HIST 144
Brazil's Myth of Racial Democracy Spring 2025
Division II W Writing Skills D Difference, Power, and Equity

The notion that race worked differently in Brazil took root in the early twentieth century and grew into a myth that the country was home to a unique “racial democracy.” This course will examine the creation and surprisingly long life of this idea among not only Brazilians but also observers and visitors from the U.S., Europe, and Africa. We will look at how “racial democracy” became central to constructions of Brazilian national identity, how the country’s governments tried to coopt Black cultural forms like samba and Carnaval into official culture, and how thinkers around the world used Brazil to define their understanding of race making in their own regions. The special focus, though, will be on how Afro Brazilians challenged the myth politically, intellectually, and artistically from the 1920s to the 1990s. Our texts will include the fiction, memoirs, manifestos, and scholarship of individuals like Abdias do Nascimento, Carolina Maria de Jesús, and Sueli Carneiro, as well as the activism of Black and feminist groups.