UCLA

In Brazil, slavery's despotic legacy of racial marginality presently continues in the form of racial economic inequality. The outcome of which has resulted in the existence of two very different Brazil's, bifurcated based on racial income differentiation. One Brazil is "black", while the other is "white". In black Brazil, blacks generally earn 28 times less than their white counterparts. To decrease the racial income gap, the success of cultural tourism as a viable means of community economic development in Salvador, Brazil has been examined. Salvador is known as the Black Rome and thus provides the most African cultural experience to tourists outside of Africa. Although the cultural tourism industry in Salvador yields significant profits from Afro-Brazilian culture, black cultural producers may be victims of exploitation, of which one outcome is not receiving congruent benefit from their contributions to the industry. This may signal that in order to decrease racial economic inequality, solutions tied solely to financial increase may be insufficient.