Abstract
The objective of this paper is to relate the idea of sociology as a weapon of liberation, developed among American scholars of the Atlanta School at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the conception of sociology as knowledge of salvation that emerged among intellectuals of the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), specifically between 1948 and 1955. Our methodology consists of the historical reconstruction of the contexts and theories, comparing the similarities and differences in the appropriation of sociology by racialized intellectual communities in the United States and Brazil. We indicate how the Atlanta School (1897-1910) used Sociology to demonstrate that inequalities were the result of social and economic mechanisms, and not of alleged atavistic inferiority. TEN, on the other hand, resorted to Sociology, first as a means of constructing a project for the social integration of the black population, and then as a tool to unmask the ideologies produced by the Social Sciences. Thus, on the one hand, these two institutions worked against domination and exploitation based on racial categories; and, on the other, they constructed new forms of rationality oriented by emancipatory purposes.
Keywords:
W.E.B. Du Bois; Alberto Guerreiro Ramos; Atlanta Sociological School; Teatro Experimental do Negro; deracialization