Race And Multiraciality in Brazil And the United States: Converging Paths?

G. Reginald Daniel " Race And Multiraciality in Brazil And the United States: Converging Paths?"

Pennsylvania State University Press | Pages:384 | 2006-09-30 | ISBN-0271028831 | PDF | 2.9MB

Although both Brazil and the United States inherited European norms that accorded whites privileged status relative to all other racial groups, the development of their societies followed different trajectories in defining white/black relations. In Brazil pervasive miscegenation and the lack of formal legal barriers to racial equality gave the appearance of its being a "racial democracy," with a ternary system of classifying people into whites (brancos), multiracial individuals (pardos), and blacks (pretos) supporting the idea that social inequality was primarily associated with differences in class and culture rather than race. In the United States, by contrast, a binary system distinguishing blacks from whites by reference to the "one-drop rule" of African descent produced a more rigid racial hierarchy in which both legal and informal barriers operated to create socioeconomic disadvantages for blacks.

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