Antiracist Discourse in Brazil: From Abolition to Affirmative Action follows Teun A. van Dijk’s earlier studies on racist discourse in Europe, the USA, and Latin America. This book focuses on antiracist discourse, focusing on the history of the discourse against slavery and racism and in favor of abolition and affirmative action in Brazil. After a theoretical chapter on antiracism and antiracist discourse, the author studies Jesuit texts of the 17th and 18th century criticizing the abuses against slaves and the texts of black and white writers in the 19th century advocating abolition. The author analyzes discourses of 20th century scholars, journalists, and activists who explicitly combat prevalent international eugenicist and racist ideologies as well as post-abolition discrimination of black people all while challenging the dominant myth of Brazil as a ‘racial democracy.’ After the historical study of these antiracist discourses, this book offers a detailed case study of contemporary debates on affirmative action in Brazilian parliament.

Antiracism is a global and historical social movement of resistance and solidarity, yet there have been relatively few books focusing on it as a subject in its own right. After his earlier books on racist discourse, Teun A. van Dijk provides a theory of antiracism along with a history of discourse against slavery, racism and antisemitism. He first develops a multidisciplinary theory of antiracism, highlighting especially the role of discourse and cognition as forms of resistance and solidarity. He then covers the history of antiracist discourse, including antislavery and abolition discourse between the 16th and 19th century, antiracist discourse by white and black authors until the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter, and Jewish critical analysis of antisemitic ideas and discourse since the early 19th century. It is essential reading for anyone interested in how racism and antisemitism have been critically analysed and resisted in antislavery and antiracist discourse.

‘No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media’ examines the social phenomenon of construction and dissemination of colonial-like racist discourses fostered against upwardly-mobile black women through disparagement humour on social media platforms, adopting a fresh and innovative perspective. In this book, Luiz Valério P. Trindade explores the idea that disparagement humour might not be as exempt of social impact as the jokers might believe, and that, in fact, this kind of humour reveals the hidden facet of deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society despite being hailed as a unique model of a post-racial society. The author argues that these ideologies establish and naturalise superior social positions and symbolic privileges to whites while undermining and delegitimising black women’s upward social mobility. Social media platforms enable the proponents of these beliefs not only to engage in the practice of online hate speech but also to attract a considerable number of like-minded people, creating a long-lasting echo chamber effect in the cyberspace. This way, they manage to amplify the reach and reverberation of their racist discourses in the online environment in ways not commonly seen in Brazilian offline social contexts. This monograph is of great interest and relevance to students, scholars, and researchers across a variety of disciplines, most notably Critical Race Studies, Media Communication Studies and Critical Humour Studies, and also academics in other areas such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies.

With new momentum, the Brazilian black movement is working to bring attention to and change the situation of structural racism in Brazil. Black consciousness advocates are challenging Afro-Brazilians to define themselves and politically organize around being black, and more Afro-Brazilians are increasingly doing so. Other segments of the Brazilian black movement are working to influence legislation and implement formal mechanisms that aim to promote racial equality, including Affirmative Action Racial Verification Committees. For advocates of these committees, one needs to be phenotypically black enough to be a more likely target of racism to qualify for Affirmative Action programs. Paradoxically, individuals are told to identify as black but only some people are considered black enough to benefit from these policies. Afro-Brazilians are presented with a whole range of identity choices, from how to classify oneself, to whether one votes for political candidates based on shared racial experiences. Between Brown and Black argues that Afro-Brazilian activists’ continued exploration of blackness confronts anti-blackness while complicating understandings of what it means to be black. Blending linguistic and ethnographic accounts, this book raises complex questions about current black struggles in Brazil and beyond, including the black movements’ political initiatives and antiracist agenda.

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.

Since the 1970s there has been a dramatic rise in the Indian population in Brazil as increasing numbers of pardos (individuals of mixed African, European, and indigenous descent) have chosen to identify themselves as Indians. In Racial Revolutions—the first book-length study of racial formation in Brazil that centers on Indianness—Jonathan W. Warren draws on extensive fieldwork and numerous interviews to illuminate the discursive and material forces responsible for this resurgence in the population. The growing number of pardos who claim Indian identity represents a radical shift in the direction of Brazilian racial formation. For centuries, the predominant trend had been for Indians to shed tribal identities in favor of non-Indian ones. Warren argues that many factors—including the reduction of state-sponsored anti-Indian violence, intervention from the Catholic church, and shifts in anthropological thinking about ethnicity—have prompted a reversal of racial aspirations and reimaginings of Indianness. Challenging the current emphasis on blackness in Brazilian antiracist scholarship and activism, Warren demonstrates that Indians in Brazil recognize and oppose racism far more than any other ethnic group. Racial Revolutions fills a number of voids in Latin American scholarship on the politics of race, cultural geography, ethnography, social movements, nation building, and state violence. Designated a John Hope Franklin Center book by the John Hope Franklin Seminar Group on Race, Religion, and Globalization.

Brazil's "comfortable racial contradiction"--"Good" appearances : race, language, and citizenship -- Investing in whiteness: middle-class practices of linguistic discipline -- Fears of racial contact : crime, violence, and the struggle over urban space -- Avoiding blackness : the flip side of boa aparência -- Making the mano : the uncomfortable visibility of blackness in politically conscious Brazilian hip hop -- Conclusion : "seeing" race