Inégalité raciale au Brésil et aux États-Unis : comparaison statistique

Abstract

This article compares statistical indicators of racial inequality between whites and nonwhites in Brazil and the United States for the period 1890-1988. Specific areas examined include: geographic and spatial distribution of whites and nonwhites; demographic indicators; education; and employment and earnings. For the first half of the 1900, census and household survey data yield measures of racial inequality that tended to be greater in the United States than in Brazil. After 1950, however, those measures tended to decline in the United States while remaining stable, or in some cases increasing, in Brazil. As a result, by 1980 the United States ranked as the more racially equal of the two societies on most indicators. In explaining this change in the two countries’ relative position, the article focuses on three factors: migration and the regional distribution of racial groups; the income-concentrating effects of economic growth; and state policies concerning race. Each of these factors tended to reduce racial inequality in the United States while leaving such inequality in place in Brazil. During the 1980s these factors reversed direction in the United States, with the result that racial inequality in that country increased measurably during that decade. Nevertheless, by 1988, the last year covered in this study, the United States still displayed lower levels of racial inequality than those recorded in Brazil.

Keywords

• Brazil
• United States
• race
• inequality
• Afro-Brazilians
• African-Americans