Villares, Lucia. Examining Whiteness: Reading Clarice Lispector through Bessie Head and Toni Morrison. London: Legenda Press, 2011.

Abstract

According to a number of cultural scholars, one of the most puzzling aspects of racial politics in Brazil has to do with the ability of elite Brazilians to reconcile mainstream ideologies of miscegenation and white supremacy. As Liv Sovik and John Norvell have argued, the hegemonic discourse of the nation’s morenidade (or brownness), which helped cover up the “uncomfortable” whiteness of an outnumbered elite in a mostly Afro-descendant country, has not prevented the same elite from exerting discriminatory practices to reproduce white privilege and social power.