The society of classes referred to in the title is that of the city of São Paulo, and one conclusion of the author is that almost eight decades after the abolition of slavery the Negro has only just begun to enter into it. Emancipation freed São Paulo’s Negroes from bondage to the slave owners, but not from problems of poverty, social disorganization, prejudice, and discrimination. The social heritage of slavery combined with the new forces of a rapidly expanding commercial and industrial society to keep them in their places—somewhere below the bottom. It was not until the 1940s that the colored population of São Paulo began in a significant way to move into the ranks of industrial labor and the middle classes.
Perhaps this is not what one is accustomed to hear about the character of race relations in Brazil, even though some Brazilian sociologists have written with the conviction that it is more patriotic to study the reality of their society than to project an image of perfection for an admiring world to applaud. Some of the material in this book appeared earlier in Brancos e Negros em São Paulo, written in collaboration with Roger Bastide. There is much additional material, however, and the work represents a reconsideration of the problem with new insights and the benefits of a broader historical perspective.
A peculiarity of the racial question in Brazil has been the widespread acceptance of what Fernandes calls the myth of racial democracy. In his view the myth itself was a barrier to racial democracy, masking very real problems by flatly denying their existence.
An interesting section of the work discusses the Negro protest movements which flourished in the 1930s. The most influential of these transient and in some respects ineffectual organizations was the Frente Negra Brasileira, which curiously—but naturally enough in the context of time and place—had been partly inspired by the fascist movements in Brazil and Italy.
A North American reader cannot help asking how the racial problems of São Paulo or Brazil compare with those current in his own country. A book such as this abounds with material which by contrast or coincidence seems relevant to an understanding of North American experience. But the two societies differ in myriad subtle ways which cannot meaningfully be summarized in a concise formula. These differences require further research. Let us hope that those who accept the challenge will bring to it not only critical intelligence but a spirit of malice toward none and charity for all.
