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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how the concept of race has been applied and criticized in contemporary Brazilian anthropology. The implementation of Affirmative Action policies in Brazil has raised an intense debate in anthropology, in which the concept of race is being both questioned and reaffirmed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how the concept of race has been applied and criticized in contemporary Brazilian anthropology. In the last decade, the implementation of Affirmative Action policies in public institutions in Brazil has raised an intense debate in the academic and political fields, in which the concepts of both race and culture are being questioned and reaffirmed. The positions involved in such a critical reframing vary from those that consider race as an analytical concept to those that apply the word when referring to the native point of view. On the one hand, there are anthropologists who refuse to employ the word race as an analytical concept and tend to see it as an ideological and indigenous concept, since the majority of Brazilians do not classify themselves "neatly" into blacks and whites. This is the main argument of those who oppose Affirmative Action policies, claiming that these are inadequate to the Brazilian reality and would foster racism in a society in which the definition of one's ethnic belonging is fluid. On the other hand, there are intellectuals who support Affirmative Action and employ race as an analytical concept, for at least three reasons: 1) race reveals inequalities that are not explained by the concepts of social class and ethnicity; 2) culture should not be thought of as static, but rather as a field of disputes and convergence of ideas; 3) the chromatic classification in Brazil alludes to race, revealing that Brazil is a racialized country.