ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide the ways in which one might build a conceptual framework that offers the possibility of systematic comparisons of the political attitudes of Afro-Brazilians and African Americans. The racial policies enacted in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s must be measured against whatever impact these policies may have had on an institutional transformation of the system in which these policies emerged. Where insurgencies and movements of social change commanded centre stage in the United States, similar movements were being suppressed during the counter revolution in Brazil in 1964 when the military assumed power. In both the cases of Brazil and the United States scholars have called attention to the impact of dominant or hegemonic ideologies on the ability of racial minorities to react to persistent patterns of racial discrimination. The argument made by these scholars is that hegemonic ideologies act as serious inhibitors to the collective action of Afro-Brazilians as well as African Americans.
