Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in BrazilDespite great ethnic and racial diversity, ethnicity in Brazil is often portrayed as a matter of black or white, a distinction reinforced by the ruling elite's efforts to craft the nation's identity in its own image white, Christian, and European. In Negotiating National Identity Jeffrey Lesser explores the crucial role ethnic minorities from China, Japan, North Africa, and the Middle East have played in constructing Brazil's national identity,