Historically, the myth has grown up of Brazil as a racial democracy, despite its marginalisation of its substantial Black population, and the writing out of the Black presence from the national narrative. This article seeks to analyse the extremist political position of Jair Bolsonaro in relation to the Black population of Brazil, within the context of the historical trajectory of official discourses surrounding the question of race. The current far-right president has made racist statements throughout his political career, during his campaign and as president. These are framed here within a broader perspective, relating their content to other views of the state, its agents and its ideologues concerning the Black presence in Brazil since the nineteenth century, at the time of the Brazilian Empire and the struggles by Black organisations to assert their place in the nation.
Despite its focus on the United States, George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), offers an interesting description of the alt-right.
Espirito Sanro, 1 August 2018, quoted in Indigenistas Associados, quoted in ‘What Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, has said about Brazil’s indigenous peoples’, Survival International, https://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3540-Bolsonaro.
7.
Joseli Maria Nunes Mendonça, Entre a mão e os anéis (Campinas: Editora Unicamp, 2008), Chapter 3 in particular.
8.
Blackburn summarises the argument against a schematic interpretation of the end of slavery, not only in Brazil, in the following passage: ‘In each of these cases slavery was politically vulnerable not economically unprofitable; and in a politically viable slave system the slave-owner’s natural response to poor profits was not emancipation but the sale of surplus slaves to more dynamic sectors of the slave economy. Slave emancipation was put on the agenda by englobing political crises and social contestation.’ Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery (1776-1848) (London, New York: Verso, 2011), pp. 520, 521.
9.
Regarding the economic and political factors of abolition, see, among others: Emila Viotti da Costa, A Abolição (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2008); Sidney Chaloub, Visões da Liberdade: uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na corte (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990); RobertConrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888 (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972). On the abolitionist movement in Brazil, see AngelaAlonso, Flores, votos e balas: o movimento abolicionista brasileiro (1868–1888) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2016).
10.
BenedictAnderson, Imagined Communities: reflexions on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, New York: Verso, 2006).
11.
Manoel Luís Salgado Guimarães, ‘Nação e civilização nos trópicos: o Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro e o Projeto de uma História Nacional’, Estudos históricos1 (1998), pp. 5–27.
12.
Celia Maria Marinho de Azevedo, Onda negra, medo branco: o negro no imaginário das elites: século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1987).
13.
On the generation of 1870, see AngelaAlonso, Ideias em movimento: a geração de 1870 na crise do Brasil-Império (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002).
14.
LiliaSchwarcz, O espetáculo das raças: cientistas e questão racial no Brasil 1879-1930 (Cidade: Companhia das Letras, 1993), p. 13. Translated by the author.
15.
GilbertoFreyre, The Masters and the Slaves: a study in the development of Brazilian civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 278.
16.
MichaelGeorge Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: the ‘Movimento Negro’ of Rio and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945–1988 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 52.
17.
Concerning the relation between theoretical and ideological positions in the work of Freyre and his political articulation during that period, see GustavoMesquita, Gilberto Freyre e o Estado Novo: Região, nação e modernidade (São Paulo: Global Editora, 2018).
18.
Getúlio Vargas was president of Brazil from 1930 to 1945 and 1951 to 1954. In 1937 he carried out a coup and installed a dictatorship lasting until 1945, a period known as ‘Estado Novo’.
19.
Gabrieledos Anjos, ‘A questão da “cor” ou “raça” nos censos nacionais’, Indic.Econ.FEE, Porto Alegre41, no. 1 (2013), pp. 103–18.
20.
PetronioDomingues, ‘Movimento negro brasileiro: alguns apontamentos históricos’, Tempo12, no. 23 (2007), pp. 100–22.
21.
‘Black Soul, while a more popular manifestation of identity-politics [in comparison to the Movimento Negro Unificado] and cultural articulation, never really left the confines of the dance hall. As such, it was both an expression of resistance and a form of commodified leisure that was ultimately appropriated for mass production, circulation, and consumption.’Hanchard, Orpheus and Power.
22.
AmilcarAraújo Pereira, O mundo negro: relações raciais e constituição do Movimento Negro contemporâneo no Brasil (Pallas Editora, 2013), in particular Chapter 3, ‘Influências externas e o movimento negro Contemporâneo no Brasil’.
23.
Law No. 1,390 was the first law passed against racial discrimination, enacted in 1951. Known as the Afonso Arinos Law, it called for equal treatment before the law and stipulated punishment for commercial establishments that discriminated against Black people. However, its effects were more symbolic than real. Article 5, item XLII of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 is considerably more rigorous and prescribes prison sentences for racism. Racial abuse is typified in the penal code. The contradictions of race relations in Brazil and the racist character of the Brazilian judicial system greatly limit the practical effects of this law. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, for example, only 244 cases were judged in thirty years.
24.
Sales Augusto dos Santos shows how the initiatives of the FHC government in launching an institutional debate with the aim of creating measures for fighting racism were the direct result of a popular movement that sought those objectives; in particular, the preparations for and the march on November 20. We can cite, for example, the lack of support from the FHC government for a 1995 bill presented by former opposition senator Benedita da Silva (Workers Party – Rio de Janeiro). The bill sought to guarantee a quota of ‘at least 10% of admissions in federal, state, and municipal public and private institutions of higher education for ethnic-racial minority groups’. Among the measures adopted by the government as a result of the march in Brasilia in 1995 was the creation of the Grupo de Trabalho Interministerial para a Valorização da População Negra (GTI), although it did not possess independent funding. According to Sales, ‘[a]s a technical body incapable of carrying out its functions and having inadequate infrastructure, the GTI fell short of the initially outlined possibilities’. Sales Augusto dos Santos, ‘Ações afirmativas nos Governos FHC e Lula: um Balanço’, Revista Tomo24 (2014).
25.
In relation to the disputes surrounding the multiple interpretations of race relations in Brazil and its influences and representations in the debate concerning affirmative action policies in Brazil, see CarolinaCantarino Rodrigues, Políticas de ação afirmativa e o embate entre representações sobre as relações raciais no Brasil (PhD Thesis, 2004), https://www.unicamp.br.
26.
The Secretary for Policies for the Advancement of Racial Equality was created in 2003 with the passing of law 10.678 on 23 May 2003. It was passed on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, instituted by the United Nations in memory of the Sharpeville Massacre. During its first ten years, its main measures were laws 12.711 of August 2012, which instituted racial quotas for federal institutions of higher education, and the establishment of the Racial Equality Statute in 2010. The ‘quota law’ of 2012 mandated that 50 per cent of all university places in federal universities be reserved for students from public secondary schools. Within this 50 per cent, 25 per cent are set aside for low-income students, and within this a further sub-quota is reserved for self-identifying Black, brown or indigenous students. In 2014 affirmative action was extended to federal public employment with a law mandating that 20 per cent of federal civil servant posts be reserved for Black or brown candidates (http://monitoracism.eu/the-rise-of-bolsorano).
The following articles exemplify the debate surrounding the characterisation of June 2013: André Singer, ‘Brasil, junho de 2013’, Novos Estudos97 (2013), pp. 23–40. Singer emphasises the discontentment among the middle class in relation to rising living costs. Braga, on the other hand, in ‘As jornadas de junho no Brasil: Crônica de um mês inesquecível’, Observatório Social de América Latina34 (2013), sees the source of discontentment in the precariously-employed working-class youth, many of whom are the first in their families to access higher education.
30.
Between 2005 and 2015 the income of the poorest 10 per cent rose 129 per cent above inflation rates.Median income in Brazil increased from R$ 530 to R$ 788, an increase of 48.67 per cent when accounting for inflation (see http://temas.folha.uol.com.br/pt-13/especial-pt-13/pt-13-anos-na-presidencia.shtml). This, however, took place while extreme income inequality was perpetuated, shown by an increase of less than 2 per cent from 2005 to 2015 in the share of the population over 10 years of age earning more than the minimum wage (see https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv98965.pdf).
31.
Such a phenomenon sparked a debate in academia and the press surrounding the possibility of the middle class becoming the majority in Brazil. Much research was carried out in relation to this topic, among which we have selected the following, presenting different points of view and conclusions: Bolivar Lamounier and Amaury Souza, A classe média brasileira: ambições, valores e projetos de sociedade (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Elsevier, 2009), which attests to the growth of the middle class in Brazil through stratified analysis; AndréSinger, Os sentidos do lulismo: reforma gradual e pacto conservador (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012), in which the author analyses the growth of the middle class amidst changes in wide reaching policies during the Lula government; and Marcio Pochmann, Nova classe media: o trabalho na base da pirâmide social brasileira (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2012), contrary to the thesis of Brazil as a majority-middle class country.
32.
Schwarcz traces the roots of authoritarianism in Brazil. Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Sobre o autoritarismo brasileiro (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019).,
33.
Maria Luiza Martins de Mendonça and Janaína Vieira de Paula Jordão. ‘Nojo de pobre: representações do popular e preconceito de classe’, Contemporânea 1, no. 23 (2014).
34.
Concerning the ‘rolezinho’, in relation to changes in consumption habits among low-income urban youth and the events of June 2013, see Teresa Pires do Rio Caldeira, ‘Qual a novidade dos rolezinhos? espaço público, desigualdade e mudança em São Paulo’, Novos estud – CEBRAP98 (2014).
‘Good citizen’ – coded language used by Brazilian conservatives, akin to ‘upstanding citizen’. Another example, although more explicit, is the slogan ‘Direitos humanos para humanos direitos’, ‘Human rights for humans who act right’.
