ABSTRACT
The election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018 can be considered reactionary because of his hostility to affirmative action and not recognizing racism as a problem in Brazil. In Brazil, up until 1888, slavery was the worst aspect of racism because the worst forms of human oppression were maintained, through forms of racial understanding. By the end of War World II, neither Afro-Brazilians nor African-Americans believed Brazil could justifiably be argued to be a racial democracy. The narrative of racial democracy was revived with a vengeance by the military dictatorship, which desperately wanted to portray Brazil as a racial democracy, in particular to the newly-liberated African countries that it wished to trade with. The quest for racial equality in the African diaspora, specifically in Brazil and the United States, still has not resolved racial inequality. Politicians like Adalberto Carmargo played to both sides of this by using it as a way to promote Afro-Brazilians and Africa.
