Scholarship overstates the size of antiracist movements in Brazil.

Evidence

Given that he does not make this argument, Burdick’s contention that “an entire generation of mulattos” has become antiracist activists comes across as wishful thinking, and is certainly misleading because it implies a groundswell of activism that is fictive. For instance, several years later, Burdick himself states that “the actual number of participants in [antiracist organizations] is not very large … [and the] organizations remain fragmented and small. [T]he leadership and social base of the movement are mainly limited to urban, middle-class and professional negros…” … One of the problems with these particular allusions is that they distort the level of resistance and mobilization. They create the false sense that antiracist movements are stronger than they actually are. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3639

Categorization

• QUESTION: How widely does the gap between movement rhetoric and actual membership numbers hold across other national antiracist movements?