Race in Brazil: Affirming a divide

[13chapters]

IN APRIL 2010, as part of a scheme to beautify the rundown port near the centre of Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic games, workers were replacing the drainage system in a shabby square when they found some old cans. The city called in archaeologists, whose excavations unearthed the ruins of Valongo, once Brazil’s main landing stage for African

Comments

[poli_jerk]

While I was sort of aware of the racial issues that exists in Brazil, it was this documentary that opened my eyes on race in Brazil.

Many of the items mentioned in this article was also brought up in the video.

Great article OP :)

[13chapters]

TY for video link AND for thumbs up from FLOTUS.

[danyjoncew]

Ooooh, I'm gonna watch this! I wanna watch it right now but it's 1am, damn it.

[apostle_of_eris]

Thanks for this. It seems each country that received African slaves as its own particular heritage.
This piece is personally gratifying because a couple of years ago at a con I attended a panel on class in America which was owned by Marxists. When anyone else could speak, I started to say, "The United States has its own unique interrelation between class and race, and you can't completely deal with one without considering the other." I got as far as the word "unique" when someone across the audience started shrieking about oh, no, not more American exceptionalism. It's nice to run across support.

[13chapters]

IMHO, there is American exceptionalism, but there's also Canadian exceptionalism, Brazilian exceptionalism, Colombian exceptionalism, etc. It's interesting to consider how race and class work in different countries, although tbh I find it really difficult to understand. I'm so used to how race is understood in American terms that it's a struggle to really internalize how it functions in other societies.

[apostle_of_eris]

"Exceptionalism" usually refers more to Manifest Destiny God's uniquely chosen sort of attitudes than simply local distinctiveness.
Imnsho, the interrelations between class and race are unique to each country (Danish discrimination against the Eskimo??). This has nothing to do with thinking that you alone are the New Jerusalem.

[13chapters]

imho, that is irrelevant in a discussion of race and class in the United States, which was the issue at hand. Would you dissent with the statement that how race and class function in the US are unique?

[danyjoncew]

Holy cow, I was not expecting a good article coming from The Economist! I was so sure it was gonna be a mess ahahahah. It's very hard to explain race and racism in Brazil, I remember getting into an argument about it with an American back when Obama was elected because he kept saying Brazilians would never vote for a black candidate and portraying racism here as a Nazi-like type of hatred and complete segregation and I kept thinking "where the fuck would that even be possible?".

My Uni has a bonus system instead of quotas (to get into university here we take admission exams, top grades get in). They have different coefficients for black applicants, students from public schools and people with indigenous background (declaring your race is up to you). If more than one of those apply to you, they're cumulative and you get all the extra points possible. Supposedly it takes away the "but this goes totally against meritocracy!!!1!1" argument.

[13chapters]

hahaha, I like the Economist for its political analysis, but their articles on culture and society are sometimes...uh, less than great. But I thought this one was interesting.

Do you think the bonus system is working?

[danyjoncew]

I've noticed some change but I think it's gonna take a few more years and official numbers to tell if it works better than a quota system. I still think it's too white and elitist, which is even more tragic considering it's public and totally free (all the top universities here are). But before the bonus system, I wouldn't be surprised if I saw more black exchange students than black Brazilian students. I just tried to google some statistics but nothing comes up immediately and I really should be sleeping haha. Last time I remember reading something about it, around 35% of the students that got in declared themselves black, which is a higher number than any quota system. But obviously a quota is not a limit, so I don't know what to make of that. When I come back home tomorrow I'll try to find some data and compare the before and after and hopefully I'll be able to find how different it is from other universities from cities/states with similar demographics =).

[romp]

Cool, I don't know as much about Brazil as I'd like.