Analysis of the myth of racial democracy from Frantz Fanon and Sueli Carneiro

Abstract

In this work, we seek to understand some elements that underlie the racism expressed in the myth of racial democracy and we intend to explain the exclusion of black people in Brazil. Thus, initially, we will briefly analyze the Brazilian authors Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, Arthur Ramos and Gilberto Freyre, seeking to understand the construction of the idea of racial democracy. Therefore, we will present Franz Fanon’s thinking about the objectification of the black people, in order to show that the existing procedures in the idea of racial democracy have an inferiorizing bias of the black, which culminates in the denial of this subject. Finally, we will turn to the thought of Sueli Carneiro, precisely with regard to the concept of raciality/biopower device, as a means of deepening the analysis undertaken by Fanon. As a result of this research, we noticed that Carneiro, when engendering such a concept, presents a new conceptual apparatus that shows how power relations operate to negate the black subject.