Identificación de perspectivas y definición de temas estratégicos

Contemporary scholar Bernardo Sorj in his article The seven faces of Brazilian society (2000) states that, although Brazilian “melting pot” society does not include any form of organized or ideological racism, social inequality in Brazil, which is still vividly present, does come associated with racist practices. As to the main factor of this, Sorj also refers to the specificity of Brazilian culture, which has contributed to a dynamic of tolerance, syncretism and the absorption of differences, without eliminating prejudice in practice and thus resulting in so called “prejudice of not having prejudice” (Sorj, 2000, p.27). Also, some scholars claim that in Brazilian case in particular, even if such prejudice exists it does not involve actual discrimination (Hanchard, 1999; Twine, 1998).

At the same time, many sociologists and historians challenge this view by arguing that the blacks and browns have been suffering systematic discrimination and disadvantages throughout Brazil’s history, although in more hidden and subtle forms (Azevedo, 1966; Fernandes, 1978; Hasenbalg, 1984; Scalon, 2013). According to the 2012 PNAD, average monthly income of white workers was almost twice those of blacks and browns. Among the 1% wealthiest Brazilians, whites constituted 86.3%, while only 12% were blacks and browns. At the same time, among the 10% poorest blacks and browns made 73.9% of the group, and 25.5% were whites (PNAD, 2012). So, the middle class and the elite are almost entirely white, while Brazil`s melting pot exists only among the working class and the poor (Sheriff, 2001).

These disparities between non-whites and whites are visible in education as well. Of just over 14 million illiterates in Brazil, nearly 9 million were black or brown (PNAD, 2012).

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Middle- and upper-class status in Brazil is increasingly based on a university education and non-white Brazilians were rarely found in the country`s top universities (Sheriff, 2001), until beginning of affirmative action in 2001. Several universities have begun to implement racial quotas in order to redress persistent societal racism and as a response to black social movement (Jaccoud, 2009).

Besides being placed in less favorable positions in the class structure in terms of income and education, and being subjected to human rights abuses, including for instance widespread police violence, blacks and browns also experience a greater disadvantage in the labor market, having more precarious jobs. Non-qualified manual sector, which is the least well-paid and prestigious, incorporates almost a third of the black and brown workers (Scalon, 2013).

Moreover, socio-economic data on non-white women participation in the labor market show that compared to white women and non-white men, black and brown women are unequally concentrated in certain low paid jobs in the service industry, such as for instance domestic work (Lovell, 2000). This demonstrates that racial inequality is added to gender inequality. Black women remain in the worst and most vulnerable position in the power hierarchy in Brazilian society. They are below black men who, in turn, occupy lower position than white women, while white men are the most privileged. The same sequence of disparities is present in relation to payment for the same type of work (Werneck, 2010). Carneiro (2011) describes this as patriarchal racism pointing out on greater vulnerability and instability experienced by black women, and the extent of subordination reflecting the combination of racism and sexism.

As the major factor of the marginal position of the black women in Brazilian society and labor market in particular, many scholars traditionally refer to the end of slavery in 1888, which was not accompanied by any measures enabling the ex-slaves to compete on equal terms with the newly-arrived European, Arab and Japanese immigrants (Fausto, 1999) in a forming capitalist society based on paid wages (Levine & Crocitti, 1999). It must be noted that most of the black African slaves, were originally brought from Nigeria, Angola and Benin to the Northeastern regions of the country, and the original indigenous communities were concentrated in the North, while the influx of mostly lighter-skinned immigrants happened predominantly in the South and Southeast of Brazil (Sheriff, 2001). Groups of mainly Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Ukrainian, Japanese, Syrian and Lebanese origin, who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Fausto, 1999), were particularly motivated to come to Brazil because of its immigration policy, which promised to

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provide for each immigrant family a large tract of farm land. Brazil government in its turn sought to populate vast and scarcely inhabited territories in the South with the work force needed for the agricultural expansion and the coffee plantations in Southeast (Sheriff, 2001).

As to the former slaves, after the abolition of slavery they were not employed as wage workers (Levine & Crocitti, 1999). According to Sheriff (2001), this happened because white Brazilian elite did not believe that black ex-slaves were able to develop the country. Also, as Sheriff claims, the elite had the idea of “whitening” Brazil through new immigrant workers and their subsequent miscegenation with the blacks. Thus, non-white ex-slaves, particularly women, were left on the margins of forming labor market. While the paid jobs were mostly offered to the white, for many of the poor and uneducated black and brown women the only possibility was to continue working as domestics in their former masters` homes (Dzidzienyo, 1971).