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> The Difference Between Black Brazil and Black U.S.
> Wednesday, 17 October 2007
> by BAR contributing editor
> Italo Ramos
> African Americans sometimes embarrass themselves, often
> without know it, by assuming that others from the Diaspora see the
> world in the same way as themselves. Blacks from other nations are
> also frequently puzzled and confused by U.S. Black behavior, and even
> the concept of Blackness that prevails in the United States.
> Afro-Brazilian journalist Italo Ramos shares his notebook of
> impressions on the ways being Black - and the assumptions of whites -
> are different in the two countries. One example: in Brazil,
> affirmative action in education is spreading like wildfire, while in
> the U.S. it is under whithering assault. The author explores the
> reasons why.
>
>
> The Difference Between Black Brazil and Black U.S.
> by Italo Ramos
>
> "We black Brazilians don't blame our national black
> leaders for inefficiency or inaccuracy, because we don't have any."
> In the 16th Century, the colonizers that went to Africa
> came from the same continent, a vast and diverse Europe, as we know.
> But, despite their different origins and cultures, they had two things
> in common. First, their two main motivations: 1) to pillage free
> natural resources; and 2) to appropriate free labor. Second: they
> thought they had the right to do these things, because, in their
> minds, they were superior human beings. This is a history that didn't
> change, as racist whites have the same mindset even today about
> pillage and slavery.
> Although their motivations were the same, European
> colonizers couldn't escape their cultural differences, and so, the
> resulting contemporary racial relations in two countries, Brazil and
> the US, couldn't be more different. Today, the American newspapers'
> editions, as they report the contemporary history of US racial
> questions, are full of very good examples of these two radically
> different streams of racial consciousness. (In fact, the daily
> editions are, themselves, one of the big differences, because it is
> not so easy to find news about black and white differences in
> Brazilian newspapers.)
> From reading American newspapers. I discovered that Mr.
> Juan Williams, a correspondent, news analyst and writer, wrote an
> article complaining that he has been attacked since he published a
> book about racial issues, that holds today's civil rights leaders
> accountable for serious problems inside black America. He went on to
> say that "75%% of black America is taking advantage of 50 years of new
> opportunities...to create the largest black middle class in
> history...."
>
> "Contemporary racial relations in two countries, Brazil
> and the US, couldn't be more different."
> Now and then, the businessman and former University of
> California Regent Ward Connerly appears in the pages proclaiming
> satisfaction because "the demise of affirmative action in America is
> fast approaching."
> Then came all the racial viciousness at Los Angeles' Laugh
> Factory with Michael Richard, followed by the idea of banning the "N"
> word. In this particular case, Noam Chonsky, the linguist, certainly
> would approve this movement, as he, more than anyone else, knows the
> dangerous power of cultural and political domination the language has.
> More recently, I read an article written by Vikram Amar
> and Richard H. Sander, two professors from UC Davis School of Law and
> UCLA, respectively. They call our attention to what they called the
> "mismatch effect" - the possibility that Affirmative Action (AA) is
> not functioning to blacks benefit. Citing some researchers, they say
> that "50%% of the black law students end up in the bottom 10th of their
> classes...." In Brazil, on the contrary, the students with AA help,
> are at the first rank of their classes, ahead of white students. So,
> white people cannot claim that AA can be bad for blacks. Instead, they
> say that it will be bad for the whole society, by separating people by
> color and, thus, "creating a racist country."
>
> "In Brazil, the students who are helped by AA help are at
> the first rank of their classes, ahead of white students."
> All this reminds me of five years ago, when I first came
> to Los Angeles intending to do some research on racial relations, and
> had my first shocking personal experience of the differences I am
> writing about. Walking down Sunset Boulevard, I was surprised by a
> white, slightly pink and widely smiling old lady who greeted me with:
> "Oh, you're good-looking! How are you doing, today?," she asked. I'm
> not so naïve as to suppose that she wanted an answer, so, while
> silently smiling back, my memory was free to send me back to my
> country, where an old white lady in the streets of Rio de Janeiro or
> Sao Paulo would never have greeted me like that. And I thought: Well,
> as I know I'm not that good-looking, maybe she is just a racist
> feeling vulnerable by my black appearance and trying to determine if
> I am really a threat, by observing my reaction to her greetings. Was I
> right? Or maybe she was just a liberal white woman. Well, I will never
> know.
> But there is one thing I do know. In that old lady's
> attitude there was something I see in many whites, in the
> predominantly white community where I live, in Brazil. It is something
> too charming, extremely pleasant, excessively easy, that always makes
> me uncomfortably distrustful. This something is artificially forged by
> education, by politeness - the kind of civilized behavior that
> prevented the old lady from being gratuitously hostile or, at least,
> ignoring my existence. In fact, a kind of hypocrisy. But living in LA
> for some months every year, I quickly learned that those attitudes can
> be seen as a sign of education, yes, but must not be confused with
> liberalism.
>
> "For Brazilian media, the work done by our black movement
> is an antipatriotic attempt to import American-style racial hate."
> Reading all this news about race in the US, more than just
> to learn about American racial complexity, I could make sense of how
> big the differences are between Brazil and the US, in terms of racial
> questions. Here are some of them:
> All the space taken up in newspapers to debate black
> "affairs" would be unbelievable in Brazil. As a matter of fact, the
> media, in general, thinks and acts as if Brazil is a "racial
> democracy." So, for them, the work done by our black movement - which
> is growing although still weak, considering the huge weight of our
> racism - is an antipatriotic attempt to import American-style racial
> hate.
> We don't blame national black leaders for inefficiency or
> inaccuracy, because we don't have any. There are so many blacks in
> Brazil that to be anti-black is the same as being against gravity, as
> they are everywhere. But without leadership, they are not organized,
> not mobilized and, just like gravity, not a force, compared to the
> American black movement. We have some black leaders in local
> communities, but none of them nationally known. Our greatest leader,
> Zumbi dos Palmares, fought against slavery, which ended one hundred
> years ago. Today, we have some black politicians, in the Congress,
> fighting for laws to benefit black population. And we have some black
> secretaries in the government, like the singer Gilberto Gil. But they
> don't lead any national black organization or movement.
> In the US, black leaders may commit errors, not doing
> something they should do or not doing anything to stop some abuses,
> but, at least in principle, black people believe in them as honest
> individuals. In Brazil, black people always look at an emerging leader
> suspiciously, believing that he is not sincere and only wants to take
> personal advantage based on his race. So, if someone black wants to
> run for a political position, it is better not to ask for votes saying
> "I'm a black man and will fight for racial progress," because no one
> will vote for him.
> Brazil has the second largest black population in the
> world, only after Nigeria. Still, black history is a very recent
> discipline in schools. The country is considered one of the most
> unequal societies, where blacks are 90%% in the poorest classes. But,
> nonetheless, we don't attack government programs that benefit black
> people, because we don't have them on such a large scale as the US
> has. And they are new programs, as almost everything done to benefit
> blacks has come in recent years.
>
> "There are 40 universities adopting the quota system."
> Affirmative Action is a very new expression in Brazil,
> borrowed from the US vocabulary. It started being practiced in 2003,
> not in any federal institution, but by the initiative of the
> Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, with a quota of 40%% for
> black students. And while in the US AA is being more and more
> contested and losing its strength, in Brazil, today, only four years
> after being adopted, it is a volcano, expelling quotas around the
> whole country. Americans can say it is not the best kind of AA, but
> it is what Brazilian black people are depending on to go to
> university. And in 2007, there are 40 universities adopting the quota
> system.
> We don't have any part of the society taking advantage of
> new opportunities. First, because new opportunities are very few;
> second, because we don't have a black middle class. Blacks amount to
> 49%% of a population of 180 million people, but it is impossible to
> create a middle class without education and with salaries 51%% less
> than the salaries of whites.
> We never had a Ku Klux Klan, but until today we have
> thousands of Samuel H. Bowers (the assumed former KKK leader who died
> in prison) in many owners of industries, commercial shops, hotels, and
> restaurants, ready to discriminate against black people at the
> entrance.
> As anyone can see, these are very important differences,
> as they show how little black consciousness there is in Brazil. But
> there is one that is the biggest.
> The most significant aspect to distinguish Brazilian and
> American racism, in its most generalized form, is the concrete nature
> of American racism, in contrast with the subjective character, the
> fluid state, the invisibility of Brazil's. The difference is that, in
> the US, nobody would dare to deny its existence, but in Brazil, racism
> is the essence of a substantive very...abstract. For a massive
> majority in Brazilian society, it just doesn't exist. For many blacks,
> too. But, more fantastic than that: At the same time it is invisible,
> it is naturally practiced by the majority of the white population. And
> they don't even notice what they are doing.
>
> "In the US, nobody would dare to deny its existence, but
> in Brazil, racism is the essence of a substantive very...abstract."
> There are two reasons for me to list invisibility as the
> most significant difference between American and Brazilian racism:
> First, because invisibility is a secular, regular, ordinary custom,
> the most common form through which discrimination spreads among the
> population against black people. Brazilian society practices
> "non-existent" racism, as part of a collective bad character of
> Brazilian moral life. And its main property is to be diffuse,
> underground, disguised, treacherous and, so, very difficult to combat.
> How does one fight against a ghost? In general, Brazilian society
> believes so little in the existence of racism that some white people
> get offended when confronted with their own racist practices, as they
> like to say and believe that they are liberals. The second reason:
> being so, it is the best example to show how deep racism is in
> Brazilian whites. It is so entrenched in everyday life that nobody who
> is white will bother about being polite, educated, with Black people.
> We all know that, in the US, blacks sometimes are "invisible," but, in
> Brazil, invisibility is the real racism.
> The millions of signs of racism in schools, at work or in
> the streets - the common use of the word "crioulo" is a good example -
> mean so little that the latest book, written this year, about racial
> questions, has the title "Nao Somos Racistas" (We Are Not Racists).
> And I keep thinking that something makes it necessary to write that
> book.
> It is not that white Brazilian society is all racist. Of
> course, there are many that take advantage of discrimination, but who
> don't hate black people and don't think they are inferior. These ones
> are opportunists, like the cheap thief that takes our wallet while
> we're not looking. And there is that majority thinking that racism
> doesn't exist. These ones can be sincere, and I would dare to say
> innocent. The problem is that black people have failed in giving white
> Brazilians the real image of the world they live in. There are some
> attempts, mainly on the academic level, but without the necessary
> frequency and wide national repercussions. One of the most recent was
> given by a professor at the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, the
> economist and sociologist Marcelo Paixao. He published his
> dissertation in 2004, with some data proving, once more, that the
> color of poverty is black. That is not a new fact, but he exposed it
> in a very surprising and intelligent way. He split Brazilian society
> in two parts, black and white, and applied to them, separately, the
> human development program launched by the UN in 1990 to measure the
> quality of life in 173 countries - income per capita, life expectancy,
> and scholarship. This index, that has "Happiness Index" as its
> nickname, was created by the Nobel Prize laureate American economist
> Paul Samuelson, in the 1970s, as the social counterpart of the
> National Growth Product (NGP), which measures economic development.
> According to the UN, in 2002, Brazil, as a whole, was in 63rd place,
> one step behind Namibia. Paixao's two countries, one white one black,
> were compared, and the result is that if Brazil were a country with
> only white people, it would be in 44th place. If it were populated
> only with blacks, it would be the 105th. Paixao's study goes on,
> showing that between 1992 and 2001, while the number of Brazilian
> poor people decreased by 5 million, the number of poor black people
> increased by 500,000, demonstrating that, while the whites got richer,
> the blacks got poorer.
>
> "In Brazil, the color of poverty is black."
> The biggest Brazilian university, Universidade de Sao
> Paulo (USP), as its name says, is located in the country's richest
> state, with a population of more than 30 million. Although the
> state's black population is 27,4%%, the black students at USP are only
> 1,4%%. In 2005, USP adopted a quota for black students in the masters
> programs of its law school. But it was the Ford Foundation that
> proposed it and gave the money to be used for scholarships. So, if
> there is the money, why not?
> Personally, I don't think that Mr. Juan Williams is a
> sellout, as his critics used to call him. On the contrary, considering
> all he has written, he is a good black man. But there are two things I
> don't understand in his thoughts. First: When he suggests that many
> black people are capable of helping themselves, as a black man, he is
> legitimizing the white racist arguments against Affirmative Action.
> Why does he do that? Well, maybe that is why he is being attacked,
> because, if "75%% of black Americans are taking advantages of 50 years
> of new opportunities," it is also true that there is a large number
> of blacks in need of them in the other 25%%, and so, his mathematics
> becomes a very difficult social equation. Second: When he pinpoints
> education as a pre-requirement to achieve racial progress, what is he
> thinking racial progress is? My point is: On the white side of
> society, education does not seem able to cure racism; instead, it
> simply gives to white persons a hypocritical, insincere attitude. If
> so, education cannot prevent black people from being a target of
> racism, too. So, where is the progress? Is education only a shield to
> protect black people against poverty and discrimination, or is it so
> effective that is capable of assuring racial progress? After all,
> Hitler was surrounded by very educated people. Well, if we don't put
> education in its place, we'll be at risk of creating a society with
> undesirable black families and workers, and full of white educated
> racists just like the Third Reich was. Education is very important,
> who can deny it? But racism is a behavioral disturbance, located in
> the moral terrain, although, in the whole of Mr. Williams' article we
> cannot find the word morality one single time. That might go without
> saying, but, maybe, that's another reason why he is being attacked.
> As we Brazilians don't have another good example, the
> adoption of AA in education is the first step in Brazil to follow the
> path the US has been taking all these years, since the 60s. But, being
> such a different society, my question is: are we going the right way?
> Italo Ramos is a Brazilian journalist. He can be contacted
> at iramos@cyberspace.com.brThis email address is being protected from
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