A Paulista Counterpoint: Florestan Fernandes, Oracy Nogueira, and the UNESCO Project on Race Relations

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the studies of Florestan Fernandes and Oracy Nogueira on race relations in São Paulo in the 1950s under the auspices of Unesco. Professors of the most important centers of social sciences in Brazil at the time (Escola Livre de Sociologia e Política/ELSP - Free School of Sociology and Politics, and Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras/USP- Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters, University of São Paulo), Florestan and Oracy reveal different perspectives on the relationship between race and class. While in Fernandes’s work race was subsumed under class, Nogueira saw an intersection of race and class in which racial disparities could not be explained by social inequalities alone. Thus the UNESCO research called attention to differing interpretations of Brazilian racism.

Keywords

• Unesco. Pensamento Social no Brasil. História das Ciências Sociais no Brasil. Racismo. Raça.