"The children were killed so that they wouldn't grow up and become criminals, that's the philosophy of the people in power here. Being Black is as negative as it gets - it's a lot different from living here in England. I was really surprised when I came to Britain, to see Black people on TV, driving nice cars and dressing in fine clothes - it was a real surprise. In Brazil that would not happen. The only people you would see doing well would be the people with blue eyes and blonde hair." Earlier this year the Brazilian Centre for Expression of Marginalised Populations (CEAPM) planned to sue Transport Minister Eliseu Padilha after ahe made a racist remark about one of Brazil's national heroes, footballer Pele. A Brazilian Embassy spokesman told The Voice that it's not racism but rather the distribution of wealth that puts Blacks on the bottom of the pile. The spokeswoman said: "I am not denying that racism exists in Brazil but racism is a universal thing. The UK is more racist than Brazil. The main problem with my country is an economic/class one - the Black people do not have the economic muscle to climb to the top. The roots of this are deep in our history.
Dos Santos and Joaquim Barbosa Gomes, a constitutional law professor and lecturer at Columbia University, say racism is more easily detected in the United States than Brazil and is thus harder to combat. Affirmative action's advocates chide dos Santos Silva and other cautious Afro Brazilians, noting that blacks have been "feeling different" since an estimated 3.6 million slaves toiled throughout the country from 1532 to 1850. That estimate does not include the captured Africans who did not survive the brutal journey to Brazil by ship.
Since I have been thinking about Blacks in Brazil for years, I do know that racial identity is important and perceived differently there. For example, people who consider themselves Black or African American in the U.S. would not automatically be considered Black or African Brazilian in Brazil. People who have brown or lighter skin complexions in Brazil are mulattos, morenos, or some other non Black color category. Approximately half of Brazil's 150 million people are classified as mulatto or Black. "Pe na cozinha" means "foot in the kitchen" and "mulatinho" means "little mulatto." "Foot in the kitchen" refers to someone normally seen as white acknowledging his African ancestry because the kitchen is the kitchen of slavery in which Blacks served whites in all aspects of life.
Portuguese and Spanish slavers supplied the Americas with "los Negros," the Blacks. Only those young and strong, impervious to European disease and able to withstand months of torturous living packed in the cruel quarters of slave shipholds survived the middle passage. Those who arrived, stunned and malnourished, lost in a foreign land, were easy prey to the slavers. Removed from a world that had nourished them, left to the mercy of those whose own lack of humanity prevented the recognition of theirs, they were utterly dependent and at the mercy of their captors. Vestiges of racism threaten to dismantle further progress in South America, as they do here. The prophecies of Willie Lynch, a slave owner who created a divisive plan to keep Blacks separate by fostering dissent among them, are coming true. Lynch outlined the differences in physical characteristics among the slaves-skin shade, hair texture, height, etc. By playing up these differences, Lynch promised, "The Black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands." Throughout North and South America, Lynch's plan lives on. Color lines rule, with the predominantly European strains remaining in power, and those of darker skin and crisper hair texture continue to be oppressed. It is a chilling reality that echoes down from the brutal suppression of the native peoples of Chiapas to the continued repression of Mexicans here and in their own country, to the harsh discrimination shown the Blacks of Brazil and America.
"White Brazilians are not accustomed to seeing Blacks in positions of power and seeing Blacks with money in shops, night clubs and hotels. Having more Black American tourists will cause white Brazilians to treat Blacks differently and that will cause them to get a different image of all Blacks. And that can help change attitudes," Medeiros said during a recent interview in Rio.
I do know that racial identity is important and perceived differently there. For example, people who consider themselves black or African American in the U.S. would not automatically be considered black or African Brazilian in Brazil. People who have brown or lighter skin complexions in Brazil are mulattos, morenos, or some other nonblack color category. Approximately half of Brazil's 150 million people are classified as mulatto or black. "Pe na cozinha" means "Foot in the kitchen" and "mulatinho" means "little mulatto." "Foot in the kitchen" refers to someone normally seen as white acknowledging his African ancestry because the kitchen is the kitchen of slavery in which blacks served white in all aspects of life.
