Brazilian Racial Politics Essay

The reading provided, extracted from Orpheus and Power by Michael George Hanchard, critiques the Race vs. Class substitution twelvemonth that is widespread in the Brazilian nightclub. By weaving together slightly works of the more renowned analysts and sociologists of the topic, he highlights two main things firstly, the spectacular points of their claims and secondly, the faults in their arguments. By comparing and contrasting two schools of thought on the issue, Class-based and Structuralist, he points out certain weaknesses and the glaring irreconcilability of such thought when employ to the trends in Brazilian frugal society.The subject of Race and Class and their contributions into creating a society wherein oppression has been integrated into indemnity has fueled many debates, more of them still ongoing. While there has not been any theoretical consensus reached, a characteristic that is always attendant in the field of academia, there is however, a fortunate by-produc t in that it has broadened the body of current knowledge to wedge other topics into the countersign such as modes of production and social divergence.It is too interesting to note that the post-World War II era, as represented by the works of Oliver Cox and Stanley Greenberg, show the minimum agreement among scholars that race, at the very least, plays cuts an integral figure in structuring the oppressive social inequality. This makes for a broader, richer and more interesting scholarly debate. Hanchard begins the comparison with a discussion on Economic Determinism and the study of the Negro population in Brazilian society through the written work of unrivaled Florestan Fernandes, Democracia Racial.Fernandes describes the transactionhip between the washcloth elites and the Negroes in Brazilian society as a situation where the agent limit themselves to treating the Negro with gross profit margin, maintaining the old ceremonial politeness in inter-racial dealingships and e xcluding from this tolerance any true egalitarian feeling or content. (Hanchard 32) By articulating the hegemonic personate of the White population over the Black one, he more than hinted at the absence of racial democracy in Brazilian society. Fernandes analyzed the racial interaction of the society a pivotal time in scotch Brazilian history.The importance of his written work may largely be attributed the perfect timing of it. His deconstructions and analysis of Brazilian society then, through interviews and the meeting place of empirical data, did much to further the study of Brazilian racial relations. Moreover, his procedure and significant importance to the field is further underscored by the fact that he was the first to analyze the linkage between race and class in the context of Brazilian socio- economical development. He claimed that the Brazilian Blacks were exploited both during and afterward slavery by uncaring whites.However, in a turn-about, he concludes that th e Afro-Brazilian is dysfunctional, miserable from anomie, hopelessness and immorality and lacked a sense of discipline and responsibility that do them pale in comparison to Italian immigrants for competition in the compass markets. Hanchard, however, took issue with this particular conclusion and rebutted by emphasing the failure of Fernandes missed or misappreciated the important fact that the intervention of big landowners and government officials played a crucial role in creating a marketplace that preferred gray European immigrants.In essence, Fernandes salute fails is that his discussion of the Negro social faecal matter was confined to issues of racial inequality where race itself was autonomous and not an economic variable nor indicator. George Reid Andrews, by using an approach offered by Greenberg, refutes Fernandes claims and forwards his own. Andrews approach fares better than the previously discussed one of Fernandes to the extent that he explored the collusion bet ween the reconcile government and landowners to foster economic development by subsidizing European immigration creating a rocky playing field where the Blacks were the destined losers.He then claims that although slavery played the role of a detrimental throttle in Brazilian socio-economic development, it is but one of many factors to the displacement of Afro-Brazilian workers. He considered state intervention more critical in that policy itself structured the economic oppression by the doling out of development funds in a very preferential treatment to European immigrant workers. Thus, he introduced a very important aspect into the debates that of the material dimension of race and how it structures state policies.At this junction, the theoretical wars began to include a different perspective Structuralist. As the third generation of race relations, this school of thought rebuts and debunks the racial democracy myth proposed by their predecessors. Carlos Hasenblag and Nelson Do Valle Silva are two of the more or less prominent figures in this approach that does not treat race and class as being on opposing ends of the same spectrum but sooner they situated racial inequality at the very heart of socio-economic relations and the development and trends of the labour market.Harchand, however, critically points out that although there was a discussion of racial inequality, there was virtually no explanation offered how such inequality id politically constructed or even contested. Despite the conceptual differences between the Reductionists and Structuralists, the tendencies seemed to defend about one crucial dimension of Brazilian race relations a dimension that seemed to distinguish Afro-Brazilians from their US counterparts a lack of bodied awareness of themselves as a subordinated racial group. (Hanchard 41) By analyzing the theories at hand, one thing is clear the need for a better-tailored conceptual framework to be used as a guide for racially equal po licy making. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. In an effort to stop the mentality of finger-pointing to the preponderating white, what has the different Afro-Brazilian social movements done, or at least attempted to operate about, in order to cook up the racial inequality with regard to economic policy and labour markets? 2. What are some concrete state policies, same(p) the Black Economic Empowerment Movement of South Africa, that can correct this historical injustice?