In “The Color Beneath the Skin,” writer Paulo Scott recounts a racism so Brazilian

“It’s this thing about being black, Mom. When I say I’m black, when I claim to be black, some people find it strange.” Federico, the protagonist and narrator of The Color Beneath the Skin, is talking to his mother in a scene set in his youth.

He grew up with his brother, Lourenço, in the city of Porto Alegre (southeast of Brazil), in a black family. But he was born with very light skin. And “while Lourenço tried to live peacefully, without worrying too much about the prejudices against him, Federico became a sociologist and activist on racial issues in Brazil,” summarizes O Estado de São Paulo .

Paulo Scott's novel, recently translated by Gallimard, was published in 2019 in Brazil, where it was unanimously acclaimed by the press. It carefully examines colorism, the very precise hierarchy of skin tones, so fundamental to Brazilian racism. But the novel never takes on the air of a pamphlet or a manifesto on discrimination.

At the very beginning of the novel, Federico is invited to participate in a government commission dedicated to quotas in universities. The action takes place in 2016 ( the year the right returned to power , but no political figure is named), and affirmative action policies are under debate as to how they should be implemented. Seeing the inner workings of the exchanges in this kind of body is fascinating, underlines the critic