Favelas and Ghettos

It is well established in the literature that mechanisms of subordination and the role of race and class are markedly different in Brazil and the United States. Racial identities and formal mobilization among blacks in Brazil have tended to be neutralized by the state and civil society, a tendency reflected in the prevalence of class-based policies toward blacks and the myth of racial democracy (Skidmore, 1974; Winant, 1989). In the United States, race-based policies and social organization along racial lines have obscured and in some ways precluded attention to class as a basis of identity formation as well as a fundamental form of oppression. However, the U.S. literature is characterized by a fierce debate over whether race or class is the critical determinant of impoverishment among descendants of former slaves. This debate is distinguished by several camps, one favoring class and economic factors, another focusing on race and its historical and cultural underpinnings, and still another advancing a culture of pathology argument currently using the term underclass, with much overlap among all three (Reed, 1992). The primacy of cultural values as a determinant of poverty is usually defended by conservatives (Glazer and Moynihan, 1970; Murray, 1984; Banfield, 1970) and a few liberals (Lewis, 1966, 1968; Auletta, 1982; Kasarda, 1985). Structuralists tend to privilege class and deny the significance of cultural values or race-based differences (Wilson, 1987; Gorman, 1989; Burawoy, 1974; Wright, 1979; Tabb and Sawyers, 1984; Dolbeare, 1986). Arguments defending race as a predominant factor (Pinkney, 1976; Omi and Winant, 1986; Massey and Denton, 1993) are deeply embedded in the U.S. experience, giving little consideration to