Is this a Racist AD?
Out of context: Reply #25
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Conniff (1981:179) writes that "In the 1940s Vargas effected his most noteworthy transition, this time from dictator to populist." After World War II, Vargas created the Brazilian Labor party (PTB -- Partido Trabalhista Brassileiro) that supported the paternalistic policies of the government. Vargas was deposed but made a comeback in 1950. In his return to power he merely reworked his old populist views for the new political climate. Through the years following Vargas, mainstream Brazilian politicians continued to espouse populism. (Page 1995:207 & 209)The tradition of populism continued in the post-Vargas era. Even, the head of the Communist party in Brazil, Luis Carlos Prestes, led the party "with a conciliatory, even populist, stance." (Conniff 1981:180) And the Brazilian Democratic Movement of the 19780s was certainly not a leftist party.
More recently, a labor party has made more progress in Brazil. The popular leader nicknamed Lula helped form the Workers' party (PT -- Partido dos Trabalhadores). That Brazil is still much affected by populism, however, is evident in the following observation (Page 1995:222), explaining one of the reasons the Workers' party performed relatively well in the presidential election campaign of 1989: ". . . health problems forced the early withdrawal of Janio Quadros, the right-wing-populist ex-President, who appealed to much the same constituency as Lula."More recently, a labor party has made more progress in Brazil. The popular leader nicknamed Lula helped form the Workers' party (PT -- Partido dos Trabalhadores). That Brazil is still much affected by populism, however, is evident in the following observation (Page 1995:222), explaining one of the reasons the Workers' party performed relatively well in the presidential election campaign of 1989: ". . . health problems forced the early withdrawal of Janio Quadros, the right-wing-populist ex-President, who appealed to much the same constituency as Lula."
Blacks: On the Bottom of the Social Structure
Brazil is a very rigidly stratified society. Upward mobility is difficult for anyone in Brazil. But the lighter the skin color, the easier the rise to higher social position.
Blacks and mulattos continue to have lower education levels than whites. According to data of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), in 1990, 28% of the black population were illiterate, against 11% of the white population. (http://www.tvcultura.com. br/res_pgm/b4596/visoesli.htm) review of the book VISÕES DE LIBERDADE.
And blacks and mulattos experience racial discrimination. The average income for white Brazilians is twice that for black Brazilians. (Cleary, et. al. 1998:623)
Ongoing Prejudice in Brazil Against Blacks
Tiffany Brown (Whiten Up: Race and Class in Brazil) notes that ". . . for Brazilians, color categories are the equivalent of race categories. . . . Brazilians have internalized anti-black stereotypes so much so that "black" is seen as a set of poor cultural values, negative behaviors, and poverty in addition to being a color."
"In some ways, Brazil's claims to a racial democracy reinforce the culture's informal racism. "The fact that some blacks had apparently gotten rid of their 'stigma' and had joined the white community" made most Brazilians see the deprived conditions of most blacks "as a consequence of class rather than racial differences or of black inferiority" rather than racism (Viotti da Costa 243). So while Brazil claimed to be racially democratic, "[w]whitening was the most common form of social ascension," both by "marrying light" (Shapiro 830) and by "social whitening" or adopting white/upper-class ways (Viotti da Costa 243). "
(http://www.geocities.com/ad_con...
Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) was a dark-skinned black woman who lived in one of the favelas (shantytowns) of Sao Paolo. She and her children were constantly poor and hungry. She had to scavenge garbage areas to earn the necessary money to feed and clothes her family. A newspaperman, Audalio Dantas, discovered her and eventually saw her diary published as Quarto de Despejo (Child of the Dark). With the publication of her first diary she had some money available from the royalties. Robert M. Levine (1997), one of the translators, in the afterward to her second book I'm Going to Have a Little House, has an excellent discussion of the "constant" racial prejudice the authoress faced. Since she was of dark skin, Brazilians classified here as one worthy of the epithet a negra retinta, referring to her African appearance. The poverty she endured was much greater than that in the United States. (Not to mention the death squads that regularly murder children on the urban streets of Brazil -- in 1992, 442 children in the state of Rio de Janeiro were murdered -- Page 1995:260). For instance, when her book earned her royalties, she could not by herself access these funds from a bank because she was an indigent person, and as such was not allowed by law to have a bank account under her own name.
Levine described Carolina as being reviled for her blackness as well as for her poverty. Dantas censored many of the passages in her first diary that dealt with race. For instance, he censored the entry that described arranging for a white woman to work for Carolina as a servant. When Carolina (1997:79) had visitors, the white Dona Maria would become sad and grumble "My God in heaven, the world's coming to an end! God is punishing me. The world is turned upside down. I, a white woman, have a black woman for a boss." Indeed, the maid demanded a higher wage because she had to work for a black and a former shantytown dweller. In another incident, Carolina met a black woman so upset at the prejudice directed her way that she became depressed at being black and would not go to "dances for blacks."
Carolina was never good enough for the whites, but she also was never good enough for the intellectuals of Brazil. They rejected her because she was not revolutionary enough -- dare we now say it -- she was not politically correct enough for the intellectuals. They looked down on her because the three different fathers of her three children were all white. And the intellectuals claimed that she was too "selfish" because she cared most about her children and herself than any political cause. (Even though the poor woman with her small royalties was always giving money to poor people who came to her for assistance.) In short, they did not see her as an appropriate spokesperson for their political views. (Her story shows how the intellectuals used and abused her for their purposes and then threw her away -- she died in the same poverty from which she came -- a national tragedy. Perhaps the intellectuals who asked what kind of person Carolina was, should ask themselves what kind of people are they.)
Jan Rocha (1997:27) has pointed out that even though half of Brazil's 150 million people are black or mixed race, "official Brazil is white and TV commercials are positively Scandinavian. "Blacks only appear on TV as soccer players, suspects, or stiffs," complains one black activist. . . . Immigrants, adventurers, ex-Nazis, and runaway bank robbers have found more tolerance in Brazil than its own black citizens."
The most complete scientific-journalistic study about racism is Brazil was conducted just last year by the major newspaper Folha de São Paulo and the Institute of Research Datafolha. Some of the results were very surprising: while 89% of Brazilians said they believe there is racism in the society, only 10% admitted they were prejudiced; but 87% manifested some sort of prejudice by agreeing with racist statements or admitting having had discriminatory behavior in the past. (http://www.brazil-brasil.com/p1... by Rosemary Gund)
There seems less awareness of or resentment of the link between skin color and class in Brazil. This may be because of the lesser extreme gap between blacks and whites in the United States, and the recognition of peoples of different skin colors in Brazil. For instance, there is more intermixture of blacks and others on the beaches of Brazil. (Cleary, et. al., 1998:623-624) But when almost half the Brazilians have some black blood in them and have darker skins than North American whites, skin color would appear obvious that skin color would be less of a problem.
One Cannot Understand Brazil Without Understanding the Impact of Slavery and Racism
The fact that racism has always been a big problem for Brazilians can be seen in the Brazilian national inferiority complex, which has only been somewhat lessened by Gilberto Freyre's (1956) positive promotion of the positive effects of racial hybridization in Brazil. The publication of Freyre's masterpiece Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves) was a landmark in Brazilian cultural history. It was a sociological study of the formation of Brazilian society in the sugar-growing regions of the country during the colonial period. Freyre emphasized the importance of the distinct ethnic mix. Freyre described the positive impact blacks had had on the social fabric and national identity. Inf fact, Freyre was the originator of the now-dominant myth of Brazil as a "racial democracy."
But the presence of the Brazilian inferiority complex is apparent with the statement that Freyre's book "made the Brazilian upper classes feel pride rather than shame." Frankly, from reading Freyre's work, it is very apparent that he is talking to a larger conservative, and largely racist, audience. He constantly brings up an old white wives' tale of racial intolerance and then argues why it is not valid. He does this over and over again. He could just have well been talking to white Southerners of the 1950s in the United States, trying to combat their prejudices.
The Brazilians' inferiority complex is directly traceable to the fact that so many Brazilians have black blood in them (probably more than 50 percent because many undoubtedly have conveniently forgotten their racial past). In contrast, Brazil's neighbors, the Argentineans, seem to have a superiority complex because of their white skin -- they are "white" European. Argentina did not having the racial intermixing of Brazil and Argentineans will quickly make this known when talking about their country. Now how can their be no racial problem in a country with an inferiority complex about the ethnic composition of its people?
Greater Separatism in Brazil
In America, what passes for racial "liberalism" under the name of "multiculturalism" is actually a form of racial separatism. So these "multi-separatists" might actually praise Brazil for its separatist tendencies. But if one has not accepted separatism, has not accepted that blacks should be separate from whites, these separatist tendencies in Brazil will be viewed with a bit of disappointment. This is not to say that Brazilians or Americans are better or worse compared to each other. This is something that happened due to historical circumstances. Both nations have to be restructured someday.
The greater separatism in Brazil has somewhat lessened the important integrative process of acculturation. For instance, there arose a special African language known as Nago, which intensified the blacks isolation from the white world. Even Pierson (1967:71) says it retarded the whole acculturation process. Another example is that in Brazil tribal units were not deliberately broken up with the result that Brazilian blacks were better able to preserve and transmit their African culture. (Pierson 1967:73)
The most disturbing element about Brazil today is how racially distinct so many of the states are. This is something the United States has actively opposed. There is no state in the United States that is identified as a predominantly black state. But in Brazil, Bahia is definitely seen, and is in fact, "black,"while some other states are seen primarily as "white." The city of Salvador in Bahia has a population that is composed of 80 percent back and mulatto citizens (while most of the city government is white) (Page 1995:78) . Blacks are disproportionately concentrated in the north and hee is where the greatest poverty is found.
On the other hand, the state of Rio Grande do Sol has many towns that are very distinctively German or Italian, and not German/Italian because of the ghettoization of these people. But rather the Germans/Italians have set up a kind of "state of their own" within a state. Gilliam (1992:180) notes that "It is shameful for Brazilian blacks in the southern states to be more exposed to German culture than to Africanness. In Blumenau (dig the name), some blacks learn German before Portuguese!"
The Future of Racial Politics? Better in the United States
The complexity of race in Brazil and its connections to class makes eradicating racism in the national culture even harder to do. Without a clear system of discrimination to point to, Brazilians can claim that they are not racist, despite whitening ideology, and anti-black stereotypes. The result is that racial inequalities persist and continue to undermine Brazil's claims of racial democracy.
As the United States jettisoned Jim Crow legalized segregation, the two nations of the United States and Brazil have increasingly come to look like each other, with the Brazilians minorities being somewhat more conservative than their American counterparts. (But Brazil is more divided by race than the United States so this is understandable.)
The blacks in the United States have been frustrated with the apparent refusal of the Brazilian blacks and mulattos to develop a "black consciousness" somewhat similar to what has developed in the United States (Gilliam 1992). They have wondered how it will be possible for Brazil to develop a strong racial movement like that in the United States. But this is again a result of American political bias in the social sciences. The social scientists in America have endorsed a new version of racial separatism, a "plural but equal" separatism that hides its separatist past and present under the name of multiculturalism.
The lie of multiculturalism is partly illustrated by the actions of Brazilian immigrants in the United States (see Margolis 1994). The Brazilians have deliberately tried to make it clear to Americans that they are not Hispanics. (Even though many Brazilian-Americans and Brazilian immigrants speak Spanish learned by working with Hispanics in lower level jobs.) Nor do the Brazilians like to use the term Latinos. They know that Hispanics face a lot of prejudice in the United States, and so they do not want to be thought of as Hispanic or Latino. They want to be thought of as Brazilians. This, of course, hurts Hispanic efforts at political unity. What's important is to recognize the natural selfishness of groups and try to work with this knowledge rather than to try to pretend the selfishness does not exist (or is only the result of some rich buissnessmen using divisive advertisements). This selfish behavior just shows how, in a racist society, every group is guilty of a bit of racism and the overall system has to be dealt with instead of just focusing on the racism of the whites.
The very lack of separatist sentiment in Brazil may make Brazil a more likely country to endorse the necessary struggle changes to work toward a truly non-racist country. The American black movement currently is not qualified to do this -- rather they reject any alternatives to their separatist multicultural segregation. One thing for certain -- overcoming structural racism is not going to be easy in either country.
Conclusion
Brazil is a country with serious, ongoing problems with racism. To stress that Brazil's problems are less than those of the United States is to continue the American bias of undermining the appreciation of the important and independent social force of racism in our world. And, worse, it just keeps racism going strong.