Race, labor, and class

Florestan Fernandes’s approach to the non-incorporation of the black population into the competitive social order

Abstract

For Florestan Fernandes, Brazilian society was constituted through the subalternization of specific social groups, especially the Black population, whose social position resulted from a long historical process of silencing and domination. After the end of slavery, there was no political project aimed at effectively incorporating this population into the emerging class society, as the exclusionary logic of the old estate order was preserved in new forms. Deprived of access to schooling and the specialization required by modernization, Black people were relegated to the margins of economic and social development. This article examines Fernandes’s contribution to understanding how Brazil’s class structure consolidated itself in an exclusionary manner, assigning the Black population subaltern roles and producing their unequal incorporation into the competitive social order.