Michael Banton’s text belongs to the long tradition of European social sciences which rejects the conceptual use of the term ‘race’ in sociological analysis. His work is also linked to the school — this time a minority — that uses individualist and logico-analytic methodologies, largely shunning historical, structuralist or holistic analysis. The real novelty of his approach, though, resides in bringing the natural concept of ‘colour’ to the centre of sociological analysis of the kinds of social differentiation and hierarchization that arise from the encounters between distinct peoples and cultures. However, my comments in this short text will not address any of these aspects head on. Instead I shall concentrate on clarifying what seems to me to be the weak point of the empirical example used by Banton in his argument, namely, the Brazilian system of racial classification, which, according to the author, is based not on race but on colour, by which he means skin colour or tone. Adapted from the source document.
