Afro-Brazilians in the North Star State: Black Racial Formation through a Relational and Regional Lens

• In Event: 30420 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Racial Identity, Complexities, Hierarchies

Abstract

This paper examines the racial identities and constructions of Black Brazilians in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area. Interviews with a diverse sample Afro-Brazilian immigrants in terms of skin tone, age, and occupation elucidate the ways that blackness is conferred through interactions with institutions, and non-Brazilian whites, Blacks, and Latinx. Findings show how interviewees claim blackness as an unproblematic, uncomplicated identity. At the same time, native-born others assign them to either Black and Latinx racial categories, based on local racial formations which exclude the possibility of being Afro-Latinx. In addition, cultural understandings and neighborhood residence shaped how non-immigrants viewed the blackness of individual interviewees.

Author

• Daniel Williams, Carleton College