Brazil has the largest African-descended population in the world outside Africa. Despite an economy founded on slave labor, Brazil has long been renowned as a "racial democracy." Many Brazilians and observers of Brazil continue to maintain that racism there is very mild or nonexistent. The myth of racial democracy contrasts starkly with the realities of a pernicious racial inequality that permeates Brazilian culture and social structure. To study the impact of this contrast on African Brazilians' view of themselves and their nation, Robin E. Sheriff lived in a primarily black shantytown in...