BETWEEN “RACES”, QUOTAS AND NGOs: a critique of social-liberal anti-racism in Brazil
Racist oppression. Social classes. Social-Liberal Anti-Racism. Rio Grande do Norte.
From the Zumbi March, Against Racism, for Equality and Life on November 20, 1995, the fight against racism in Brazil developed an unprecedented form and content, in line with Brazil's integration into globalized capitalism and marked by defeats of the working class in the face of neoliberal governments. In this period of qualitative change in contemporary Brazilian antiracism, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) officially recognized the existence of racism in Brazil, affirmative actions were formulated, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) assumed unprecedented prominence and the category “race” it was rehabilitated in research on racial inequalities in the context of the rise of postmodern social theory. This set of determinations outlined a counterrevolutionary anti-racist strategy, which was named in this dissertation on social-liberal anti-racism. The governments of the Workers' Party (PT), from 2002 to 2016, carried out this strategy with relative success through the promotion of racial equality policies. The political crisis intensified with the 2016 parliamentary legal coup, however, accelerated the short-circuit process of social-liberal anti-racism and opened a fissure through which Marxist criticism has problematized the notions / premises of African ancestry, identity politics, place of speech, anti-communism and intersectionality. The historical and current example of anti-racism in the state of Rio Grande do Norte (RN) can contribute to elucidate, from the knowledge of its particularities, essential aspects of the development, consolidation and crisis of social-liberal anti-racism in Brazil.