RACIAL DETERMINISM AND BRAZILIAN FOOTBALL: some reflections on structural racism since the 1930s

Abstract

Since the 1930s, deterministic views on “race” have influenced both common sense and social theories in explaining the success of Brazilian football. This article, grounded in a genealogical and bibliographical review approach, and drawing on examples from print media, criticizes these perspectives as expressions of structural racism. Such views: 1) reduce human behavior to biology, ignoring culture; 2) attribute success and failure to biological factors, as seen in expressions like “the Seleção (didn't) show race!”; 3) uphold the myth of racial democracy (“on the field, we are all equal”); and 4) reinforce the belief in “human races” with inherent characteristics, disregarding contrary scientific evidence. The article examines how these ideas obscure the socioeconomic and cultural forces shaping football, perpetuating biased interpretations. Finally, it emphasizes the need to abandon essentialist discourses, highlighting the importance of social, cultural, and economic dimensions in understanding the sport.