Abstract

The article deals with race relations in Brazil, analyzing how adult and children’s literature in Brazil has worked to maintain and update the "complex prosperous." The article is guided by the hypothesis that the main challenge is to mover narratives, literature and textbooks which go beyond the homogeneity of a single story based on white as representative "natural" discourse of the human species that places the "other" as "deviant", from the hegemony of the white hierarchy for plural discourses. In Brazilian racial hierarchies are profuse and profound. An analysis of "the Negro as an object" indicate the presence of some striking black characters as tending to be subordination and inferiority. The alternatives are linked to the "black literature" that demonstrates richness and strength but at the same time, this literature is maintained as "marginal." In children’s literature the process is very similar, observing continuous forms of hierarchy of whites as superior and blacks as inferior. I discuss the need for teacher training and the production of alternatives and other new literary discourse.