Ambiguity, consciousness, and plantation afterlives in Brazil's racial capitalism

This paper studies racial ambiguity and consciousness to advance debates on labor and discourse in racial capitalism and the plantationocene. I examine how the historical co-constitution of race and class shapes ideology and discourse, and how non-white workers perceive racial discrimination in a context where race and class strongly overlap. Focusing on sugarcane in Northeast Brazil, my methods include interviews with workers and union officials, and ethnographic observations at plantations and sugarcane municipalities. I argue that structural racism and class exploitation were forged through colonial plantation systems and that respondents both uneasily follow and openly challenge ideologies of racial ambiguity.