Book, Unequal society, A: racism and whiteness in the formation Bra[LS]

The most comprehensive study on the determining role of racism in Brazilian inequality, by one of the most important black economists working. “Violent, authoritarian, elitist and mediocre. This is an unequal society.” With an innovative approach, economist and professor Mário Theodoro demonstrates the centrality of the racial issue in the construction and development of Brazilian society, explaining how racism worked and continues to work as a driver and organizing element of inequality in Brazil. In its various forms and manifestations, violence acts as a guarantor of the maintenance of inequalities, in the complementary relationship between the action of the police and the Justice, in housing conditions, public transport, health and education systems and in the precariousness of work. In each of them, the racial element is the explanatory factor, and this set of violence sustains and preserves the unequal society, preventing significant structural changes. Mário Theodoro also points out the inability of scholars and the main economic theories to produce, to this day, a study model that takes into account — in a country with a black majority — the preponderance of racism in the inequality of Brazilian society, and, as the author writes, “racism kills, arrests, excludes, limits, drives mad”. For him, the great force for transformation will come precisely from the segment most affected by inequality: the black population.