Slavery’s legacies | THE ECONOMIST

American thinking about race is starting to influence Brazil, the country whose population was shaped more than any other’s by the Atlantic slave trade

ALEXANDRA LORAS has lived in eight countries
and visited 50-odd more. In most, any racism she
might have experienced because of her black skin
was deflected by her status as a diplomat’s wife.
Not in Brazil, where her white husband acted as
French consul in São Paulo for four years. At
consular events, Ms Loras would be handed coats
by guests who mistook her for a maid. She was
often taken for a nanny to her fair-haired son. “Brazil is the most racist country I know,” she says.