The Dialectics of Citizenship: Exploring Privilege, Exclusion, and Racialization

Chapter 7. Brazil: Experts in Exclusion

113 CHAPTER 7 Brazil Experts in Exclusion After the uprising of 17 June the secretary of the Writers’ Union distributed pamphlets on Stalinallee, which stated that the people had forfeited the trust of the government and could only win it back by doubling their work effort. Wouldn’t it be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another? BERTHOLD BRECHT, JUNE 1953 This chapter focuses on yet another illustrative case: Brazil . As I have done before, I present each case to highlight one particular aspect of the dialectics of citizenship. In this chapter, the main focus is “how exclusion works.” I have chosen Brazil as an example to explain how exclusion works not because Brazil is peculiar in this respect. To the contrary, Brazil is typical. The ways in which exclusion is produced and reproduced there are repeated elsewhere in the same, or very similar, ways. Thus, Brazil is a “case” introduced to unveil and highlight the causal mechanisms that typically are put to work by those who seek to defend their own privileges by excluding, stigmatizing, and discriminating against others. My own familiarity with Brazil and Brazilian Portuguese allows me to take a closer look at and a deeper examination of how exclusion works. The Brazilian case allows us to explore the microdynamics of how the reproduction and defense of privilege produces exclusion. It also allows us to take a closer look at the interpersonal and intergroup level of this dynamic—without, however , claiming that the interpersonal level is the only one of relevance when analyzing the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion. The Brazilian case, to the 114| Chapter 7 contrary, is intended to add texture and complexity to the manifold ways in which inclusion and exclusion constitute each other. Why Brazil? one could ask. Brazil fulfills the conditions of a typical case because of the richness and clarity of the causal mechanisms used in this process. Brazilians are indeed “experts in exclusion” and as such, they provide a very clear and textured image of how exclusion works at the interpersonal and intergroup level. Given that individual and group interactions become institutionalized and shape social structures, the way in which Brazilians exclude also allows us to see how Brazilian social structures have been constructed around this exclusion. To be sure, implicit in this exploratory analysis of Brazil is that we can learn something about how exclusion works in general. Of central importance in the process of exclusion and discrimination— that is, of withholding full access to the rights citizenship promises—some factors stand out as particularly relevant—namely, racism, the importance of linguistic codes, and the strategic use of formalistic protocols for exclusion. The end result of these different ways to exclude, which are in reality not separable, is a phenomenon I have called “the formal versus the informal.” Formality in language, in general habitus, and in the structuring of institutions conditions access to the spheres of power and money, as this chapter will show. By doing so, it excludes all those who are stuck in their own informality, mostly due to their lack of formal education, from full citizenship. This finding also provides the caveat of this analysis. This way of reproducing privilege works best where parts of the population are rather less educated, or differently educated, than those that control the spheres of power and money. While diverse educational backgrounds are the most common ground upon which such a way to exclude works, the presence of different language codes, where one stands out as the “high” variety and others are thus declared “low” or “vulgar,” provides another typical background for this type of exclusion. Brazil, thus, represents a typical case for how exclusion works in colonized societies. WHITENESS AS CAPITAL A recent poll on Bolsa Família recipients, conducted by the Rio de Janeiro– based Laboratory for Economic, Historical, Social and Statistical Analyses of Race Relations (laeser), found that of the 10.2 million families (18 percent of all households) in this income transfer program aimed at Brazil’s Brazil| 115 most destitute families, 66.4 percent were Afro-Brazilians (the chief of the household self-classified as either preto or pardo) and 26.8 percent selfdeclared “white.” Nationwide, almost one-fourth of Afro-Brazilian families were enrolled in this program. Afro-Brazilians thus continue to occupy the lowest ranks of Brazilian social hierarchies. In general, when comparing such highly consequential indicators as...