Abstract
The objective of this article is to analyze the formulations of Florestan Fernandes about the myth of Brazilian racial democracy and problematize recent data about unemployment, imprisonment and homicides in Brazil, based on this theoretical foundation. It is a bibliographic and document analysis related to a research project undertaken by a network of researchers from the field of education. It concludes that one of the ethical and political challenges to the break with capitalism is criticism of the myth of racial democracy that disguises racial intolerance and maintains a surplus population that is excluded or included in a subaltern form in the labor market. This myth has a functionality in the bourgeois order, particularly in a dependent capitalist country like Brazil.
Keywords:
Dependent capitalism; Class struggle; Racial democracy