Racial Discrimination During The 20th Century - 3606 Words

Starting in 1501, white Portuguese men enslaved over five million Africans and brought them back to Brazil to work on sugar plantations, creating a power dynamic that has lasted for centuries. After nearly four hundred years of slavery, freed black men and women were left with no education, place to live, or family, placing them at an economic disadvantage from the beginning. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following emancipation, white men began to procreate with indigenous and African women, creating a mixed or mulatto race, which led to the false identification of Brazil as a country with a â€Å"racial democracy.† However, darker-skinned individuals still remained at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, facing systems of social, economic, and educational discrimination. The racial inequalities, products of historical legacy, have resulted in a society that has severe racial stratifications and continues to subject Afro-Brazilians to prejudice, poverty , and police brutality. Although racial discrimination in contemporary Brazilian society is pervasive, particularly noticeable in the lack of economic and social mobility, discrimination is not a new phenomenon in Brazil, but rather the culmination of 500 years of historical inequities rooted in slavery, eugenics, immigration policy, the process of miscegenation, and the myth of racial â€Å"democracy†. Brazil’s racial history has led to the formation of a society in which darker-skinned individuals faceShow MoreRelatedThe Ideas Of Discrimination During The 20th Century1164 Words   |  5 PagesThe Ideas of Discrimination A controversial topic since the 20th century, discrimination was and continues to be a concept of heated discussion all over the world. 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