"Negro is a nickname that the whites gave to the blacks": Discourses on color, race and racism in Rio de Janeiro.
Item
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Title
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"Negro is a nickname that the whites gave to the blacks": Discourses on color, race and racism in Rio de Janeiro.
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Identifier
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AAI9732972
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identifier
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9732972
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Creator
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Sheriff, Robin Elizabeth.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Vincent Crapanzano
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies | Language, Linguistics
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Abstract
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This dissertation, based on twenty months of ethnographic research, differs from previous scholarship on race and racism in Brazil by focusing primarily on the experiences, perspectives and discourses of poor people of color living in a favela, or shantytown. The broader discursive arena is examined through an additional focus on the discourses of middle-class whites living close to the favela and those of militants in Brazil's black consciousness movement. The dissertation makes a significant contribution to the study of "racial classification" in Brazil by investigating how the vocabulary associated with race and color is used in natural settings and by incorporating local understandings of the semantics and social functions of this vocabulary. Race/color terms are used within several distinct registers, including one that requires the use of euphemisms that politely "soften" references to blackness. Although previous researchers have argued that Brazilians do not conceptualize race in bipolar (black-white) terms, poor people of color, because they frequently encounter racialized prejudice and discrimination in their everyday lives, articulate a perception of a bipolar racial divide in their country. Two chapters focus on narratives of encounters with racism; they concern the worlds of work and leisure and the more intimate contexts of family and community. A chapter on middle-class whites suggests that the discourses of "democracia racial"--the belief that racism is not a significant problem in Brazil--remain a dominant idiom through which privileged classes describe their own practices as well as Brazilian national character and culture. A chapter on black activists examines not only the political and intellectual bases of contemporary black movement discourse but also describes the ways in which activists account for their unusual political trajectories. The dissertation concludes by reassessing the cultural significance of the "myth of racial democracy." It is not only its obviously fallacious descriptive claims but also its prescriptive tenets that play a significant role in the construction of racialized practices and discourses in Brazil.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
