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University of California Press

Shifting the Meaning of Democracy

Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil

by Jessica Lynn Graham (Author)
Price: $29.95 / £25.00
Publication Date: Sep 2019
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 392
ISBN: 9780520966932
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 8 b/w images

About the Book

This book offers a historical analysis of one of the most striking and dramatic transformations to take place in Brazil and the United States during the twentieth century—the redefinition of the concepts of nation and democracy in racial terms. The multilateral political debates that occurred between 1930 and 1945 pushed and pulled both states towards more racially inclusive political ideals and nationalisms. Both countries utilized cultural production to transmit these racial political messages. At times working collaboratively, Brazilian and U.S. officials deployed the concept of “racial democracy” as a national security strategy, one meant to suppress the existential threats perceived to be posed by World War II and by the political agendas of communists, fascists, and blacks. Consequently, official racial democracy was limited in its ability to address racial inequities in the United States and Brazil. Shifting the Meaning of Democracy helps to explain the historical roots of a contemporary phenomenon: the coexistence of widespread antiracist ideals with enduring racial inequality.
 

About the Author

Jessica Lynn Graham is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego.
 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology
Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction
1. Communist Racial Democracy in the 1930s
2. Embattled Images of Racial Democracy: State Anticommunism in the 1930s
3. Presaging the War: Racial Democracy and Fascism in the 1930s
4. State Cultural Production, Black Cultural Demarginalization, and Racial Democracy in the 1930s
5. The Centrality of Race and Democracy in the US-Brazil Wartime Alliance
6. A Partnership in Cultural Production: The Brazil-US Racial Democracy Exchange
7. Wartime Racial Democracy at Home: Domestic Pressures and In-House Propaganda
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"This study’s presentation of the issues of race and democracy in the United States and Brazil carefully places the issues, and how they were viewed in each country, in dramatic historical perspective."
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"In this comparative historical analysis of Brazil and the US, Graham provides an intriguing look at how debates on the meaning of democracy have intersected with fights for racial equality. . . . Recommended."
CHOICE
"In a field as densely populated as comparative US-Brazilian racial formations, it is hard to say something new. Jessica Lynn Graham has done so in scintillating detail, with an admirable balance of subtlety and clarity that will serve as a model for future work."
Hispanic American Historical Review
"This is a remarkable work of historical scholarship that I predict will have a profound impact on the discussion of race and democracy in Brazil, the US, and elsewhere."–– Barbara Weinstein, author of The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil

"Jessica Graham's comparative and transnational history of racial democracy in Brazil and the United States in the 1930s and 40s sheds new light on both nations' histories. Brazil was a crucial US ally, and Graham shows that the countries collaborated on cultural diplomacy on race during World War II. Fascinating and highly original." ––Mary L. Dudziak, author of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences

"Shifting the Meaning of Democracy opens a new chapter in the study of comparative race relations between Brazil and the US, bringing significant questions and a novel conceptual framework to the transnational history of the African Diaspora."–– Jerry Dávila, Lemann Chair in Brazilian History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Awards

  • Outstanding First Book Prize Finalist 2020, Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora
  • Roberto Reis Book Award 2020, Brazilian Studies Association
  • Bryce Wood Book Award 2021 2021, Latin American Studies Association
  • Luciano Tomassini Latin American International Relations Book Award 2021 2021, Latin American Studies Association
  • Antonio Candido Prize Honorable Mention 2020, Latin American Studies Association, Brazil Section
  • SSSP Global Division Book Award 2020 2021, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Global Division
  • Warren Dean Memorial Prize 2021 2021, The Conference on Latin American History