Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Brazil Initiative

Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman - The Color of Love: Racial Features and Affective Capital in Black Brazilian Families

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

12:00pm – 1:30pm

Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

In this presentation, Hordge-Freeman discusses her recent book The Color Of Love which reveals the power of racial hierarchies to infiltrate our most intimate relationships. Based on interviews and a sixteen-month ethnography of ten working-class Brazilian families, this presentation sheds light on how black Brazilian families respond to racial features in ways that simultaneously resist and reproduce racial hierarchies.  Hordge-Freeman illustrates the privileges of whiteness by revealing how those with “blacker” features often experience material and emotional hardships. Moreover, she introduces her theoretical concept, 'affective capital’ to examine the tangible impact of differential treatment and the unequal distribution of affection in families.