Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production

In Souls of Black Folk, sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois elaborates on the notion of “double-consciousness,” a concept that captures how racial marginalization shapes the perspectives, experiences, and identity of blacks in American society. He characterizes blacks’ positionality as one marked by clashing dualities that create “two warring souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (Du Bois 1903 [1996], 5). But he also notes that when this unique positionality is stimulated and directed, it can ultimately give way to heightened awareness and discovery, what he refers to as “second-sight.” Du Bois’s prolific and pioneering contribution to the social sciences, unmatched by those in his time or ours, is perhaps the best example of the manifestation of this “second-sight” (Morris 2015). His assertions about “double-consciousness” are cited profusely in interdisciplinary and international contexts, but his statements about “second-sight” have not garnered nearly as much attention despite their implications for black researchers’ knowledge production.

I was first drawn to Brazil during my sophomore year in college as a result of an eye-opening presentation made by Joselina da Silva, a black Brazilian activist and scholar. She spoke about the political work black women were doing in Rio de Janeiro. Until that point, I had little to no knowledge of Africandescendant communities in Brazil and my curiosity was piqued. Over the past 20 years, my personal and professional endeavors have been focused on trying to better understand black women’s experiences in Brazil and also contributing to efforts to promote racial and gender justice, especially through my research and scholarly projects. As someone who conducts research and teaches courses on black communities in Brazil, other areas of Latin America, and the United States, as well as courses on gender, I often think comparatively about knowledge production in and about these different geographic spaces and ways to challenge the invisibility of black women, particularly in academic research. In this chapter, I reflect on the development of the field of black women’s studies in the United States and some of the challenges to increasing the production of scholarship focused on black women within the academy in Brazil. I also examine some of the problems associated with incorporating black Brazilian women’s experiences and writings into women’s studies in Brazil and black women’s studies in the United States.

In 1986 K. C. Morrison and David Covin attended a conference of the Association of Caribbean Studies in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. For both, it was their first trip to Brazil. Although each was active in the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS), they had not met until earlier in the year when they presented papers on the same panels at both the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) and the NCOBPS annual conferences. By the time they arrived in Salvador, they were fast friends. Neither spoke, read, wrote, or understood Portuguese. Nevertheless, within two days each found himself in the close company of Brazilians. Morrison was befriended by two young Afro-Brazilians, Antônio Rosário de Lima and Júlio Romário da Silva. De Lima was fluent in English and was self-taught in the language by listening to R & B records from the United States (his favorite artist was Sam Cooke), by listening to English language radio broadcasts, and by practicing on black tourists from the United States. Covin was befriended by Laís Morgan, a white Brazilian married to a black college professor from the United States. Over the course of several days both men were introduced to people and places they never would have had access to on their own.

In this chapter I examine how my notions of blackness were challenged as a black researcher conducting research in Salvador, Brazil. I have conducted research in Brasília, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro but solely focus on Salvador in this chapter. My research spanning a period of 11 years is about the role of racial identification, racism, and group identity on political behavior. In this chapter I focus on the period from 2004 to 2012, during which my research consisted of interviews with politicians about how they address racial issues during campaigns, survey interviews with Afro-Brazilians examining racial identification, racial attitudes, and political behavior, and a survey experiment with Afro-Brazilians studying whether racial and class frames impact support for racial or class policies. I also conducted in-depth interviews with Afro-Brazilians about black identity and affirmative action. In this chapter I do not analyze results from my research. Rather I focus on how I was challenged to analyze blackness more critically because of my lived experience as well as varying notions of blackness I witnessed living in Brazil while I conducted my research. Considering varying notions of blackness within one country is especially important to theories of the African diaspora where oftentimes there is an assumption about common experiences and interpretations of history. The lived experience as a black American researcher in Brazil allowed me to gain a broader understanding of what it means to be an African descendant in another part of the African diaspora. I also began thinking about new ways of analyzing racial politics in the United States when considering black Americans.

In this chapter, I analyze my experience as an Afro-Latina activist and graduate film student, during my two years of residence in Philadelphia in the United States. I discuss my reflections about my expectations, experiences, and moments of connection with the African American and Afro-Latino community using the conceptual framework of transitory identity, as developed by sociologist Stuart Hall (1994) in his chapter “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” This analysis alternates between important childhood and adolescent memories that shaped the formation of my black identity, and I rely principally on the medium of film to make these comparisons. The ultimate goal of this chapter is to illustrate the connections between Afro-Brazilians and African Americans and to broaden the discussion about the issues that should be addressed as global problems that are common to the entire African diaspora, propose solutions that can be replicated, as well as facilitate an ongoing dialogue between African descendants.

Black transnational engagement between researchers in Brazil and those in the United States adds one more layer to the “major dialogue shaping the cultures and politics of the Afro-Atlantic world” (Matory 2006, 153). Contrary to the notion that intellectual trends are guided by the whims of the “invisible hand” of the academy, there are cognitive orientations and perceived cultural commonalities that explain the origin and persistence of black researchers’ interests in their counterparts in the United States and Brazil. Beyond serving as a logical point of comparison, due to similar (though not identical) histories, their sense of shared political goals, racial commonalities, and solidarity against racism means that diasporic citizens engage in dialogues to monitor, analyze, and refine movements and programs in their own countries (Pereira 2013).