In 2009 the Brazilian media was consumed by a news story that shocked the national consciousness. The episode involved a soccer player for São Paulo FC named Grafite and the Argentine center-back Desábato, who, in the middle of a game, allegedly insulted his competitor, calling both him and his family “negro e macaco” [“black and monkey”]. Let us take this case as a model example. Why did this event elicit so much attention and resentment? Certainly, this was not the first time that someone marshaled color as a category for slander or to invoke popular connotations between skin color and certain moral and cultural attributes. Furthermore, as a marker of social difference, “negro” can be a negative term, but also one that is positive, and even affectionate. Never neutral.

But the fact is that symbols can only be understood in a situated manner, and in the context of this case, there was no trace of kindness in the expression that was used. On the contrary, in this instance, what seemed to provoke the general reaction was the position from which the conflict originated: the other. Not by coincidence, the entire affair resembles a form of prejudice that is widely practiced in Brazil: a type of “prejudice against having prejudice.” This type of retroactive racism was described for the first time in the 1960s by Florestan Fernandes, the renowned sociologist who noted our tendency to cast accusations of discrimination and racism onto the “other,” even more so if the other is a foreigner, and particularly if Argentine.

On the other hand, the conflict threw even more fuel onto the fire of those who believe that in this country discrimination applies more to color than to social status. Oracy Nogueira in 1954 called the phenomenon “preconceito de marca” [“prejudice of physical feature”] as opposed to “preconceito de origem” [“prejudice of origin”], more commonly practiced in countries like South Africa and the United States, two nations that are always invoked, like the flip side of a coin, when efforts are made to analyze the racism that exists here. The supposition is that unlike other countries, whose basis for discrimination is the origin and quantity of black or white blood (one thinks of the famous North American model of the one-drop rule), in Brazil the standards developed in a more flexible manner given that they oscillated based on contingency (of the moment), social situation, and cultural origin. That is, a person could be defined as more or less white depending on one's perspective, context, or economic situation. A famous case was cited by the English traveler Henry Koster, who, in the early nineteenth century, related the following episode: “in conversing on one occasion with a man of color who was in my service, I asked him if a certain Capitam-mor was not a mulatto man; he answered, ‘he was, but is not now.’ I begged him to explain, when he added, ‘Can a Capitam-mor be a mulatto man?’” In other words, the militia leader could not be black because of his position of authority.

Examples of this sort abound in our literature and combine to form a faithful portrait of the racial ambivalence practiced in this country. Grafite accepted his own nickname, which affectionately refers to his skin color. Nevertheless, in a public circumstance, this same color was activated in an opposite way: perhaps in this specific situation, it may be alleged that he does not have color, or he may be judged to be whiter than in other circumstances, or one might be angered seeing his social status and class highlighted in a moment of conflict. The same phenomenon is repeated in a soccer game that takes place in Heliópolis, São Paulo, where for the past eight years, just before Christmas, a match called “Pretos x Brancos” [“Blacks v. Whites”] is held. Theoretically, there are eleven black players against eleven white players. Nevertheless, each year, the athletes trade teams as if they were changing their socks. More interesting than the “versatility” of the players is the nature of their explanations. Some say they are more white because they have become rich, some because they have risen up in life, still others because they feel that they just are whiter. There are even a few examples of players who assert they are blacker because they claim a certain African origin. The important thing is that in this country color is a double for race and for social class, and, therefore, it is subject to negotiation.

Today we know, according to biology and genetics, that race does not exist as a scientific concept; it is, rather, a taxonomic and merely statistical category, a social construction. The problem is that cultural considerations are introduced under the guise of race, insofar as they are associated with beliefs, values, and truths. Thus, even if the concept is not natural, it continues to be pragmatically utilized, denoting a social classification based on negative attitudes toward specific groups, which are consequently discriminated against according to these criteria. Hence, to demonstrate the limitations of biological concepts, to deconstruct their historical significance, does not relinquish their implications and new social classifications. As the anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha has shown, various ways of understanding the culture of a nation exist: culture (without quotation marks) might refer to common heritage; while “culture” (with quotation marks) refers to the particular properties of each people. And it is this “culture” (with quotation marks) that has been manipulated more widely, taking on a new role within political debates.

A fundamental change has taken place in the last few decades and is worth highlighting: if the postwar period defended the universality of rights, more recently the emphasis has fallen upon the rights of minorities. Now, in this world of differences, there is nothing like marshaling “culture” (with quotation marks) as a strategy for affirming new identities, and race has played a powerful role in this sense. Thus, if we think of race not as a biological concept but—drawing a parallel with the model of anthropology—as “race” in quotation marks, we will see that race exists as a crucial marker that reveals the reflexive quality of culture and that establishes a tense line connecting, reflexively, anthropology and politics.

Let us turn once again to our initial anecdote. First, it is worth noting that any debate of this type is already valuable just for bringing these issues to our attention. In a country where, until very recently, discrimination seemed to be naturalized, as if unequal social positions were created by nature and racist attitudes could be considered to be in the minority and the exception, all attention is good attention. After all, in the absence of official discriminatory politics, we live surrounded by a good and yet false consciousness, which at times denies prejudice or views it as somehow more mild, or even might affirm that it exists, though only in others. It is only in this way that one can explain a study conducted in 1988 by the University of São Paulo, in which ninety-seven percent of the respondents affirmed that they were not prejudiced and ninety-eight percent of the same respondents stated that they knew other people who in fact were prejudiced. At the same time, when asked about the degree of relation to those whom they considered to be racist, those interviewed frequently identified close relatives, boyfriends and girlfriends, and other intimate acquaintances. Immediate conclusion: every Brazilian feels like they are an island of racial democracy, surrounded by racism on every side.

In 1995, the newspaper Folha de São Paulo published the results of a study on the same topic, with similar results. Although eighty-nine percent of Brazilians acknowledged that color prejudice existed against those who are black in Brazil, only ten percent admitted to holding such prejudice themselves. Nevertheless, indirectly, eighty-seven percent revealed some prejudice by agreeing with statements with racist content, or even by making them. The study was repeated in 2009, and the results were no different in this respect. To the contrary, they seemed to indicate an even more harmonious racial coexistence, despite consistently pointing to “isolated” cases of discrimination.

The conclusions reached by the anthropologist João Batista Felix in his research on black dances in São Paulo can be understood in an inverse but symmetrical way. The majority of those interviewed denied having been the victim of discrimination; however, they confirmed cases of racism suffered by relatives and close friends. Furthermore, in research into the existence of prejudice in small cities or rural areas, respondents to surveys typically identify cases of racism as occurring in areas of larger populations (the actress who was barred from entering a bar, the daughter of the governor of the state of Espírito Santo who was not allowed to use the main elevator, the citizen who was prohibited from frequenting a club, the worker who was abused by the police); but the opposite also happens—from the perspective of residents of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, it is in rural areas that the most radical examples of racial discrimination are found.

Not to mention the way racism existed in the past. When interviewed, Brazilians turn to history, to the period of slavery, to identify the last moments of racism. Typical of this attitude is an early national anthem, which at the beginning of 1890, a year and a half after the end of slavery, proudly noted: “Nós nem cremos que escravos outrora tenha havido em tão nobre país” [“We can hardly believe that there were once slaves in such a noble country”]. The past lives far away, and a single year seems to be, in the context of this hymn, a sign of many decades or even more: gifts bearing the patina of time.

Seemingly distinct, the conclusions reached by these different research studies are parallel: it is no longer denied that racism exists in Brazil, but it is always an attribute belonging to someone else. Whether on the part of the individual exhibiting prejudice or the individual suffering from prejudice, what seems to be significant is when discrimination happens, and not that it happens. Furthermore, the problem seems to be summed up in the fact that prejudice is acknowledged officially and in public but not in private. As the saying goes, “De perto ninguém é perfeito” [“No one is perfect up close”], and the maxim seems to apply to the practice of private discrimination. The result is a discourse that tends not to deny it but rather to minimize its importance along with the evidence of the existence of racism among us.

The matter is polemical and has divided Brazilian specialists who oppose each other by affirming, on the one hand, the singular and even positive nature of this hybrid model of coexistence, and, on the other, demonstrating that racial mixture does not equal the absence of discrimination. At any rate, what no one argues is the existence of social inequalities. Everything indicates that we are dealing with a particular type of racism, a silent and ambivalent racism, which hides behind a supposed guarantee of universality and equality before the law, which pushes to the private realm, to one's neighbor, the game of discrimination. In a society historically marked by inequality, by the long duration of slavery, by paternalism, and by favoritism, racism is affirmed primarily in private or denounced in the lives of others. Perhaps the case of the Argentine footballer, who ended up in prison, may serve as a model for analyzing our internal and perverse game of racism, which oscillates between social inclusion and exclusion. . . .

The philosopher Kwame Appiah once vented that “[i]nsisting on the notion of race is most devastating to those who take culture and history seriously.” The shame is realizing that this type of devastating scenario remains strong and considerably vital. Race is still a powerful concept, and it persists as a historical and social construction, the raw material for the discourse of nationalities, or as a social marker that identifies and classifies people and situations. Not by chance, the concept has served to analyze the inclusion in society of other social groups, like Jews, Indians, Gypsies, or even those who are physically or mentally disabled. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian case, this problem has centered, primarily, on the discussion about our indigenous people, and then on the vast population of black Brazilians. Such an affirmation is even more vigorous when one recalls that even before Brazil became Brazil, when it was still an American Portuguese colony, the topic was already part of the rhetoric, essays, images, and letters that described the country. Sixteenth-century travelers like [André] Thevet, [Jean de] Léry, and [Johannes de] Laet highlighted, on the one hand, the country's paradisiacal nature and, on the other, a population given to habits considered to be “primitive” or “barbarous,” according to the terminology of the period. The Portuguese chronicler [Pero de Magalhães] Gandavo synthesized this more negative type of perception, affirming that native Brazilians were people without F, L, and R: “fé, lei e rei” [“faith, law, and king”]. The inhabitants of the country, from the beginning of its foray into the long history of Western civilization, were already viewed as “others” and perceived under the sign of absence. In this case, the difference was not more, but rather less: a lack of customs, of order, of responsibility. Uncoincidentally, habits such as cannibalism, polygamy, or nudity inflamed the European imagination, which migrated from the Orient to America and expressed astonishment at nature but suspicion that America offered a new humanity.

The ambiguity was such that in 1534 Paulo III would establish a papal bull that confirmed the “humanity” of the natives of the New World and granted them a “soul.” But the distrust remained, such that naturalists from the eighteenth century would return to observe nature and the American natives. Whereas George-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon, published in 1749 the three initial volumes of Histoire naturelle [Natural History] and argued that natives were childlike (seeing that they did not have hair on their bodies), thus demonstrating the infancy of the continent, his colleague Cornelius De Pauw, editor of Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains, ou Mémoires intéressants pour servir à l'histoire de l'espèce humaine [Philosophical Researches on the Americans; or, Interesting Memoirs for a History of Mankind] in Berlin in 1768, took the argument one step further, saying that the natives were not people who were childlike but rather fallen. That is, they had previously been children, passed through maturity and then grown old; they were, therefore, “degenerate.”

The theme of degeneracy deeply entered the debate about America, and especially in regard to Brazil, when in the middle of the nineteenth century, local scientists took up the question again, now informed by the determinist and racist theories in vogue at the time. The debate coincided with the campaign to end slavery in the country, and, in this case, it focused not so much on races as isolated phenomena but rather on miscegenation. In reality, against arguments for citizenship stood a racialized model, which denies the notion of equality among men. The supposition was not only that races (as ontological specimens) made different contributions and had different qualities, but that racial mixture always led to misfortune, imbalance, and degeneracy. Using this type of model, scientists from the Recife School of Law [Faculdade de Direito de Recife], like Silvio Romero and Tobias Barreto, or those coming out of medical schools in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, like Nina Rodrigues and Renato Khel, advocated for practices of social exclusion, prohibitions against miscegenation, and restrictions of civil liberties, always in the name of science.

It is interesting to think that in the middle of the 1920s, we were only a step away from social apartheid, and in 1930, we would transform ourselves into the “model of racial democracy.” Of course the intellectual context was different, and the notion of race was exchanged for that of culture, advocating that it was not biology that explained societies but rather their histories, contingencies, and customs. And in Brazil, the debate would be led by the whole modernist generation, which, following the example of Mário de Andrade, Gilberto Freyre, Artur Ramos, and so many others, would bring black populations and their contributions to the center of national thought—not as a lacuna, silence, or drawback but as a profound contribution. From venom to fortune, racial mixture little by little became transformed into the “national brand,” to the point that in 1947, 1961, and 1964, Brazil served as a case study for UNESCO, an example of idyllic and peaceful coexistence in a world marked by hatreds expressed in terms of race, origin, and culture. It is in this context that expressions like “melting pot,” racial democracy, and “celeiro harmônico de raças” [“harmonious granary of races”] point to a cultural turn and to new representations of identity throughout the country. What has been at issue is a singular pattern of race relations. It is not by chance that during this same moment Getúlio Vargas would “nationalize” and decriminalize practices like capoeira, samba, and candomblé, besides transforming soccer into a mixed-race and Brazilian form of sport. Another result of this new development was the transformation of feijoada into the mixed national dish: the white of the rice, the brown of the beans, the yellow of the orange, the red of the pepper, and the green from the forest comprised this new “aquarela of Brazil,” or Brazilian watercolor.

And from there to the present, everything changed, but also remained the same. After the 1970s, with the rebirth of the black movement and the politics of affirmative action, resulting in new studies based on the national censuses and new research in the field, the topic has become even more compelling. It has been difficult not to recognize that, alongside inclusion, there prevails a persistent social exclusion. To this end, one need only note the official data that demonstrate profound disadvantages in access to work, to education, and to housing but that are also expressed in the unequal rates of mortality and even marriage. Racial mixture has never been a synonym of equality or the absence of discrimination, and the ambivalence of this “racism à la Brazil” manifests itself in the frequently perverse coexistence of inclusion and exclusion.

As one can see, it is not surprising that race has been a matter of discussion among us, for good or for bad. Furthermore, it is worth adding that racism is a contemporary issue, given that it means reinventing the hierarchy of supposedly egalitarian societies. If the French Revolution established legal equality among men, prejudice and racism, first scientifically and then culturally, presented themselves as an affirmative response, in the sense of reinscribed difference and discrimination, if not in legal terms, then based on criteria that claim to be first scientific and later historical. Since then, our globalized era has been defined by racism, marked by hatreds considered to be “traditional” but expressed in terms of ethnicity, origin, geography, or social status. In Brazil, the issue has been framed in various ways. On the one hand, one cannot deny the evidence of a singular coexistence of races along with the existence of an official project of identity based on mixed-race cultural models. On the other hand, this same sociability attests to a division that was formerly naturalized (and today has been culturalized) in reference to “aptitudes” and customs. There is a type of consensual compartmentalization of activities, in which, by convention, social inclusion is promoted in music, in sport, and in the arts in general. But in other arenas—in the exercise of politics, or science, in social relations—the supposition is that “cada um conhece seu lugar” [“everyone knows their place”]. Perhaps the absence of discriminatory laws paradoxically helps to push certain customary discriminatory practices into a place of silence. After all, it is in the domestic space of common-sense practices that exclusion takes place and the game of possibilities and constraints is renaturalized.

It is true that in Brazil official discourse on race does not legitimize exclusion. Likewise, discriminatory laws and institutions do not exist, nor do split models that impose strict limitations on blacks and whites—which represents a considerable advance. Nevertheless, and even so, a robust segregation survives that affects above all those who are poor, poorer, and poorest. I will conclude with two proverbs, which function based on the suppositions they impart. The first affirms that “de noite todos os gatos são pardos” [“at night all cats are gray”]. Pardo is an unpredictable and indeterminate category, and it names our ambivalent and porous racism, even more so at night. But there is another saying that refers to the other side of the coin. “Eles é que são brancos que se entendam” [Roughly: “those who are white understand”]. This phrase, as Arcádio Diaz shows, refers to new forms of prohibition. On the one hand, the saying demonstrates how, following day-to-day experience, authority and order are expressed through the third-person plural. On the other hand, who “they” are and who we are is difficult to know. What is known is that it involves a relationship full of silences, ambivalences, and conventions imposed by history, by memory, and by countless non-sayings. It is therefore worth observing the social use of the concept and noting how it not only has been employed by militant groups but also reflects the use of common sense, generally. It is of little assistance for us to remain tied to a canonical definition if the concept is out in the streets and being negotiated as social discourse, in the sense of operating in society and producing effects. In these terms, “race” (in quotation marks) could shed light on new meanings disseminated both by theory and by common sense (which in the day-to-day divides and discriminates against social groups), and the term could also be used in an agenda of social inclusion.

Race and color in Brazil act as social classifications that are arbitrary but not random. As Manuela Carneiro da Cunha affirms regarding ethnicity, races are constructions that are diacritical, relational, and positional. Thus, they constitute a powerful political argument for an equally acute political reality, which explains—and does so very well—why, in the end, Grafite reacted to a situation that he might have let pass if it had happened in private, but which he considered inadmissible when manifested in public.