Afro-Brazilians – a category that includes Black and mixed-race people – comprise 56% of Brazil’s population but 43% of elected officials. So when almost 29,000 Afro-Brazilian city council and mayoral candidates took office on Jan. 1 after winning their races last November, communities of color celebrated their growing political representation.
But Brazilian politics may not be as diverse as official statistics suggest.
More than 42,000 veteran politicians who ran for office in 2020 had changed their self-declared race since their last campaign, potentially to gain access to new campaign financing earmarked for Black candidates.
Of the 28,764 winners who identified as Afro-Brazilian last year, 16% – 4,580 people – had identified themselves as a different race when they ran for office in 2016, data from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court shows. Nearly all were previously registered as white, according to my analysis of Brazil’s race-switching politicians. The data analyzed does not include first-time candidates, whose past racial identification is not documented.
Brazilians were outraged when they learned that so many veteran politicians had decided to identify as Black. Black voters are left questioning whether the lawmakers actually understand their experience as a marginalized majority – and represent their needs in the halls of power.
Thousands of Brazilians who won elections as Black candidates in 2020 previously ran for office as white