Raça e comportamento político: Participação, ativismo e recursos em Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Social scientists approach the role of race in Brazilian politics from diverse perspectives: its role in the making of the nation-state, social movements, or race-targeted public policies. This paper takes on race as a central issue and looks into race's effect on individual political behavior. Using the resource-based approach as a framework, races does not seem to affect an individual's chance of participating politically in Belo Horizonte, whereas the possession of resources such as income and education substantially increases an individual's likelihood of participation. Despite these findings, it is argued that the resource-based approach has a limited capacity to test all factors that lead to political behavior influenced by racial identity.