1. 1. In recent years, debate has emerged regarding the capitalization of racial categories, and it is increasingly common to capitalize “Black” to honor Black cultures and identities. There is less agreement about the capitalization of “White,” with some arguing that capitalizing “White” in response to “Black” favors an “all lives matter” approach to the issue, and White supremacists have also argued for capitalization. Others have argued for capitalization of “White” from a different perspective, suggesting that capitalizing works against the racial invisibility that is a privilege of Whiteness. As this article focuses on the salience of race in constructing community, I have chosen to capitalize both terms while recognizing the possible criticisms.
2. 2. As discussed later in the article, I am referring to “heritagization” as a process of selecting cultural practices and elevating them as authentic and traditional expressions of particular communities often supported with institutional backing, as theorized by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1995) and many others.
3. 3. While acknowledging the possible critique that theoretical concepts or racial formations such as alternative Whiteness are not themselves actors, I do afford them agency and effectiveness beyond individual actors who are interpellated in systems beyond their control. In this sense, alternative Whiteness and other social formations have subjecthood.
4. 4. The blocos afro of Salvador, Brazil, for example, which drew on a wide diversity of Black repertoires, a Pan-African aesthetic, and a transnational message of Black Power, present an excellent example of an alternative Black movement that critiqued and expanded the heritage repertoires previously available in Salvador’s carnival, as do new Black practices in New Orleans’s downtown Mardi Gras (Wade, Roberts, and de Caro 2019).
5. 5. Aside from many other documented examples, in Rio de Janeiro, many of these alternative Whiter bands do participate in protest, and they also use carnival as an opportunity for activism (see Snyder 2019b, 2020b, forthcoming). I maintain, however, that such activism is generally a marginal practice within festivities that more predominantly are celebrated as modes of cultural expression for distinct communities.