African-American Visions of Brazil, 1900-2000

Abstract

This essay examines how African-American visitors to Brazil wrote and thought about that country’s racial situation over the course of the 1900s. During the first half of the century, African-American visitors were more likely to see Brazil as a successful racial democracy, a society in which blacks, browns, and whites lived together on conditions of racial harmony and equality. During the second half of the century, African-American views of Brazil became much more critical, with some writers arguing that the ideology of racial democracy was itself a principal obstacle to the achievement of genuine racial equality. The article argues that this shift in views was in large part a reflection of African-Americans’ judgments about their own society. During the first half of the century, racial violence and oppression were so extreme in the United States that Brazil looked good by comparison. As the United States turned away from racial segregation in the second half of the century and adopted policies aimed at reducing racial inequality, African-Americans became increasingly critical of Brazil’s failure to adopt similar policies or to follow US-based models of black political mobilization.