Beyond racism: Race and inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States

Abstract

This volume is a unique collage of perspectives on the cause consequences of gross disparities in power and well-being between "persons of European or African descent or appearance" in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. The awkward phrase in quotation marks describes people who, in common parlance, are often labeled "white" or "black". Its use signals that perceived "race" is a subjective idea, variously understood, constructed, and maintained to forge group and individual identities and apportion rights and privileges in these three nations and others around the globe. Although all human beings are the same beneath the skin, and "race", colour, or phenotype have long furnished the method and rationale by which disparities in power and well being between and among these groups have been perpetuated.