The Economics of Racism

Abstract

Brazil is a federation, made up of twenty-six states and a Federal District, grouped in five geographic regions: North, North-east, Centre-west, South-east, and South. The population is classified1 in five official categories of colour/race: branca (white), preta (black), parda (equivalent to brown), amarela (yellow) and indígena (indigenous). Fifty-four per cent of the Brazilian population identify themselves as whites, 5.7 per cent as pretos and 39.5 per cent as pardos. The population of African descent is the sum of pretos and pardos, 45.2 per cent of the total population, making up seventy-five millions Afro-Brazilians.2 Brazil has the largest population of African descent outside of the African continent and has the second larger African population in the world, after Nigeria. While the less developed North and Northeast regions present the higher proportions of people of African descent, the more industrialised Southeast region concentrate the largest absolute number of Afro-Brazilians.