Racial inequalities in times of pandemic in the city of Rio de Janeiro: reflections from 1918 and 2020

ABSTRACT

This manuscript proposes to compose with the debates about the pandemic of the new coronavirus, still ongoing, seeking to complex discussions about its possible democratic effects for the global context. When looking at the Brazilian reality, focusing on the city of Rio de Janeiro, a democratic illusion is perceived that does not match the unequal impacts in the current context of the pandemic, especially for the black population, mostly poor in our country. In a genealogical exercise, we recovered studies on the so-called “Spanish Flu”, a pandemic that hit Brazil in 1918 seriously. Thus, we took both pandemics as devices of analysis for the Brazilian social reality and as a way to raise the debate on racial inequality, a fundamental analyzer in this context. Social changes towards democratization must always take this inequality into account, a consequence of centuries of enslavement. © 2020. All Rights Reserved.