Gilberto Freyre and Brazilian Self-Perception

Abstract

The idea of Brazil as a ‘racial democracy’ and a mixture of peoples and cultures became a central part of its national identity following the publication of Gilberto Freyre's Casa-grande e senzala in 1933. This chapter argues that the idea of racial democracy cannot be understood without taking into account the dialogue, dating from much earlier than 1933, between Brazilians and North Americans, based (in the former case) on an emphasis on the mixture of black and white, and (in the latter) on the ‘one drop rule’ and the segregation that came with it.

Reconfigurações do lusotropicalismo em museus monumentais de países de língua portuguesa

“…It was later, first during the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship (1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) and then during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1985) that Freyre's ideas provided a corpus for many intellectuals and political efforts to consolidate a national image. It was over the course of these two 20th century authoritarian regimes that the idea of Brazil as a racial democracy, emerging from so-called "mild" colonization, was consolidated socially and culturally either by the official regimes or social movements (Guimarães, 2004;Pallares-Burke, 2012;Sansone, 2003). Thus, in the official sphere, Brazil was both promoted and presented as an example of an egalitarian society in terms of race relations, and one that was often offered as a contrast to the racially segregated U.S. model.…”

Racisms and normative pressures: a new outbreak of biological racism?

“…It stimulates the diagnosis of different forms of anchoring and institutionalising racism, and makes it possible to examine the objectification of the concepts that sustain racial beliefs . Finally, the theory of social representations offers an analytical framework conducive to a psychosocial analysis of racism within the context of collective memory (Cabecinhas and Feijó 2010; Licata and Klein 2010; Licata and Volpato 2010;Valentim 2008) and can promote inter-disciplinary dialogue, mainly with history (for the Portuguese context and beyond, e. g. Alexandre 1999;2017;Bethencourt and Pearce 2012;Bethencourt 2013;Castelo 1998;Fredrickson 2002;Jahoda 1998;Matos 2006;Sobral 2004;Xavier 2012;Pollares-Burke 2012) and the articulation between racism and other concepts and phenomena like nationalism and cosmopolitanism (Balibar 1991;Billig 1995;Silva and Sobral, 2013).…”