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In this article, we explore the impact of the global cultural transformation that reconciles the values of equality and difference as parameters of the good life. We argue that the idea that social justice incorporates both the value of equality and the value of difference expresses a broad cultural transformation, one that poses new challenges society has to confront to deal with the social distribution issue. Moreover, we sustain that while this challenge is present everywhere, responses to it vary not only as a matter of policy choice, but also as consequences of the fact that possibilities are circumscribed by the particular trajectories of nation and state building. While there are forces at play today that make us aware of fallacious conflations between nation and state, it remains relevant to look at national contexts as meaningful frameworks in order to understand what is going on and to explore possible alternatives to deal with emerging issues. Moreover, looking at ways people in different historical settings experience global transformations is relevant, not only to illuminate policy choices to deal with them, but also to enrich our theoretical understanding of the changes at play. The adoption of a historical sociological approach contributes to illuminate particular national trajectories without loosing sight of possible commonalities that make it possible to contribute to the effort to reach general explanations.
Taking into account the above, we focus on the way Brazilians perceive both equality and difference and comment on the uncertain consequences of the interplay of old and new repertoires of social identity and inclusion. In particular, we look at the ethno-racial aspect, the most salient issue in the current debate about difference. Empirically, we analyze perceptions of inequality and difference among different segments of the Brazilian population. We confer special attention to two issues: the relationship between race and national identification and support to affirmative action, the most traditional policy to take into account particular identities while distributing social resources. First, we find that in Brazil racial and national identification do not seem to be in conflict. Second, we find that most Brazilians approve racially-targeted affirmative action with no significant different according to racial identification but with significant differences according to socio-economic differentiations
