“…we shall gradually recognize that the racialization of democracy is as important as the democratization of race.”
Howard Winant, 1999 *
These reflections are based on a long history of study and involvement in the Black movement in the United States, on friendships with militants in the Brazilian Black movement, and on study of that movement. They arise directly from musings occasioned by comments made by an undergraduate white student in my course, Politics of the African Diaspora, and by my observation of a couple on the Avenida Sete de Setembro in Salvador, Bahia.
In a paper for my politics of the African diaspora course, one of my students made an argument which contradicted everything I knew and understood about the conditions of Afro-Brazilians in Salvador. More troubling was the reality that his analysis was sound and systematically substantiated. The essay grew out of an assignment to critique Kim Butler’s...
University of California Press