ABSTRACT
In the United States there is a long train of black nationalist thought, orientation, and activity. It has had social, cultural, religious, and economic manifestations. It has produced some of the most systematic and probing thought arising from black people in this country. This chapter endeavors to find comparative illuminations and examines how a black consciousness organization in Brazil, the Unified Black Movement (MNU), addressed the question of black consciousness and politics, particularly during 1992 and 1993. It hypothesizes that the central difficulty faced by the MNU is the same one found in the United States: how to link a black consciousness political organization to a mass base. The chapter describes the MNU's particular interpretation of the intersecting roles of politics and culture. It shows some reflections on hypothesis regarding the MNU—that its central difficulty is the same one faced by black nationalist organizations in the United States, building a mass base.
