Translator: Themis Scalco Reviewer: Claudia Sander
The construction of a post-racial country,
of a Brazil where we wouldn't have to worry
about people's skin color, about people's race
and about problems of racism,
is a goal I share,
but, unfortunately it's still fiction.
Since 1984, I've devoted time to making films,
writing texts and books,
all of them aiming, like in the film
I'll show you some images of, "The Daughters of the Wind,"
to talk about our dreams,
our anxieties, our fantasies, our desires
as afro-descendent people.
My effort is to demonstrate
that the experience of being black, of having black origin in Brazil,
means that we have a specific way of looking at our reality.
However,
I've been working for 30 years
and I keep asking myself
how long it'll take until Brazil starts to value what I consider
one of our greatest legacies,
which is our multiracial background;
the fact that we're a country made by blacks,
by white, by Europeans,
by Asians, by eastern people.
In other words, many groups of people came here,
many of them mixed
but, unfortunately,
the fact that we're a mixed country
hasn't made us what we would like to be:
an example of racial democracy.
If we look at statistical data about the Brazilian reality,
about professional growth, labor market, police violence,
access to education,
in all aspects we'll realize
that the worst indicators concern blacks.
I mean, unfortunately, we haven't overcome our terrible past of slavery.
I'll mention two examples here, not very recurrent ones
when we talk about the persistence of racism in Brazil,
but I think they're revealing,
they help illustrate this terrible Brazilian reality.
The first is about the adoption of black children.
According to the national adoption file, released in September 2011,
the greatest number of children waiting to be adopted are black.
The second revelation is that only 585 people,
among those who filed in to adopt,
stated that they'd accept black children.
Only 1,537 of them
stated that they'd accept mestizos, brunette or brown children.
But 10,173 of them stated openly that they'd only accept white children.
In other words, around 40 percent of them don't want black or mestizo children.
I'll mention another example that I consider even more tragic,
and perhaps one of the greatest problems of racism in Brazil nowadays,
which is police violence against young blacks.
Here I'm working
with data of 2014 from the Slum Observatory.
They made a study between 2002 and 2010
and checked that in that period
the homicide rate in Brazil
fell from 20 to 15 to each 100,000 inhabitants
This is good news.
However, in this same period, for blacks the rate went up
from 34 to 36 murders to each 100,000 inhabitants.
Now, the worst of these indicators
is the number of victims among black and young populations
has doubled in relation to whites.
I mean, quoting Caetano Veloso here,
reality keeps being brutal to those who are black or almost black
because they're so poor.
Chances of social ascension are,
unfortunately, conditioned to skin color.
I have a friend who says something I really like,
he's an anthropology professor at USP named Kabengele Munanga.
He says this, "Racism is a perfect crime in Brazil."
What is a perfect crime?
It's a crime that leaves no trace, it doesn't raise any eyebrows,
the one in which the perpetrator
tries to look like a citizen that is above all suspicion.
But, in the racial case,
you've got the highest level of perfection of the perfect crime,
which is when the criminal manages to transfer to its victim
the responsibility for the deed.
I'll give some examples of a perfect crime in the Brazilian society.
The first one is occasionally on the news.
It's what happens in football stadiums.
I think you remember the case of Aranha, the goalkeeper.
Aranha was called "monkey," "stinky black," by the opponent rooters.
Like many other players before him, he was thrown bananas at.
What was society's attitude in the case?
The attitude was to ask him to consider that natural,
as if it were an exacerbated passion from supporters.
Supporters, when passionate about their clubs, rooting,
don't know what they are saying.
Well, this issue became hot on TV,
it was on the news for two or three weeks.
Curiously, one of the people identified as a perpetrator
was broadcast on TV programs
and, from aggressor, she almost turned into heroine.
There was a great Brazilian soccer player,
who said Aranha should disregard that.
That if he did it in his history, he wouldn't get where he was.
Where is the perfect crime in the case?
The perfect crime is that in which the victim of racism suffers pressure
to not consider that as racism.
Another example of a perfect crime was something you've seen recently,
concerning athlete Ângelo Assumpção, who fell victim of racist jokes
among his peers from the Brazilian gymnastic confederation
and experienced the same kind of pressure.
When I was young and entered university
and became engaged in the black movement,
I used to wear an Afro like this this big...
It's true, it's true.
I started to frequent a friend's house,
a young white middle class girl;
I used to go there to do college homework
and, in spite of my black power, her family treated me very well.
One day, we started going out together.
The family's attitude was this.
Take a look at me in those times, at 19 and 22 years old.
They said, "You betrayed our confidence."
What does that mean?
It means I was guilty.
I crossed the invisible racial line
and provoked trouble in the family.
I had turned from a victim into an aggressor.
Nowadays I believe one of the ways this racism persists -
and it hasn't yet been tackled by the Brazilian society -
is the way it appears in people's childhood.
Especially at primary school,
at that moment when children leave the house and the family
and start to live more openly in society.
I'll give you a recent example of that.
A girl, Lorena, a student from a primary school in São Paulo,
in a school in the city of São Paulo,
suffered the same aggressions as Aranha did, by her class peers.
Her first attitude was to run to the principal
in search of a hug and support;
The principal's attitude was to say, "Don't involve me in that."
Worse: the principal said to her, "Apologize."
Even worse: the principal, instead of punishing the aggressors, sent her out
and transferred her to a different class.
That's why racism in Brazil is the perfect crime.
Well, my areas are cinema, radio and TV.
As I said before, I've been working for 30 years in these areas.
My first important work, which made me known nationally,
was a film I transformed into a book, as well,
because I spent five years researching
the history of black people in Brazilian soap operas.
I, and 14 other people who worked with me,
examined more than 500 soap operas broadcast between 62 and 98.
We saw shocking things.
It was just then that I realized that TV and soap opera
practice an even more sophisticated kind of perfect crime,
something that's called "the aesthetics of whitening."
This is what I'd really like to talk about here today.
In a third of the soap operas we examined,
there were no black people, not even as extras;
not even as housemaids or in any other way.
In the other two thirds, in about 90 of them,
black people appeared as:
killers,
janitors, bandits, drivers.
In other words, they appeared representing ugliness, backwardness,
or as a representation of subalternity in the Brazilian society.
It is as if blacks were doomed to be subaltern eternally;
and to be kept slaves.
We like to say we're a mixed-race country;
and that, therefore, we've overcome the problem of racism,
because we're mixed-race.
If that were true, if we were proud of being mixed-race,
it would be natural that those who are mixed-race,
the so-called mulatos, blackish,
would be the ideal beauty of the national TV.
Let's check the career of two big names:
Nelson Xavier and Dira Paes.
Nelson Xavier spent 20 years of his career
without wearing a suit and a tie,
usually taking roles of a small-time, grumpy businessman,
of a smart guy, of a police officer whose wife is the one who orders around,
I mean, a type of intermediate race
that isn't black, that's ashamed of their black origin,
that wants to be white but can't and so is resentful.
Dira Paes, with strong indigenous features,
this fabulous actress, spent more than 10 years
just taking on roles of funny housemaids on television sitcoms.
That is, from my perspective, to be a mixed-race person in Brazil
means it is a transition, it's a ticket from inferior to superior.
The expectation of our society is
that we become the whiter younger generation of our families.
And this is the base of the perfect crime on television.
Because it reinforces this social expectation.
And those chosen to be the stars, the good guys on TV,
are those that have strong Germanic features:
light eyes, blonde hair...
Strangely, our publicity material and our television
and even our blockbuster cinema
insist on something that was defeated in the Second World War,
that is, the claim that Aryans are a superior race.
This is a terrible thing.
Our aesthetics, the whitening aesthetics,
is more than whitening, it is Aryanism.
And blacks just get in as long as they represent backwardness,
ugliness or exoticism.
And we can see this in publicity, too.
I did a little research on Google and checked "Brazilian publicity."
Pages and pages came up
just with white people.
So, as you see, this has become natural for us,
it's the way we see on television,
on television the same thing happens day in day out.
When a black guy appears, he appears this way
as a minority, one among six.
Here, the representation is quite positive
it's almost exotic in this type of representation.
I mean, we are today in the second decade of the 21st century.
Brazil is the sixth economy in the world.
It does business with all the continents.
China has become our biggest business partner.
Africa, if it were considered as a country,
would be our fourth business partner.
I mean, a demand of the Brazilian society
is to educate a new generation, to enable people
to understand the diversity of the world,
to respect the diversity of the world,
to interact with this diversity as a natural thing,
and to learn such thing from their family at home.
Therefore, these are the challenges I believe aren't future challenges,
but challenges of the present, to the present,
to everyone, white, black, Japanese,
no matter the ethnic group.
I believe the issues discussed here today
and to those who are listening and seeing are:
How are we going to make this country, which is a global power,
overcome and destroy its mongrel dog complex?
How are we going to lose our "colonial" mental framework,
the persistence of a colonial mentality
which considers white Aryans as ethnically superior,
as having an ideal beauty or ideal characteristics for human beings?
Facing these challenges, I think we should also think how to ensure
the country acknowledges the great contributions
of black people to its history:
economically, culturally, artistically,
in sports, in several fields.
Having said that, I believe we're in a moment
in which we need to press the government, to press legislators,
to press the legal system
so that Brazil can adopt a different concept of itself,
a new aesthetics of itself,
based on what we are: a country deeply diverse racially.
I think we should also devote ourselves
to persuade the entrepreneurial segment,
those who demand publicity ads,
who fund television programs
and sponsor films,
to embrace the idea we should change our aesthetics;
we should build aesthetics based on multiracial aspects,
on human diversity.
We all have something to profit with it,
therefore, I believe this is the moment
we should let our mongrel dog complex aside.
This is the moment we should decolonize our minds.
Thank you.
(Applause)