The Transformations of Structural Racism: interview with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/0103-2070.ts.2024.224234

Keywords:

Structural racism, Institutional racism, Systemic racism, Sociology

Abstract

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is internationally recognized as one of the leading proponents of the concept of "structural racism." Born in 1968 in Puerto Rico, he served as president of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2018. Currently a professor at Duke University, Bonilla-Silva has argued that the racialization of our social structures is more effective in reproducing inequalities than explicitly racist ideologies or political doctrines. In 2003, he published "Racism without Racists" (translated to Portuguese by Perspectiva in 2020), a book in which he suggests that the contemporary world experiences a "color-blind racism," wherein racial discrimination continues to operate despite widespread condemnation of racist values by various political movements. Despite the increasingly common use of the notion of structural racism, Bonilla-Silva's works remain relatively unknown in Brazil. For this reason, we conducted this interview with him in September 2023, addressing topics such as the structuring of racism in today's world, the impact of events like the brutal murder of George Floyd in the U.S., and the current challenges of anti-racism in Brazil and globally.

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Author Biographies

  • Luis Augusto Campos, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

    Professor of the postgraduate programs in Sociology and Political Science at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Iesp-UERJ), where he coordinates the the Group  of Multidisciplinary Studies on Affirmative Action (Gemaa) and publishes the scientific journal Dados. He is the author and co-author of several articles and books,  including Race and elections in Brazil  (Zouk, 2020) and Affirmative action: the concept, history, and debate (Eduerj, 2018). He was a visiting researcher at SciencesPo in Paris (2014) and at New York University (NYU-2020-2021). He participated in the  coordination of the anpocs Race Relations GT (2016-2018), the abcp Race and Politics AT and the ANPOCS-Digital committee. He was a representative of the Humanities  collection on the Scielo Advisory Board (2022-2023), member of the DataLabe Advisory Board and consultant for the Ciência Suja podcast (2023). He is a PQ-CNPq (2), JCNE-Faperj and Prociência-UERJ scholarship holder. He was Professor at Unirio (2013-2014), UFRJ (2010), PUC-RJ (2010) and executive secretary of the Brazilian Association of Researchers in Political Communication (Compolítica). In 2021, he participated in the conception and organization of the Lélia Gonzalez Prize for Scientific Manuscripts on Race and Politics (abcp, Nexo and Ibirapitanga) and the  Digital Atlas of Social Sciences (ANPOCS). He is a columnist for the newspaper Nexo. He works on research on racial inequalities and democracy, and scientometrics.

  • Marcia Lima, Universidade de São Paulo

    Professor at the Department of Sociology  at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP), where she was a technical advisor to the Dean of Inclusion and Belonging (Prip). She is the licensed coordinator of Afro – Research Center on Race, Gender and Racial Justice at the  Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning. She is currently Secretary of Affirmative  Action Policies, Combating and  Overcoming Racism at the Ministry of  Racial Equality.

  • Gabriel Delphino, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

    Doutorando em Ciência Política, Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ)

References

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. (2003), Racism without racists: color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. (jun. 1997), “Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation”. American Sociological Review, 62 (3): 465-480. https://doi.org/10.2307/2657316.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. (mar. 2021), “What makes ‘systemic racism’ systemic?”. Sociological Inquiry, 91, Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.1111/soin.12420.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo & Herring, Cedric (1999), “We’d love to hire them but…: The underrepresentation of sociologists of color and its implications”. Footnotes: The Official Newsletter of the ASA, 27 (3): 6.

Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Ture) & Hamilton, Charles. (1967), Black power: Politics of liberation in America. Nova York, Vintage Books. Ed. bras.: (2021), Black power: A política de libertação nos Estados Unidos. São Paulo, Jandaíra.

Lee, Alfred Mc Clung. (1976), “Presidential address: Sociology for whom?”. American Sociological Review, 41 (6): 925-36.

Marx, Karl. ([1845] 1978), Theses on Feuerbach. Karl Marx: Selected writings. Org. David McLellan. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Weber, Max ([1949] 2017), “‘Objectivity’ in social science and social policy”. In: Shils, E. (ed.). Methodology of social sciences. Nova York, Routledge, pp. 49-112.

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Published

2024-08-19

Issue

Vol. 36 No. 2 (2024)

Section

Interview

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Luis Augusto Campos, Marcia Lima; Gabriel Delphino

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Campos, L. A., & Lima, M. (2024). The Transformations of Structural Racism: interview with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (G. Delphino , Trans.). Tempo Social, 36(2), 261-271. https://doi.org/10.11606/0103-2070.ts.2024.224234