In the public debate on current racial inequality in Brazil, two fundamental anti-racist strategies may be identified. While the political assertion of black awareness is faced by some as a form of denouncing the racism present in our structures and social practices, others argue that the traditional praising of the mixed race character of the Brazilian people supplies the best foundation for an authentically post-racial national project. Although these stances may seem irreconcilable, they were not seen as rivals in the beginning. Brazilian sociologist Alberto Guerreiro Ramos is an example of someone who thinks about the “problem of the black people in Brazil”, which saw the assertion of black identity as a way to build racial democracy in the country. Although his adhesion to those two projects may be considered ambiguous and incoherent, this article argues that the assertion of black identity and the praise of racial democracy are political proposals that he has deliberately tried to harmonize. Especially between 1948 and 1955, Guerreiro Ramos argued that the epistemological and political assumption of black identity would be a way to dialectically expel from the country the unconnected ideology of whiteness. Only this way, we would be capable of giving value to our mixed heritage, reconciling the traditional apology of racial democracy with the concrete constitution of our people.
Black Identity; Racial Democracy; Mixed Heritage; Niger Sum; Brazilian Social Thought