Tuesday, February 14th 12:00 PM - 13:30 PM 306 Coble Hall
Jerry Dávila
Negative Rights: Racial Segregation and the Law in Twentieth-Century Brazil
The century between the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the ratification of the new constitution in 1988 is striking in Brazil for the near total absence of legal or constitutional protections for the social and political rights of Brazilians who are Black. In this absence of such protections, patterns of discrimination across Brazilian public, institutional, and economic life created negative rights in relation to the race-blind affirmation that “all are equal before the law.” This presentation situates the development of race-conscious policies over recent decades within a historical context of racial segregation sustained by the omission of human rights
Jerry Dávila
Jerry Dávila is Jorge Paulo Lemann Chair in Brazilian History and Executive Director of the Illinois Global Institute. His research concerns race relations, social movements and public policy in Brazil. He is the author of Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945 (Duke, 2003), Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, 1950-1980 (Duke, 2010), and Dictatorship in South America (Wiley, 2013). He is also co-author of A History of World Societies, 12 ed. (Bedford/St. Martins, 2021). Jerry Dávila has taught in Brazil as Fulbright Scholar at the University of São Paulo (2000) and as Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (2005) and at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (2022).
