When Conviviality Hides Inequality : Lélia Gonzalez on Brazilian Racial Democracy

The idea of racial democracy, also known as the myth of racial democracy, is not just a mistaken belief. In fact, it encompasses a set of mechanisms that regulate social practices, power relations, forms of social interaction, and collective thinking within a historically established system of ethnic-racial domination. Based on Lélia Gonzalez’s analysis, we will investigate which social actions concretize, support, and at the same time hinder the perception of everyday racism. How can we explain the widespread acceptance and propagation of the myth of racial democracy? And what does the myth of racial democracy hide, apart from what it reveals? The purpose of this text is to understand the paradigmatic issue of Brazilian racial democracy by assuming indirectly the conceptual framework of the relationship between conviviality and inequality. How does conviviality hide inequalities? And how could the nexus of conviviality and inequality contribute to the understanding of racial democracy? Lélia Gonzalez can help us find answers to these questions.