Social history in Brazil sees racial democracy as a less discriminatory set of relationships between the three major races in the Americas - indigenous peoples, invading Europeans and co-opted Africans - than exists in, for example, the United States. The concept is first found in the works of Gilberto Freyre and it is perhaps significant that the idea was called into question by non-Brazilian writers, Thomas Skidmore and Michael Hanchard, who saw the idea of racial democracy as a kind of confidence trick or mask used by the white elite to conceal their evil machinations in keeping themselves in power.
This revisionist thinking was carried on by Brazilians such as Florestan Fernandes who, along with other doubters, seized upon Freyre's assertion that continued miscegenation would lead to the desirable 'whitening' of the Brazilian people, an idea they denounced as racist. Black activists in Brazil have added their voices to criticisms of racial democracy as part of their move to achieve various forms of compensation for centuries of subjugation.
It is worth pointing out in passing that Brazilians are obsessed with the idea of skin colour. After the 1980 Census The historian Clovis Moura collected the responses of non-white Brazilians describing the colour of their own skin; 125 different words or phrases were used. In colonial Brazil there was a whole vocabulary describing the various combinations of the three ethnic groups, together with paintings showing examples. Mixing whites with indians produces the caboclo or mameluco; indians and black people produce cafusos, and whites and black people produce mulatos. Subsequently, of course, we have the mixing of caboclos and cafusos, mulatos and caboclos, each new group being given a name and its members answering to one of the 125 descriptors in the Census
This has obvious results for the developing nation:
- In social terms, obviously, during the colonial period and after, the lighter the shade of skin the higher up the social scale an individual was.
- In ethnic terms, individuals feel it is important to be able to locate themselves in a group where they feel they belong, so if you are not white nor completely black, you form a subgroup with similar individuals and create an identity.
- In spiritual terms Brazilians have also had to identify themselves, first with either the Catholic church or Afro-Brazilian religions, later with other religious subdivisions.
The original Portuguese colonisers arrived in Brazil with a series of problems arising out of racial conflict. They had come from an Iberian Peninsula that had only recently ejected its Arab colonisers; their proximity to Africa meant constant conflict with pirates and corsairs, and the demands of constructing an empire with a ridiculously small number of people to administer it involved creating a myth of racial superiority. On the other hand very few Portuguese women accompanied their men on this long and dangerous voyage and from the portraits we have of them it is little wonder their menfolk rapidly turned to indigenous women or black slaves for sexual solace. It comes as no surprise at all that the unattached male colonisers should do this as a matter of course.
Obviously, in colonial Brazil and the familiar underdeveloped Brazil of recent memory the small group at the top of the social pyramid were lighter in colour and through a rigid system of dynastic union they remained so. This did not prevent, as it never prevents in any society, young men of ‘good’ families from procreating among the lower orders as well as with their wives. Also of course, those lower orders themselves procreated happily with everyone else - except the unfortunate white ladies in high society, producing caboclos, cafusos and mamelucos in great profusion.
Is there anything sinister in the fact that the white elite retained most of the nation's land and wealth? Consider that in contemporary Britain, a more or less developed society, 1% of the population still owns 21% of the wealth and certain members of that 1% can trace their ancestry a considerable distance into the past. Does anyone claim that the ‘vibrant face of the new multicultural Britain’ is a cunning ploy or a devilish mask to conceal the activities of British landowners and bankers to keep the lower orders in their place?
No, the point about Brazil's racial democracy is that it does not matter whether it is a myth or not. If it truly reflects the state of affairs, all well and good; if it is a myth, it is one that should be allowed to work. Whatever one's views of organised religion today, we must surely agree that the myths of Christianity slowly brought Europe out of the savagery of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. Until Britain plunged back into those Dark Ages under Thatcher and Blair, the myth of the English gentleman, created in the private schools that trained men to run the Empire, actually produced people who could act in a civilised way towards all social classes and races, not simply their own.
To make the conclusion from a personal point of view, I look at Brazilian society as a foreigner who mixes with both the elite and the proletariat, and after 17 years of this interaction I feel the myth of racial democracy has become a reality, whatever the sociologists say. As in any society, there are many reasons for disliking many people here (let's start with sound engineers at public spectacles whose only concept of volume control is ‘maximum’) and yet it is totally unacceptable in Brazil to base dislike or discrimination upon ethnic generalisation.
Finally, there are two extra points if you have the patience to stay with me. Firstly, we have looked at this question in terms of the three ‘traditional’ ethnic groups in Brazil, as is usually done. It is also worth noting how a totally exotic group – rural Japanese immigrants - first arrived in Brazil 100 years ago and have been integrated into a society completely different from the one they came from. Also, if we look at a great cultural conflict between ethnic groups in other parts of the world - that between Arabs and Jews - is it is Brazil's proud boast and, as far as I can see, a valid one, that in this country representatives of both groups live and work together quite happily.
The other ancillary point to make is a more depressing one. As part of the understandable desire of representatives of black Brazilians (although as we have seen, it is actually rather difficult to define a truly ‘black’ Brazilian) to improve their lot, the natural tendency towards hysteria of the governing Workers Party has been swept up by enthusiasm for creating quotas for black students at universities. I have just retired from a university that had begun to institute this system and observed it with interest. - Firstly, the pedagogical question was ignored: if a group of students lacks the background or intelligence to pass the entrance examinations, what remedial educational resources are made available to bring them to the level of those who did pass? Answer came there none.
- Secondly, who is actually ‘black’ in Brazil? The answer I was given by a black activist was: "Anyone who says they are". And this indeed was the case; a student wishing to enter university on the quota system submitted a photograph to a ‘colour committee' which, had it existed in South Africa under apartheid would have been denounced worldwide. Members of this committee decided who was sufficiently ‘black’ to benefit from the quota system and there actually was a case in my university of identical twins who submitted photographs, one of whom was accepted while the other was rejected.
- Thirdly, why was this system only applied to ‘black’ students and not, for example to underprivileged ‘white’ students? Why did it not apply to the descendants of the Japanese or Italian immigrants who, while they did not arrive as slaves, in many cases came with not much more than the clothes on their backs and precious little education from their homeland?
The sad conclusion we may draw from the quota system is that it is actually creating prejudice that may not have existed previously. There is animosity towards a system that is seen to favour one group as a condition of the colour of the skin of its members.
To finish, I recall a scene one night in Belém do Pará in the northeast of Brazil. A group of small businessmen and women were holding a meeting to discuss the division of sales areas. They represented every shade of skin colour you could wish to see and the chairperson and organiser was a dynamic young female. This, you might think, is the bright future of vibrant, multicultural modern Brazil, except that the group consisted of street children no older than 10 gathered on a rainy thoroughfare to sell sweets to strangers. Cheap tricks of social engineering like quota systems will not solve this problem. Provide decent people with decent education and decent job opportunities and racial democracy will look after itself.
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