Racial democracy and industrial paternalism: stereotypes of class, race and gender in the corporate press of Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional and Nitro Química (1953-1979)
Racial democracy; Industrial paternalism; Corporate press; Gender; Class
This project, analyzing the period after the end of World War II until the end of the "years of lead" of the military dictatorship, aims to explore how the ideal of racial democracy influenced the formation of racial and gender stereotypes associated with the idea of miscegenation or "mixing of races." We will explore how the racialized vision of whiteness regarding its workers, belonging to the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) and Nitro Química, was disseminated by the military through corporate periodicals. The archival work developed reveals strong evidence of discourses and images influenced by the myth of racial democracy, disseminated within companies as a way to shape and standardize the thinking of workers and their families. Complementarily, we will analyze periodicals from the mainstream press accessible via the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library to help contextualize the internal reality of the companies in relation to the broader historical processes of Brazilian society during that period.