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.
Jessica Lynn Graham is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego.
"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
392 pp.6 x 9Illus: 8 b/w images
9780520293755$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Sep 2019