In The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil, Gladys Mitchell-Walthour seeks to explain Afro-Brazilian political behavior and political inequality in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador. These cities are among the largest in Brazil that have significant Afro-Brazilian populations. Even so, distinctions among them that relate to income inequality, racial composition, and racial politics allow for a dynamic comparison of Afro-Brazilian experiences and how these experiences, in turn, inform political opinions. Mitchell-Walthour centers racial group attachment and experience of racial discrimination to demonstrate variations in political behavior among Afro-Brazilians using the Latin American Political Opinion Project national surveys for 2010 and 2012 (LAPOP) and original survey data that she collected in 2005–6 and 2008. She also relies on in-depth interviews that she conducted in 2012 (32).

The opening pages of The Politics of Blackness guide readers through some of the...

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