The Spirit of the Brazilian Racial Developmentalism

This paper connects the issue of Brazilian racial formation to the country’s economic development model, commonly referred to as developmentalism. To fulfill this goal, it introduces two complementary concepts. The first is the “Legend of Enchanted Modernity,” which encompasses a set of ideas played out by sectors of Brazilian social thought that, explicitly or implicitly, identify the exceptionalism of Brazilian society in comparison to the world, based on the supposed absence of instrumental agency among Afro-Brazilians. The second concept is “racial developmentalism,” representing a development model aligned with the principles outlined by the Myth, which renders these same agents either content with or resigned to their position within the social hierarchy. Thus, the racial developmentalist model positions Afro-Brazilians simultaneously as an obstacle, due to their concentration in low-productivity subsistence sectors, and as a lever for economic growth, whether through their condition as underpaid labor or as precarious holders of natural and cultural resources that can be expropriated according to developmental needs. The article concludes with further reflections on racial neo-developmentalism, characterized by Brazil’s new incorporation into global markets, which features the export of commodities based on intensive exploitation of natural resources, and the contemporary sociopolitical context marked by the rise of the far right in that nation.