The Double Knot in Brazilian Football
Abstract
The article examines the interactions between racial democracy and whitening ideologies in Brazil, focusing on football history. We argue that racial democracy followed an arc-like trajectory, emerging in the 1930s and declining after 1970. Drawing on Lélia Gonzalez, the text suggests these ideologies coexisted and reinforced each other, forming a “double knot” that sustained structural racism. Football, seen by intellectuals like Gilberto Freyre as a symbol of miscegenation and racial democracy, exemplified Black contributions to Brazilian identity. However, the whitening ideology marginalized Black people, linking them to the irrational, physical, and inferior. A key example was the racism faced by Moacir Barbosa in the 1950 World Cup. The arc of racial democracy completes in the shift from football-as-art to football-as-force, aligned with European standards, marking the decline of the miscegenation paradigm. The text concludes that football's modernization, marked by stadium gentrification and working-class exclusion, deepens racial inequalities and detaches the sport from its mixed cultural roots.
