Re-making race, class, and nation: Black professionals in Brazil and South Africa

Through the perceptions of black professionals in Brazil and South Africa, this dissertation explores the distinct and dynamic ways race and class interact across different national contexts. By contrasting the experiences of the invisible Brazilian black middle class and the evident South African black middle class, it contributes to the study of a significant and understudied group in two societies undergoing important changes. Two sets of questions guide this dissertation: First, how do upwardly mobile blacks in Brazil and South Africa perceive racism and discrimination in their countries? Second, how do the experiences of black professionals challenge the historical interface of race and nation in these two contexts? In order to address these questions, I rely on a census data, national survey studies, and 112 in-depth interviews with black professionals in Brazil and South Africa.;Survey results show that, despite important improvements in racial inequalities, racism is continuously identified as a problem by large majorities in Brazil and South Africa---but particularly by the black middle class. Through the comparison of discrimination experiences, of folk conceptualizations of racism, and of the interface of racial and national identifications among black professionals in Brazil and South Africa, this dissertation identifies two contrasting antiracism narratives: homogenizing universalism in Brazil and universalized diversities in South Africa. In Brazil, black professionals rely on the affirmation of equality and racial mixing to underplay discrimination and racism and stress their shared identification as Brazilians. In interpersonal relations, racial differences are erased---or at least silenced through the affirmation of what I have termed homogenizing universalism, which underplays racial symbolic and moral boundaries. In contrast, in South Africa, discrimination is identified as institutional but experienced through inter-personal relationships. Similarly, racism is understood as resilient---part of human nature and fuelled by competition for resources. Lastly, racial boundaries are naturalized and celebrated through universalized diversities in the construction of a new South Africa---or the belief that each racial group can contribute to nation-building through the affirmation of their particular identities.