Miami's Forgotten Brazilians: Racialization and the Politics of Exclusion of Afro-Brazilians in South Florida

• In Event: Multiracial Identification and Identities

Abstract

This study excavates the racial dynamics that have historically fomented the waves of Brazilian immigration to the United States from the 1980s to present day. I situate the AfroBrazilian experience as critical to interrogate the ways in which racial formations and race relations from Latin America circulate hemispherically to specific locales in the United States, such as Miami. In particular, I investigate how the multilayered nuances of the AfroBrazilian identity complicate essentialized racial frameworks adding texture to notions of Blackness and Latinidad at a transnational level. To that end, I suggest that the essentializing treatment of Latinx as a monolithic group subscribes to a history of anti-black racism and colonial ideologies that ignore the complexities of Afro-Latinx racial formation.

Author

• Carolyn Silva, University of Florida