Contested Racial Democracy: The 2014 World Cup, the 2016 Olympics, and the Emergence of Civic Nationalism in Brazil

Abstract

The advent of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games witnessed a widespread upsurge in bending and ignoring the law in Brazil. Consequently, there was a torrent of exasperated public voices questioning the results of these events for ordinary Brazilians. This paper aims to examine how the Brazilian people’s experiences of these mega-events impacted the traditional Brazilian ideology of racial democracy. Using archival data, in-depth interviews with experts, and unstructured and spontaneous interviews with 143 ordinary citizens in five Brazilian state capitals conducted during field research, I explore how constructive opposition spurred the emergence of civic nationalism, based on shared norms and values of justice, democracy, equality, and the rights to become full-fledged citizens. The emergence of such shared “civic” principles among many groups, as a counter-narrative of traditional Brazilian national identity, destabilized the long-standing narrative of “racial democracy” as a Brazilian ethnic national identity.