Using affirmative action to decrease racial inequality is the latest chapter of a long tradition of comparing Brazil and the United States with regard to race. Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quota Students and the Quest for Racial Justice is timely for both countries as they struggle with racial justice in higher education. This book responds to the United States' dismantling of affirmative action programs and a belief that they have run their course. Data show that, while affirmative action policies have contributed to a significant increase in the representation of non-Whites in the U.S. middle class, other segments of the population have yet to take full advantage of such policies. In Brazil, this book engaged with the need to understand the first results of a public policy expected to promote major social change, as it represents the first time that country admitted the existence of racial inequality in its core and took measures toward combating it despite any subsequent controversy or dissent.

The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation is a sociological analysis of the similarities between the elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, based on biographies, academic sources, newspaper, television, and internet reports published in the United States and Brazil between 2014 and 2021. The author argues that the success of each candidate reflects the racially hierarchical structure of their societies and the strength of the ideology of White supremacy to maintain that structure despite efforts to dismantle it. Regardless of class and gender, Whites responded to Trump's nativist call to exclude "undesirable" immigrants, especially Mexicans and Muslims, both of whom are racialized as non-White.In Brazil, the country with the largest population of African descent outside of Africa and the largest miscegenation rates in the world, the votes for Bolsonaro pointed to the social wish to achieve Whiteness and thus eliminate (or at least abate) the insecurity that comes from a belief in the racial inferiority of non-Whites. The author suggests that the results of the presidential elections reflect Whites' fear of losing ground after decades of gains by minorities, women, and the poor in both countries.