
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A
LTHOUGH I began writing this book in 2001, I had been thinking and
writing about race in Brazil for at least a decade before that. Along the
way, I have accumulated many debts to people who have influenced my
thinking, many more than I can possibly thank in these pages. They
range from academics to black-movement leaders to everyday Brazilians.
Although I was previously interested in migration and urban poverty, I
first gave the issue of race in Brazil serious thought in 1989–1990 when
I went to Brazil as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the invitation of
Vilmar Faria in Population Studies at the State University of Campinas.
At that time, I began reading and discussing these issues with Octavio
Ianni and Elide Ruggai Bastos in Campinas and on a couple of occasions,
when I could escape to Rio, with Carlos Hasenbalg and Nelson do Valle
Silva. By the end of my stay, I decided I would begin analyzing the
Brazilian government’s newly available microdata on race.
Although I returned to teaching at UCLA in late 1990, I often returned
to Brazil, mostly because of my binational relationship with Ana Maria
Goldani. Of course, research reasons were also important. My research
included a trip in 1993, when Ianni, Hasenbalg, Antonio Sergio
Guimarães, and I met to plan a national survey of racial attitudes in
Brazil, and another in 1994 as a Fulbright Fellow at the Federal
University of Bahia. The Fulbright posting brought me into contact with
the emerging Bahian school of race relations.
From 1997 to 2000, I was fortunate to be at the Ford Foundation in
Rio de Janeiro. My position as program officer in human rights gave me
a bird’s-eye view of the tremendous changes in Brazilian racial politics,
where I had tremendous access to black-movement and other civil-
society leaders throughout Brazil, as well as to leading government
officials and academics. I thank the black-movement leaders who often
opened up their world for me to see and taught me to see their own
Brazilian experience. Prominent among them were Sueli Carneiro, Ivanir
dos Santos, Romero Rodriguez, Abdias do Nascimento, Sergio Martins,
Edson Cardoso, Hedio Silva Jr., Maria Aparecida Bento, Helio Santos,
Gilberto Leal, João Carlos Nogueira, Dora Lucia Lima de Bertulio, Ivair
Alves dos Santos, Diva Moreira, and Samuel Vida. When I could steal
time away from my bureaucratic duties, sporadic discussions with
scholars at various Brazilian universities, including the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro and Candido Mendes, also enriched my
understandings of Brazilian race relations. Chief among these scholars
were Antonio Sérgio Guimarães, Livio Sansone, João Reis, and Jocélio
Teles dos Santos, my former colleagues in Bahia. I also owe thanks to a
wonderful set of colleagues at the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro,
which included Nigel Brooke, Sarah Costa, Elizabeth Leeds, José Gabriel
Lopez, and Ondina Leal, as well as my New York friends at the
foundation, particularly Alan Jenkins and Anthony Romero. Janice
Rocha, my secretary at Ford, deserves special mention for much needed
help in organizing my professional life and putting up with me. Special
thanks go to Brad Smith, who brought me into the Ford fold and gave
me a grant upon my departure to help free up some teaching time at
UCLA to work on this book and relieve the trauma of returning to
academia.
Having little knowledge of formal human rights before I took my
position as the human rights program officer, I owe lots to James
Cavallaro, who taught me about the state of human rights abuses and
the law in Brazil and internationally. He continues to help me
understand human rights issues, and he and his family have become dear
friends. On the leisure side, special thanks to Jim, Gabe, and other
friends for engaging me on the squash and basketball courts and then
toasting to those games. Special thanks go to Joaquim Barbosa Gomes,
whom I befriended in Rio and who later came as a visiting scholar to
UCLA. He explained the intricate Brazilian legal system, but to avoid
embarrassment, I refused his invitations to play futebol. Our comradeship
in Los Angeles was abruptly but happily cut short when he suddenly
departed to Brasília, where he became the first negro justice of the
Brazilian Supreme Court in its 174 years. My family and I are especially
grateful to Eduardo and Luche Slerca and their kids for opening up their
own family lives to us, helping to make Rio de Janeiro genuinely home.
While in Brazil, I was fortunate to have a National Science Foundation
grant to help me with my research on Brazilian racial classification,
which I began at UCLA before going to Rio de Janeiro. Although I
completed the research I had planned on racial classification, the grant
also helped me to begin thinking and do some preliminary research
about a more ambitious project on Brazilian race relations, which would
turn into this book. At the time, my own work on the project was mostly
scribbling down ideas inspired by conversations with my grantees and
occasional reading. Later, as I better defined my analyses, Antonio Duran
helped me generate the necessary data. He was extremely
knowledgeable about the intricacies of manipulating IBGE data, and his
results were extremely reliable.
When I began writing the book after returning to the United States
again, Sam Cohn was especially important for making me rethink my
assumptions about how to produce a workable book. Walter Allen, Jorge
Balán, Harley Browning, David López, Peter Lownds, José Moya,
Alejandro Portes, and Mark Sawyer read earlier versions of this
manuscript and gave me valuable suggestions on drafts that I was later
embarrassed to have given them. Michael Hanchard, Tom Skidmore,
Roger Waldinger, and Howard Winant gave me especially detailed
comments, which I greatly appreciate. Somewhere during those
revisions, I translated and published a version in Portuguese, which has
become a reference in Brazil’s current social policy debate (Racismo à
Brasileira: Uma Nova Perspectiva Sociológica. 2003. Rio de Janeiro:
Relume Dumará). The English version has come a ways since then,
thanks largely to the patience, professionalism, and enthusiasm of my
Princeton editor, Ian Malcolm.
Other colleagues that stimulated my thinking at several points include
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Michael Mitchell, Michael Turner, Anani
Dzidzenyo, Bryan Roberts, Charles Wood, Mark Fosset, Aziza Khazoom,
Ray Rocco, Seth Rascussen, Stan Lieberson, and Michelle Lamont. I also
thank Ciro Biderman for the map of São Paulo, Luis Cesar Ribeiro for the
map of Rio de Janeiro, and the Leroy Nieman Center at UCLA for getting
them into publishable format. Aida Verdugo Lazo also made some last-
minute calculations of IBGE data for me. Humberto Adami and Katia
Mello have kept me apprised of Brazilian events since my return.
I was especially fortunate to have a graduate research assistant,
Cristina Sue, who worked beyond the call of duty, crunching numbers,
creating tables, editing, typing, and retyping my endless corrections.
Another graduate student, Stan Bailey, graduated shortly after my return
but I thank him for our lively conversations in Brazil and upon my
return. Overall, I have been lucky to have excellent graduate students
and colleagues at UCLA, who have further stimulated my thoughts.
Unfortunately, my mother and father passed away in recent years and
were not able to see the outcome of my (and thus their) efforts. I thank
them for raising me and always being extremely supportive. My wife,
Ana Maria, forced me to clarify my thinking, cast aside my North
American blinders, and think big. She had left her university position in
Brazil to come to Los Angeles, after our daughter Julia was born. For
this, I am forever grateful. My daughter Julia has always encouraged me
to get plenty of playtime with her, although I am sure it was never
enough. I hope that someday she will read this book and perhaps find it
interesting. To Ana Maria and Julia, I dedicate this book. I hope that in
some small way it helps to improve human relations in their native
Brazil.