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Race Class and Space in Brazilian Cities

E D WA R D E . T E L L E S

When we think of racial residential segregation internationally, we often think of

segregation between the European and A frican origin populations of the United States andSouth Africa, and not Brazil. Likewise, when we think of major urban problems in thoseother two countries, we often think of race-related problem s. W e do not think of Brazil inthose terms, even though Brazil is also multi-racial and has an even larger population ofAfrican descent than either theUS or South Africa. The kind of racially based violencethat has plagued those two societies has not occurred in Brazil. But because such urbanviolence has not occ urred, and because racial segregation does not seem to exist as it doesin the US and South Africa, it does not follow that race is an insignificant category ofanalysis in Brazils urban issues. There are various reasons we should examine theBrazilian case, not least of which is the fact that there is more racial segregation in Brazilthan many white Brazilians would care to adm it, and its nature has important implicationsfor the future of race relations. Also, the incipient Afro-Brazilian m ovement has broughtto light the startling racial inequalities that exist in urban Brazilian a reas and the violencecommitted against Afro-Brazilians, often by the police.

At the level of simple observation, foreign observers of Brazilian urban areas willoften point out racial segregation in places like Rio de Janeiro, but Brazilians will oftenreply that there is no racial segregation, merely class segregation. Racial segregationexists only to the extent that it is coterminous with class segregation. If poorneighbourhoods a re mostly black and m ixed race w hile m iddle-class neighbourhoods arealmost entirely white, it is because non-whites predominate in the lower class whilewhites dom inate the middle classes. In an effort to illustrate Brazils fluid race relations,

the Brazilian observer counterposes the Brazilian case with the US case, often believingthat segregation in theUS is sanctioned by law, even though the last vestiges of legalsegregation there were abolished in1966. Furthermore, some argue that Brazilianconceptions of race are continuous, and not categorical like those of the northernEuropean tradition, precluding the possibility of racial segregation.

The conventional wisdom about segregation in Brazil is partially correct. In fact,Brazilian seg regation is mod erate when com pared to the extreme black-white segregationstill found in majorUS cities. W hites often live side by side with blacks and m ulattos inpoor Brazilian neighbourhoods, while this is much less common in the US. Althoughactual interaction between whites and non-whites in Brazilian urban a reas is often limitedin such neighbourhoods, the fact that thereis some interaction means that racial groups

are more likely to have a shared culture, develop interracial friendships and evenintermarry. Th is is a positive side of Brazilian race relations. Such interaction, howeve r,is generally limited to poor neighbourhoods in most hough not all egions, and itoccu rs primarily between the p oor minorityof whites and the poor m ajority of blacks and

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396 Edward E. Telles

Table 1 Racial composition of household heads by household income and household incomedistribution fo r three metropolitan a rea s, 198

of households withblack or brown heads households

income distribution of all

Householdincome S I O Rio de S I O Rio de(in dollars) Pau lo Janeiro Salvador Pau lo Janeiro Salvador

1-225 38.7 50.8 87.1 26.1 38.8 47.5225 75 31. 7 42.6 79 .7 23 .8 22 .2 18 .4375 50 22.2 31 .0 68 .0 28 .1 21 .2 17 .6750- 1500 10.7 15.1 48. 0 14.6 1 1 1 10.41500+ 2.9 5 .1 28 .2 7 .3 6 . 7 6 . 1Total 99 .9 100.0 100.0

browns. The white middle class in Brazil has few Afro-Brazilian neighbours, largelybecause blacks and browns have been kept out of the middle class. Thus segregation existsbetween whites and the African-origin population, and this in itself, whether or notexplained by class, has important implications.

A resurgent academic debate in Brazil, fuelled by the recent availability of nationalstatistics with the requisite data, points to persistent and widespread racial inequalities.For example, in Brazil in 1976, mean income of non-white males was47 of that ofwhite males (Silva, 1985: 4 9 , while in the US in 1979 mean income for black m ales was61 of white male mean income (Farley and A llen,1989: 315). Blacks and browns ar edisproportionately represented among the lower social classes hey have considerablylower incomes than whites, experience less social mobility than whites and are more

likely than whites to be in the urban informal labour market (Oliveiraet al . 1985; Silva,1985; Hasenbalg, 1985).Because racial composition in Brazil varies widely, the extent to which the poor are

non-white and to which the middle class is white also varies widely. Non-whites maycomprise anywhere from a minority of the poor in the predominately white South ofBrazil to a large majority of the poor in many cities of the Northeast region. As Table1shows, 87.1 of S alvadors poorest households were headed by a black or brown personwhile only 38.7 of poor households inS6o Paulo were. Poor households comprisednearly half (47.5 )of all households in Salvador and just over a quarter(26.1 ) ofhouseholds in SIo Paulo, reflecting the greater poverty of Salvador. Rio de Janeirooccupies an intermediate position in both the racial composition and size of the poorpopulation. At the other end, among the wealthiest6 - 7 of households, householdheads identifying as brown or black comprise28 .2 of all heads in Salvador and only2.9 and 5.1 in S6o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro respectively.

Although Brazilian racial taxonomies generally include term(s) that are intermediateto white and black, I use a single non-white category comprised of both blacks andbrowns for two main reasons:(1) structural inequalities are particularly great betweenwhites and non-whites compared to between browns and blacks; and(2) because theCensus data re lies on self-identification, it is particularly inefficient at distinguishing the

1 The brown, or purdo in Portuguese, category refers to a heterogenous colour category comprised ofpersons with various types/amounts of European, African and American-Indian admixtures, and in the1980 Brazilian Census also included Brazils very small population of Indians. The black, or preto inPortuguese, category generally refers to those with black of dark brown skin colour or those of primarilyAfrican origin. Whites, or brunco, by contrast refers to the lightest population, though they may notnecessarily be of pure European ancestry. I will a lso refer to the combined black and brown population asnon-white, thus excluding a small Asian population from both the white and non-white categories.

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Race, class nd space in Brazilian cities 397

latter two groups (Telles, 1994). Studies based on cohort analysis across numerouscensuses and on interviewer identification of respondents colour show much resistance toidentifying as preto, a term with particularly negative connotations.For example, inSalvador, the Survey of Employment and Unemployment (PED) in the mid-l980s, inwhich interviewers coded respondents race, indicated that 39 of residents are black,whereas only 1 7 of the population identified as black in the 1980s Census . Th edistinction between white and brown is less problematic, as the same data suggest. ThePE D identified 19 of the population as white while23 of respondents to the Censusidentified themselves a s w hite.

Clearly, the social distance between the poor and middle class in Brazil is great,given its highly unequal income distribution (World Bank, 1984) and this is furtherenhanced by high levels of socio-economic segregation (Telles, 1995). In turn, suchresidential segregation clearly constrains awareness across social classes and thus racegroups. The salience of both race and class in residential segregation is illustrated by thefollowing incident.

On 18 October 1992, scores of young people from poor communities in Rio de

Janeiros North Zone arrived in busloads and made sweeps(arrastdes)

of Riosprestigious beaches in the South Zone, startling beachgoers, who ran away. Thereactions to this event by South Zone residents revealed their prejudices and insecuritiesabout the poor residents of the North Zone and from the highly visible, but sociallydistant, favelas of nearby hillsides. Furthermore, the fact that the youth from the NorthZone w ere predominantly blackor brow n, that the South Zone residents were virtually allwhite, and that those involved were quite conscious of and even haunted by the colourdifferences, made this a racial as well as a class issue. T he reactions of the middle-classresidents ranged from declarations of fear about the bands of poor dark people to thepreparation of martial arts clubs in the South Zone to defend against another invasion(Veja, 1992). Although they had occurred in the Fast, these particular sweeps were

important because they w ere highly publicized in the m edia, presumably to frighten localcitizens about what might happen if Benedita da Silva, a blackfavela resident, wereelected mayor of Rio de Janeiro. TV Globo, Brazils media giant, filmed thearrast6eslive, raising questions about how the media was able to arrive on time and set up theircameras a t exactly the right place for the short-lived raids. These events brought to lightthe tenuous relation between the predominantly black poor and the white middle class inRio, a problem which had been conveniently neglected in the past because of the distancethat had generally separated the tw o groups. Thus this exam ple not only revealed the classtensions of Rio de Janeiro but racial ones a s well. E ven though both race and class issuesare involved, as thearrast6es demo nstrated, analysts and policymakers p refer to see raceas an epiphenomenon of class, denying race as an important variable and paying exclusive

attention to the issue of class.Some researchers have begun to examine the interrelation of race and class in Brazil.They have found a high level of racial inequality that comes from persistent racistpractices, and despite an ideology that Brazil is a racial democracy (Te lles, 1994). Morethan 100 years a fter the abolition of slavery, earl ier arguments that Afro-Brazilians havenot had time to assimilate into a capitalist class society hold little sway. By contrast,poorly educated immigrants from Europe came to Brazil in the4 years after abolitionand a large proportion of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have attainedcomfortable middle class status (Andrew s, 1991). Research thus far has shown that blacksand brown s have indeed been excluded from com peting with whites in dynam ic sectorsofthe labour market and in middle-class positions. A small but rapidly growing literature

exists on the subject.This paper will not delve into the wide range of issues related to Brazilian racerelations. Rather, it focuses on the issue of residential segregation by race in Brazilianurban areas. It poses several questions related to racial segregation in Brazil. The issue


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398 Ed ward E. Telles

is one that is not self-apparent and requires establishing new cognitive frames which donot depend on previous ones about segregation, which have generally been based on theoften legalized black-white segregation of theUS or South Africa, and are free oftheracial democracy ideology which obscures an understanding of how race and class operatein Brazil.

How much racial segregation is there?

Although centralization of the m iddle class and peripheralization of the poor have roughlycharacterized the structure of Latin American cities (Schnore, 1965; Leeds, 1974;London and Flanagan, 1976), such a simple description is insufficient and increasinglyinapprop riate for understanding levels of residential segregation in the complex and oftenpoli-nucleated urban areas of Latin Am erica. T he proliferation offavelas on both the lessvalued real estate of the periphery and contested areas of middle and high income centralcities makes understanding residential segregation at the neighbourhood level necessary .

In the past, most research on L atin American patterns of segregation have focused on theextent of centralization to describe segregation instead, largely because it describes anurban form derived from colonial (and even pre-colonial) times that is relatively easy toobserve and, if measured, requires data for only two areas: the central city and theperiphery. Centralization thus refersto the population living in the periphery com pared tothe central area. However, centralization fixes ana priori urban form that is both overlysimplistic and often inappropriate for describing Brazils spatially complex metropolitanareas.

T o measure segregation,I exam ine the extent of evenness in the distribution of racialand household income groups across metropolitan areas,or the extent to which socialgroups a re differentially distributed across neighbourhoods in an urban are a. T he concept

of evenness is particularly suitable for capturing the amou nt of segregation found amongthe mosaics of households and neighbourhoods that characterize the landscapes ofBrazilian metropolitan areas. Besides centralization, segregation may also be measuredon the dimension of exposureor interaction. An exposure index measures the extent towhich members of a certain social group live in the same neighbourhood with those ofanother group. It thus measuresthe individual experienceof segregation. This measure islargely driven by the social composition of an area. For example, whites are more likelyto interact with blacks in places where blacks a re a much large r portion of the population,given similar levels of racial evennessor dissimilarity.

To measure segregation, I use census data available at the census tract level. Fromthese I calculate the standard measure of segregation, the dissimilarity index.

Dissimilarity measures the extent to which two populations are unevenly distributedacross residential space vis-ci-vis each other. Specifically, D measures the percent ofgroup A that would have to move out of their current census tracts in order to have thesame evenness of distribution as group B. The value of D varies from0, where groups Aand B are evenly distributed throughout the urban area, to 100, where A and B do notshare any census tracts, i.e. complete segregation.

I also calculate exposure indexes. F or this study,I compute the extent of exposurethat non-whites will haveto whites by virtue of living in the same census tract. It alsovaries between 0 and 100, where 0 means that the average non-white has no whiteneighbours and 100 means that all of the neighboursof the average non-white are white.Th e formulas for computing both of these indexes ar e found in M assey and Denton (1987;1988),

Table 2 shows dissimilarity and exposure indexes between racial groups in the 10largest metropolitan areas of Brazil and in selectUS cities. Segregation indexes areclearly higher is in the U S. T he highest index of white v. non-white dissimilarity is 48 for

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Race, class and space in Brazilian cities 399

Table 2 Indexes of white/Aj+ican origin, dissimilarity and African or igin in teraction with whitesin the 1 largest Brazilian and select US metropolitan area s, 198

Metropolitanarea Dissimilarity Interaction

SIo Paulo 37 63Rio de Janeiro 37 50Belo Horizonte 41 42

Recife 38 30Salvador 48 18Fortaleza 40 25Curitiba 39 75Brasilia 39 43Beltm 37 23

New York 82 16

Los Angeles 81 17Chicago 88 13Miami 78 21San Francisco-Oakland 72 30

Porto Alegre 37 77

For the Brazilian case, African origin in this table refers to the sum of both blacks and browns, and for theUS case white refers to Anglos or non-Hispanic whites.Source: Indexes for Brazil calculated from 1980 Census of Brazil; Indexes for U S taken from Massey andDenton (1987).

Salvador, which indicates that48% of the non-white population would have to move out

of their neighbourhoods or census tracts se to r cen s i f a r io )so that they would be evenlydistributed with whites across neighbourhoods. The other nine metropolitan areas havedissimilarity indexes between 37 and 4 1. Residential segregation as measured bydissimilarity is much higher in theUS with values ranging from72 in San Francisco to88in Chicago.

On the other hand, interaction indexes range from18 to 77 in Brazilian metropolitanareas and from 13 to 30 in the five US areas. Non-whites inPorto Alegre and C uritiba, onaverage, live in neighbourhoods that are about three-fourths white (scores of75 and 77respectively). Th ese metropolitan areas have racial com positions sim ilar to those found inmany US cities (about 15% non-white), but because of only moderate dissimilarity(versus extreme dissimilarity in theUS), racial interaction is high.

Four of the 10 Brazilian areas (R ecife, Sa lvador, Fortaleza and BelCm) fall within theUS range, suggesting that black interaction with whites is as limited in many Brazilianurban areas as in theUS. Salvador, with a score of 18, is roughly equal toLos Angeles,with a score of 17. In othe r w ords , the likelihood of blacks and mulattos2 in S alvadorliving near whites is similar to the likelihood that blacks inLos Angeles (includesmulattos) live near non-Hispanic whites. Th us, Afro-Salvadorans have very littleexposu re to whites, residing in neighbo urhoods that ar e overwhelmingly non-white. Datafrom the PED hat this author and his colleagues are analysing show that some census

2 In Salvador, the brown category is predominately mulatto, although the brown population tends to bemore heterogenous in other metropolitan areas. In places like BelCm it may actually include few mulattos

and is largely caboclo (mixture of Portuguese and Indian).Note that living near is based on census tracts and census tracts in the US tend to be larger than in Brazil,so that the Brazilian scores are likely to be slightly higher if they were the same size as those of the US,although this is not necessarily the case. Indexes based on the block level for the US yield higher, the sameand lower scores than indexes based on census tract level, but differences are rarely large.

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Race, class and space in Brazilian cities 40 1

Table 3 Indexes o racial dissimilarity by household income groups in Rio de Janeiro andSalvador, 198

Dissimilarity index

Income (inUS dollars) Rio de Janeiro Belo Horizonte Salvador

1-7575- 150150-225225 75375 50750- 15001500+

(45)3536364053

(44)3839394354

(57)495049495050

supports the argument that racism or ethnicity also contribute to racial segregation. Inorder for racism to have much effect on segregation, there must be differential levels ofhousing discrimination (if not outright conspiracies to steer blacks into certainneighbourhoods, as in the US) among neighbourhoods so that non-whites are kept out ofcertain neighbourhoods, rather than simply random incidents of discrimination. There areplenty of examples of incidents suggesting discrimination in housing, such as the commoncomplaint of middle-class blacks that they are sometimes required to use the serviceelevator in residential apartment buildings. To my knowledge, there are no studies of howracism might affect the Brazilian housing markets. Perhaps the instability of housingmarkets and the rapid growth of the poor population in metropolitan areas has not allowedfor the crystallization of racially separate housing markets (Ribeiro, 1993). However,

even if stability were to exist, as it does for middle-class housing, high racial segregationwould require some motivation such as a strong association between property values andracial composition of neighbourhoods, as in the US. Such an attitude does not seem to bewidespread in Brazil. Also, the historical absence of legal segregation in Brazil has notcreated the tradition of segregation found in the US, which has persisted long after theabrogation of segregatory laws.

Table 3 also shows a pattern of greater segregation with higher income groups in Riode Janeiro and Belo Hori~onte.~ he Afro-Brazilian middle class in the first twometropolitan areas is clearly more segregated from middle-class whites than poor Afro-Brazilians are from poor whites. The relatively low colour segregation among the largeurban poor population of Rio and Belo Horizonte indicates that racism among the poormay be especially low, although the higher segregation among the poor in Salvador mayreflect a stronger sense of ethnicity among the poor. For the poor, the extremely limitedhousing options and the absence of state assistance make the selection of neighbourhoodson the basis of its racial composition unlikely. Such extreme poverty may force greaterreliance on cooperation, despite the colour of the helping hand. Moderate rates ofinterracial interaction, as evidenced by intermarriage, are a result of only moderatesegregation and in turn contribute to the persistence of moderate racial segregation.

Thus, although racial segregation among members of similar class groups is notnearly as extreme as that found in apartheid contexts, it is nevertheless substantial. Thismay be due to the effects of ethnicity and to moderate racism in housing markets. Afro-Brazilians, like other ethnic groups, may seek neighbourhoods with persons of similar

5 Segregation scores for the lowest earning group are inconsistent with patterns observed for all othergroups. This may be due to data errors in which respondents may have falsely reported that they had no oralmost no income.


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ethnicity and near ethnic institutions likesamba schools. Similarly, migrant networks ofpersons arriving from the same region channel migrants into particular neighbourhoods;because of large regional differences in racial composition, these networks may increaseracial segregation. However, the voluntary settlement into neighbourhoods with personsof similar colour may itself be a manner in which Afro-Brazilians avoid housing

discrimination. It may also be easier for Afro-Brazilians to find housing in aneighbourhood that already has significant numbers of non-whites.

Changes since 198

Unfortunately data have not been available with which to measure segregation since 1 980.Appropriate new data will become available only when the results of the 1991 Census ar ereleased. At this point, we can only speculate on the change. Social transformationsoccurring throughout the 1980s support the hypothesis of increasing segregation by raceand by class , in which greater class segrega tion also means greater race seg regation. The

economic crisisof Brazil since 1981 has increased the levelof income inequality overall(Bonelli and Sedlacek, 1989), which itself leads to greater class segregation (Telles,1992). The crisis may also have increased racial inequality in which the incomes of non-whites took a greater fall than those of whites. In the context of fewer good jobs, racialcompetition may have increased, thus increasing jo b discrimination a s white work ers seekto maintain their labour market advantage, and may pressure employers to reducecompetition fro m Brazilians of colour, particularly at the white-collar level. At the moreinterpersonal level, race relations may have become more strained as blacks and brownsoften become the scapegoats for Brazilian society's increasing social and economic ills,thus making racial divisions more salient. This seems to be reflected in the currentseparatist movement. In an era of higher job turnover, the fact that Afro-Brazilians arecommonly the last hired and first fired may have harmed gains that they made during thepreceding period of economic growth.

Besides the direct impact of the cris is, at least three other changes in Brazilian citiesmay have led to greater class segregation throughout the 1980s. The first has been thegrowth of homogeneous middle-class housing tracts , often through municipal annexation.Second, the increasing popularity of condominios fechados, walled middle-classcomplexes, has come about in response tothe grow ing insecurities and fears that middle-class residents have about urban c rime (Caldeira, 1992). Althoughcondominios fechadosmay not necessarily have created greater spatial segregation, they have increased socialsegregation as walls have created the separation formerly produced by geography.Similarly, high-tech security systems allow middle-class mini-cities like Alphaville inSBoPaulo to appear amidst poor and working-class districts yet remain impenetrable to itsresidents. Finally, there has been a trend away f rom h iring dom estic servants who live onthe premises of their employers, thus cutting off even this limited form of interclass andinterracial interaction.

At least four factors point to the emergence of greater ethnic identification amongAfro-Brazilians, acting to heighten the ethnic factor behind segregation. The first of theseis the influence of Afro-Brazilian social movements, especially sincethe celebration ofthe centenano, which led to massive education about the plight of Afro-Brazilians andconsciousness raising among Afro-Brazilians, which may have led to increased ethnicpride among a community in which African origin, although glorified in the culturalsense, has been greatly disparaged in the social sense.

Secondly, a subsiding of the migration stream from the Northeast to cities in theSoutheast and the em ergence of a generation ofthe children of these migran ts means thatthe multi-racial nordestino identity may give way to an identity based on race for thechildren of these migrants. The increasing salience of racial identity among youth in

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Race, class and space in Brazilian cities 403

Brazil and the likely decreasing salience ofnordestino identity for the ch ildren is likely tomake racial distinctions more important among this population.6

A third issue which is most likely to have contributed to a grow ing isolation of blacksand browns is the greater fertility rates among this population compared to whites inrecent decades. Based on the 1980 Brazilian cen sus, fertility rates for black and brownwomen 5.25 and 4.86) were substantially higher than those for white women(3.44)(Goldani, 1989: 126). This means that the black and brown component of the populationhas been increasing more than that for whites, which would be apparent in todaysyounger cohorts. An increasing proportion of non-whites among the younger populationwould occur despite differences in the death rate which today has its greatest impact atolder ages.

A final and perhaps most important issue is the increasing globalization of blackculture and its reception by A fro-Brazilian youth (Sansone, 1994). Through television andvideos, a global black culture industry has suddenly brought Afro-Caribbean and African-American music and styles to youth throughout Brazil. A significant African diasporictourism features travel to Salvador and a strong revival and creation of Salvadors own

black culture has emerged partly in response to the market for African diasporic culture.Musical grou ps like Olodum and ca rnival schoo ls like IlC Aye have received internationalrecognition and have promoted local racial consciousness. For many young blacks andmulattos in Salvador, identity asnegros has become a positive feature of individualidentities, replacing the more ambivalent and often negative colour and phenotypeidentities likepreto, pardo and mulatto.

Consequences of racial segregation

Racial segregation has important consequences fo r the development of the Afro-Braziliancommunity and for its participation in Brazilian society. Segregation generally implieseven greater poverty than economic position itself would signify. Segregation generallymeans inequalities in access to labo ur and consumer markets which tend to be located inor near white and middle-class (or working-class) neighbourhoods, as well as access toschools, hospitals, and police and fire protection. From a psychological point of view,segregation limits exposure to middle-class role models, thereby further inhibitingmobility. Opportunities for interracial and inter-class interactions a re constrained. On thepositive side, racial segregation, no matter what the cause, often means the existence ofdynamic ethnic neighbourhoods in which ethnic affinities create a greater valuation ofshared residential space, promoting cultural life and helping to empower ethnic groupstoward greater pa rticipation by uniting comm on interests and controlling political spaces.The case of black districts like Liberdade in Salvador, where Afro-Brazilian music andculture are produced, or Brasilhdia inSHo Paulo, are prime examples.

Moderate segregation has widespread implications for other features of Brazilianrace relations, especially when compared to other countries with large populations ofAfrican and European descent. Clearly, Brazils lower levels of segregation have

6 By race, I refer to the white, mulatto, black etc. dim ension, although the nordestino identifier has manyof the characteristics of race. Despite large differences in the colour and physical features of thenordesrino population, on e hears residents ofSiio Paul0 ocasionally refer to nordesrinos as a racial group,attributing particular phenotypical characteristics to the group. In turn, nordestinos are victims of racismand discrimination as exemplified by the negative stereotypes used to describe them and by the blameplaced on them for the deterioration of the quality of life inSiio Paulo and other cities.

7 Lik epr ero , negro also translates into English as black, butnegro has become a positive term for racial andethnic identity and may include bothpreros and mixed race persons, while the term preto often hasnegative connotations and describes persons with very dark skin tone. Throughout the rest of this paper,my u se of the English term black refers to pre ro, the racial category of official statistics.

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Edward E. Telles

allowed relatively high levels of interracial interaction, including interracial friendshipand intermarriage, at least among the poor. On the other hand, the absence of parallelinstitutions has ironically created barriers to social and political mobilization of Afro-Brazilians. In theUS, for example, black churches, banks and universities form ed out ofsegregation and provided the capital to form leaders, a significant middle class, and tomobilize human resources toward political ends. Similarly, racial consciousness washeightened. In Brazil, the fact that blacks, mulattos and whites live in similarneighbourhoods, along with a semi-official ideology that denies racism, also seems tostrengthen a general perception that race has little o r no effect on life chances, at least forindividuals of the same social class. In this sense, the pervasive racism and racialinequality of Brazilian society is less conspicuous.

Discussion and conclusion

Racial segregation exists in Brazil, although not to the extreme forms found between

blacks and whites in the US and South Africa. It exists at similar levels and for similarreasons as the segregation between Latinos and whites in theUS or non-black immigrantgroups and natives in Europe- for reasons of ethnic cohesion as well as for economicreasons. O n the other hand, segregation du e to housing discrimination may exist in Brazil,although not nearly at the level of that accruing to Afro-North Am ericans. M ore researchon discrimination in housing is certainly needed before an accurate assessment of theBrazilian situation can be made.

Nationally, poverty is multiracial but disproportiona tely affects non-w hites, while themiddle-class population is much more racially homogenous. How ever, the intersection ofrace and class needs to be analysed locally as the racial composition of class structuresvaries widely across Brazilian cities. In turn, these contexts have varying sociological

consequences, such as interracial interaction a nd ethnic identity formation, a prerequisitefor ethnic mobilization. Also, tothe extent that the poor are non-white and the middleclass is white, class tensions are often seen as racial in nature. In places like Salvador,non-whites are a substantial minority of the middle class but comprise almost the entirepoor population, while in the South, non-whites are a minority among the poor and arevirtually nonexistent in the middle class. In Salvador, poor browns and blacks live inneighbourhoods that are almo st entirely non-white, while those in the urban areas likeSBoPaulo and those further south live in neighbourhoods that are primarily white. The moreendogamous interaction among Afro-Brazilians in Salvador may have contributed to thepersistence and development of Afro-Brazilian culture and a heightened racialconsciousness. In mo re racially heterogen ous metropolitan areas like Rio de Janeiro, non-

whites comprise the majority of the poor but only a small fraction of the middle class.With few exceptions, the middle class in Brazilian cities is overwhelmingly white andconsequently their interactions with blacks or brow ns a re limited to those of lower socio-economic status.

Th e concentration of non-whites among the poor have m ade them the primary victimsof Brazils urban crises. Non-whites disproportionately suffer from the lack of adequatehousing, excessive crim e and violence, abuse by police and government officials, lack ofbasic infrastructural services, and an absence of basic human rights. The fact that urbanconditions ar e particularly bad in the Northeast, and that blacks and browns comprise thelarge majority of the poor in that region, further illustrates the extent of non-whitepoverty. Clearly, urban poverty in Brazil affects whites and non-whites in Brazil, but itseffect on non-whites is far greater and their opportunities for mobility out of poverty arefewer.

Future research on the urban sociology of Brazil shouldbe particularly sensitive toand informed about the issue of race. Aside from being highly correlated with class, a


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1994) Industrialization and racial inequality in employment: the Brazilian example.

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