ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical context of the rise of the idea of culture in the late eighteenth century in the wake of the Enlightenment, doing so in order to illustrate that what is often meant by multiculturalism, has not sufficiently moved beyond the monocultural epistemological frame out which it arose. It demonstrates using the idea of a racial democracy as proposed by Gilberto Freyre, of how a proto-multicultural interpretation of the history of Brazil can further illuminate the political and intellectual strategy of making such claims in the context of societies based on the expropriation of the lands of the indigenous peoples as well as the enslavement of populations from the continent of Africa. The chapter examines the racial politics in the United States that will also demonstrate that the paradigm of multiculturalism cannot adequately address the stark racial cum class hierarchies in the United States, and in the context of an expanding neo-liberalism, across the world.
