Religious Racism in Brazil

Religious racism is a form of religious intolerance or discrimination that is rooted in racialized prejudices against a particular faith or faiths. The concept of religious racism comes from Brazil, where activists use the phrase “racismo religioso” to refer to discrimination against Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda. The report of the ICCRR focuses on Brazil because intolerance against Afro-Brazilian religions has reached a critical stage in terms of both severity and frequency of attacks.

Database

The interactive filters below will allow you to explore case records according to parameters like the type of religious intolerance, the religion of the victim or perpetrator, and the location in which the attack took place (both in terms of Brazil’s geography and the type of locale).

A few quick notes regarding the displayed fields and interface:

Year Case Began typically refers to the year in which the attack occurred. For ongoing attacks or cases that span multiple years, the case will be represented in this filter by the year corresponding to the first date in the range. You’ll find more detailed, comprehensive date information in the “Date(s)” field displayed in the table.

Location of Attack allows you to select from broad categories of locations where the cases of religious intolerance took place. The Type of Location field displayed in the data table has more specific data. In other words, Type of Location contains sub-categories — if you select “Government Site” using the Location of Attack filter, you’ll see data points where the Type of Location includes specific government sites like “Government Office,” “Legislature,” and “City Hall.”

Nature of Relationship refers to the way in which the victim and perpetrator are related. Much like the Location of Attack field, the Nature of Relationship filter features broad categories of possible relationships, with more specific descriptions in the “Relationship between Victim and Perpetrator” column in the data table. For example, if you select “School/Education” from the Nature of Relationship filter, you will find relationships like “Student-Teacher” and “Classmates” in the Relationship between Victim and Perpetrator column.

For full field descriptions, please see the data dictionary. A full list of controlled vocabularies (i.e., the possible terms in each field), click here.

Interactive Maps