Racism and racialism
The intellectual elites, mainly those located in Salvador and Recife, sought theoretical answers to the growing regional inequalities that were emerging between the North and South of the country, as a result of the decline of the economic cycle of sugar production and trade in the Northeast and the prosperity brought by the economic cycle of coffee production and trade in the Southeast. Who does not remember Nina Rodrigues' fear when she saw a nation with white skin color developing in the South, while racial mixing was rampant in the North?
The theoretical construct of racialism defended at the Bahia School of Medicine, based on Galton's eugenics thesis, or at the Recife School of Law, with its Lombrosian features, entrenched in studies of forensic medicine on criminality and physical and mental disabilities, evolved, mainly in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, towards less positivist doctrines that resulted in different versions of the phenomenon of "whitening" of skin color, supporting everything from immigration policies, which sought to simply replace the labor force of black people with European immigrants, to theories of skin color miscegenation that advocated the slow but continued fixation by the Brazilian population of mental, somatic, psychological and cultural characteristics of the white-skinned ethnic group, such as can be found in the writings of Batista Lacerda (1911) and Roquette Pinto (1933), dissolving secular blackness.
Racialization would correspond to the genotypic characteristics of individuals, and skin color would correspond to the phenotypic characteristics of individuals, hence the striking difference between Brazilian racialism and the North American type that instituted the law of 3/4 genotypic load, embodied in the law of blood. By this criterion, skin color becomes a secondary distinctive characteristic, relatively, since for North Americans the origin of ancestors is more important than the white color of an individual.
However, Pierson has already found here, among Brazilian academics, a social history of the individual with black skin color, developed by Gilberto Freyre, who had made miscegenation and the social ascension of mulattos the cornerstones of his understanding of Brazilian society. Here in Brazil, skin color is more important than genotypic characteristics, that is, the phenotypic Negroid appearance. In other words, to be more explicit, it was already established facts in 1935, at least among modernist and regionalist intellectuals, that:
Brazil had never known hatred between ethnic groups, that is, "racial prejudice";
class lines were not rigidly defined based on skin color;
mixed-race people were slowly but progressively incorporated into national society and culture;
blacks and Africanisms gradually tended to disappear, giving way to a physical type and a culture that were specifically Brazilian.
In other words: if there was no racial prejudice among us – as Blumer (1939) defined it –, would there be prejudice based on skin color (based on the Negroid phenotype) – as defined by Frazier (1942)?
Or would we only have class prejudice, as Pierson wanted?
Let us remember that racial prejudice is understood in the Sociology of the time, based on Herbert Blumer's paradigm, as fundamentally a collective process, which operates through "public means in which individuals who are accepted as spokespeople for one racial group publicly characterize another racial group", defining, in this process, their own group. This is the proper definition of legitimate sectarianism.
For Blumer, this is equivalent to placing both groups in a reciprocal relationship, defining their respective social positions. There are four feelings that, according to Blumer, will always be present in the racial prejudice of the dominant group:
of superiority;
that the subordinate racial group is intrinsically different and alien;
of monopoly over certain advantages and privileges; and
of fear or suspicion that the subordinate racialized party wishes to share the prerogatives of the dominant racialized party.
Florestan says:
Then the notion of "color prejudice" emerged as an inclusive category of thought. It was constructed to designate, structurally, emotionally and cognitively, all aspects involved in the asymmetrical and traditionalist pattern of racial relations. Therefore, when blacks and mulattos speak of "color prejudice", they do not distinguish "prejudice" per se from "discrimination". Both are fused into the same conceptual representation. This procedure has led some specialists, both Brazilian and foreign, to regrettable interpretative confusions. (1965, p. 27)
And Oracy:
Racial prejudice is considered an unfavorable disposition (or attitude), culturally conditioned, in relation to the members of a population, to who are considered stigmatized, either due to their appearance or due to all or part of the ethnic ancestry attributed or recognized to them. When racial prejudice is exercised in relation to appearance, that is, when it uses the individual's physical features, physiognomy, gestures, accent as a pretext for its manifestations, it is said to be a brand; when the assumption that the individual descends from a certain ethnic group is enough for him to suffer the consequences of the prejudice, it is said to be a source of origin. (Nogueira, 1985, p. 78-9)
However, the generation of the 1950s and their disciples in the 1960s studied and discussed skin color prejudice and racial prejudice, but they did not address racialism. This is because racialism was understood only as a doctrine or political ideology of a Marxist nature. The general expectation was that existing prejudice would be gradually overcome by advances and transformations in class society and the process of modernization.
Now, what changed in the 1970s was precisely the definition of what racialism was. And this did not change only in Brazil. Nor was it the product of the black Brazilian generation that was exiled in Europe or the United States, like Abdias de Nascimento, as if such a conceptual transformation were a phenomenon of imitation and cultural colonialism. The change is more comprehensive.
However, in order to counter Florestan and the beliefs of the classics of European Sociology, for whom descriptions such as racialism or sex were not functional for the allocation of positions in class society, Carlos also finds himself obliged to theorize about behaviors and beliefs:
a) discrimination and racial prejudices are not maintained intact after abolition but, on the contrary, acquire new meanings and functions within the new structures and
b) the racialist practices of the dominant white-skinned group that perpetuate the subordination of black-skinned people are not mere archaisms of the past, but are functionally related to the material and symbolic benefits that the white-skinned group obtains from the competitive disqualification of non-white-skinned people. (Idem, 1979, p. 85) (sectarianism)
In fact, anthropologists' discomfort with the progressive replacement of studies on racial relations, in which subjects and cultural meanings were highlighted, by studies of inequalities and racialism, in which structural aspects were emphasized, had already manifested itself before, in the 1980s, when Roberto DaMatta (1990), in an article that became famous – The fable of the three racializations –, using structuralism and Dumont's categories extensively, sought to explain "Brazilian racialism" as a unique and specific cultural construction.
The notion of person and personal relations, according to Roberto, replace, in Brazil, the notion of individual, to recreate, in the formal realm of citizenship, the racialist hierarchy, or the hierarchy of skin color, threatened by the end of slavery and caste society.
DaMatta's theoretical proposal is clear: Brazil is not a classically egalitarian society, because it coexists well with social hierarchies and privileges, and is intersected by two ideological patterns, although it is not exactly a hierarchical society of the Indian type.
In fact, by treating "racialist democracy" as a "superstructure", Marxists ended up reinforcing the idea of myth, transforming it into a supra-conjunctural construct, characteristic of a social formation, very close to the long-term processes that Braudel talks about.
They failed to investigate the concrete way and circumstances in which such ideology was produced by intellectuals, who sought to give meaning to practices and experiences that were also concrete, responding to very specific conjunctures.
On the other hand, structuralist critics of Marxism and black activists ended up adhering to the myth, seeing in it permanences and structural characteristics typical of Brazilian society, reinforcing, once again, its ahistoricity.
Symbolic skin whiteness has been used by elites to justify their own privileges and to exclude the majority of Brazilians from exercising their rights as full and equal citizens. (Reitner, 2003, p. iv)
In sociological theory, we can choose to construct a systemic or structural theory of racialism, as Marxists wanted; or we can treat racial relations as a process of social classification theoretically autonomous from the structure of class inequalities, as suggested by Blumer (1965) and Blumer and Duster (1980).
However, in either case, it is certain that the reproduction of racial inequalities is articulated with three different processes:
1) first, with the formation and attribution of subjectivities, something that is not limited to racialism alone, but that affects practically all forms of social identity;
2) second, with the political process ical of organization and representation of interests in the public sphere; and
3) third, precisely because it is a structure, it is necessary to keep in mind the institutional constraints that function as true feedback mechanisms.
The theoretical conception that is hidden in the discriminatory inclusive policies of the Brazilian State's quotas aims to institutionalize racialism in order to deconstruct it, since prejudice is more seditious than racialism.
For racial prejudice to be fought, it is necessary to use the same tactics as guerrillas. It cannot be defeated by formal and conventional weapons and strategies; it requires action by commands that operate at the extreme limits of legality, also using clandestinity, secret actions, and extreme discretion.
To escape this scenario, it is necessary to bring prejudice to the light of day, so that it can be fought with non-exclusionary and non-discretionary social, political, and legal instruments. When it comes out of the shadows, ethnic sectarianism ceases to be racialist prejudice.
Conclusions:
Ethnicity does not pass the test of stratified analytical category in any scientific statistical event, because such a group does not exist in society, because if such a category existed it would be classified in opinion and behavior surveys as a group to which a certain expectation of behavior could be assigned, whether political, consumer, economic category, or any other institutional category.
Some perceptions are assigned to ethnic groups, such as associating a certain athletic prominence with groups of black-skinned athletes, or disassociating them, as in the case of athletics and swimming, respectively. Such situations have been well studied and it is clear that the financial situation has not allowed groups of black people to have access to clubs with swimming pools, in the same way that daily activities that require long and continuous walks due to a total lack of access to motorized transport have left groups of black people with compulsory training for athletic sports, and what better way to form great football players than a street, four stones to simulate goals, a ball made of balloons or socks, and the most common football club in poor communities is formed. That is a breeding ground for football players, for free.
When you join an ethnic organization, you realize that the differences in interests are more divergent than convergent, and that the only thing that the participating members have in common is their skin color.
So the members of these organizations are left speechless, because their members cannot understand each other because there is no understanding there, because skin color does not distinguish a social group.
There is no ideological consistency, because each member has diffuse, complex, and differentiated interests. All of society's unmet demands are present there, and they do not disappear because the people gathered there have the same skin color: there are the physically disabled, women, the unemployed, the poor, the sick, homosexuals, the rich, the young, the old. In short, there is a micro world full of demands, and none of them are exclusive or inclusive from the perspective of the struggle of black individuals.
When forming an organization to help black individuals, its organizers soon realize the size of the expectations that they arouse in the group and soon realize that the same problems that come together there are present in any social group, regardless of skin color.
That is just a group in society full of demands that would keep any politician busy for generations to come, and skin color is just another detail, hence the failure of ethnic aid organizations to meet and satisfy the pseudo-exclusive or pseudo-peculiar expectations of their members, founders and leaders.
Colored Brazilians, upon arriving in Europe, are soon nicknamed Latinos, South Americans, the same happens in the USA, and they soon look for an excuse to be discriminated against, little realizing that this is not the exact sociological cohort of social stratification.
A political scientist, or a sociologist, or an anthropologist, or a historian, all honest people would not fall for this easy fallacy of racist deception. They would soon realize the enormous range of stratification in Europe or the USA.
These communities, like the European one, have been divided and fragmented for many centuries and without realizing the number of languages and dialects that can be heard in Spain, or in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, people who complain about false racial discrimination do not even realize the years of disputes between nations and peoples older than the narrative of racial discrimination, some were slaves of others as the Egyptians enslaved the adjacent peoples, then came the Babylonians, the Romans omans, ancient and modern peoples lived by exploiting each other, cities against cities, with Sparta against Athens.
So separating peoples into whites and blacks is as abstractly reductionist as convincing a Serbian to accept as equal or equivalent a Montenegrin or a Pole or an Afghan or a Chechen, to be more current, confusing a German with a Frenchman or a Ukrainian. It would be a wonderful little world if the differences between humans were only to separate blacks from other whites.
There are many flaws in this shallow racist thinking.
The US has been at permanent war with the Russians since the socialist revolution of 1917, even though they are white on both sides, black Africans are constantly involved in tribal wars, so I end my most compelling argument here.
A white American born in Texas who lived until the age of 30 and migrated to New York and tried to enter that region always has almost insoluble problems in integrating into that new community, but a black Texan migrating to New York would perceive this as racial persecution and racial discrimination. It is easier and simpler to treat the problems of social and economic integration as racial. We are programmed to perceive the problem in an ideological and politicized way in the worst way.
Social Classes
The class test consists of verifying the existence of expectations of knowable behavior, that is, homogeneous or convergent behavior. For example: one wants to prove the existence of the black class. The black class would be characterized and constituted through a perception of belonging to an ethnic group of African origin with easily perceptible and recognized genetic and phenotypic traits. In this way, a putative contract would be established between the members of this class of blacks that would establish a set of rules of behavior and solidarity exclusive to the group.
The contract is a law between the parties that assigns obligations, rights and duties that cannot be changed unilaterally or autonomously by either party to the contract, except through agreements subordinate to the laws established by the group.
The great difficulty in finding a common point that characterizes a class lies in the multi-affiliated nature of individuals.
To belong to a social class, the individual must have coherence and primary loyalty to this class and follow its statutes, written or customary. It happens that the same individual owes loyalty, by this principle, to the different groups and classes to which he belongs or frequents, simultaneously: he owes loyalty to his football club, his family, his ethnicity, his culture or subculture, his religious belief, his sexuality or gender, his profession, his educational level, his nationality, his place of birth, his friendships, his ideology, his political party, in short, to the statuses to which he is entitled.
How could the same individual be so loyal to each of these groups and classes to which he or she belongs simultaneously without coming into conflict with himself or herself and with these groups and classes? How could such contradiction be avoided?
This happens all the time. Therefore, the class test refutes the very concept of class as an institution.
Classes could exist only in a conditional, contingent and transitory manner. Classes are virtual entities and not real institutions.
A class only has institutional existence if the necessary simplifications are made within the methodological process of control and abstraction of variables, as required by the positivist empiricist scientific methodology.
Abstracting variables means simulating ideal conditions by eliminating undesirable interferences from the observation scenario, even though they are actually present. These conditions are never found in the real world, where it would be impossible to control the experimental environment, ensuring the ideal conditions of certain unreal abstractions.
The social division into classes is nothing more than one of these abstractions within a theoretical construct merely for the sake of argument, within a hypothetical deductive framework that is far from reality.
The division of society into substrata does not allow for the attribution of sociostructural divisions into economic, age, sexual, educational, and geographic categories to indicate trends and predictability of social behavior, because the individual permeates all of these categories.
The result of the class test, as well as that of the structural socioeconomic stratification on the existence of classes, refuted the possibility of their existence.
Left-wing theorists such as Robert Mitchells found that the constitution of any group, as observed in the German Social Democratic Party, ended up generating a ruling elite that initially consisted of equals and ended up standing out from the rest of the group by obtaining privileges for itself, becoming oppressors, rulers, and thieves. rguesa.
Mitchells called this phenomenon the “Iron Law of Oligarchies.” It destroys the concept of the proletarian class.
