Suchergebnisse

In this absorbing new study, Niyi Afolabi exposes the tensions between the official position on racial harmony and the reality of marginalization experienced by Afro-Brazilians by exploring Afro-Brazilian cultural production as a considered response to this exclusion. The author examines major contributions in music, history, literature, film, and popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to reveal how each performance by an Afro-Brazilian artist addresses issues of identity and racism through a variety of veils that entertain, ridicule, invoke, provoke, protest, and demand change at the same time. Raising cogent questions such as the vital role of Afro-Brazilians in the making of Brazilian national identity; the representation of Brazilian women as hapless, exploited, and abandoned; the erosion of the influence of black movements due to fragmentation and internal disharmony; and the portrayal of Afro-Brazilians on the national screen as domestics, Afolabi provides insightful, nuanced analyses that tease out the complexities of the dilemma in their appropriate historical, political, and social contexts. Niyi Afolabi teaches Luso-Brazilian, Yoruba, and African Diaspora studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as well as the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin

In recent years, increased interest in black studies in the U.S. has fostered an upswing in research in Afro-Latin American literature. The explicit focus of most studies, however, has been the works of Afro-Hispanics, while in most instances literature by Brazilians of African descent has been treated only marginally, if at all. This study delineates the factors which have caused literature by Afro-Brazilian authors to remain at the fringes of Afro-Latin American studies in the U.S. and presents an important corpus of literature written by Brazilians of African descent and published since 1960. The study of these works should not only ameliorate the general approach to Afro-Latin American literature current in the U.S. but should at the same time add a new dimension to the field of African diaspora studies as well.

Television is an important political tool in Latin America. In recognition of its ability to shape public opinion and influence political behavior, Brazilian electoral authorities provide political parties with free television airtime in the weeks preceding elections. While Brazil's publicly financed electoral program levels the playing field between parties, it may contribute to intraparty resource disparities. This article contends that racial considerations influence how party elites distribute television airtime and thus contribute to the political marginalization of Afro-Brazilians. Using original data from Rio de Janeiro's 2012 municipal elections, it shows that party officials provide Afro-Brazilian candidates significantly less airtime than their white counterparts, even after controlling for theoretically important nonracial candidate characteristics. Moreover, it shows that there are racial differences in how candidates use the airtime they are awarded. Afro-Brazilian candidates are nearly ten times more likely than whites to focus on racial issues in their campaign ads. These results provide new insight about why Afro-Brazilians are rarely elected to public office and, when elected, the types of issues they may address. ResumoA televisão é uma importante ferramenta política na América Latina. Reconhecendo sua habilidade em conformar uma opinião pública e influenciar o comportamento político, a lei eleitoral brasileira concede tempo gratuito de TV para que os partidos políticos possam apresentar suas campanhas nas semanas anteriores ao período eleitoral. Enquanto o horário político eleitoral gratuito busca nivelar a competição entre esses partidos, ele expressa também as desigualdades internas a eles na distribuição do tempo de TV dentre seus candidatos. Nosso argumento neste artigo é que vieses raciais influenciam o modo como os dirigentes partidários distribuem o tempo de televisão gratuito e, assim, contribuem para a marginalização política das candidaturas afro-brasileiras (pardas e pretas). Utilizando dados inéditos das eleições municipais de 2012 no município do Rio de Janeiro, mostramos que dirigentes partidários distribuem menos tempo de televisão para candidatos afro-brasileiros do que para seus pares brancos, mesmo quando controlamos outras de suas características. Mais importante ainda, nós encontramos diferenças no modo como os candidatos utilizam o tempo de campanha que recebem. Candidatos afro-brasileiros tendem a focar dez vezes mais em questões raciais do que brancos, por exemplo. Esses resultados trazem novas perspectivas sobre porque candidatos afro-brasileiros são pouco eleitos e os tipos de questões que eles abordam quando eleitos.