Repost
2016
In the U.S. it's normal for us to observe (even if we don't agree with it) hypodescent, commonly called "the one drop rule"
That is, in the United States, the mostly unwritten rule is if you have one drop of black blood you are considered "black."
This is based on centuries old biological racism which is based on a erroneous belief in the biology of race. The belief in the white-constructed biology of race has been so strong that there was even a court case where a woman went to court to have herself declared white. I believe it was a state court(?) that once ruled that a person that had even 1/32 of black ancestry meant she could not identify herself as white.(That probably means if one great, great or one great, great, great grandparent is black, you're black. I'll let you do the counting of "greats" But, understand this: Brittney Spears could find out she was "black" using this method of racial identification)
Slavery, the obscure court case that I can't half remember, and everything in between (except maybe Le Dolezal) indicates that the dominant and excluding racial identity in the United States is "white."
It is the dominant culture in the United States that demands this "purity." And that kind of discrimination is normal to my brain.
Even though some of us have given up forcing people to identify via the one drop rule, people who have the slightest tinge of color in their skin mostly know that they are allowed to identify themselves as mixed, bi-racial, and even cablinasian. But these slightly tanned folk without the narrowest of noses and lips, whobinsist on identifying as "white" despite white supremacy are given major side-eye by dark-skinned folk and greeted with outright shock by white people should they ever say words that mean, "I am white."
In Brazil, though? They don't do hypodescent.
Whiteness does not nominally exclude in Brazil.
You can be as dark as Tiger Woods and Lupita Nyongo's lovechild and try to identify yourself as "white" so long as you can trace you biology to somebody white and you are pale enough in shade (I think? Colorism is a factor too. But I can't always figure out the racial math white Brazilians are doing. It feels so twisted in my head)
You can try to identify as white no matter what shade you are. But I think there's a skin shade box you have to check off in order to identify as "white" too. So if you're like Tiger Woods where being identified as "black" bothers you in Brazil, you have options that seem to mean (in U.S. terms) "brown-skinned," "mixed race", and/or "bi-racial"
As I understand it, many darkish-skinned people fear/hate being identified as black will identify as "white" if there is any way possible in Brazil.
Those that are too dark to claim "white" will claim to be in a group called "brown" And if you start earning a lot of money you can try to change your racial category into a paler one (That is, if you're light brown and poor you're in the group called "brown" (in English) But the same person might be able to claim to be "white" if that person is rich)
This goes a long way in showing just how deep the racism problem is in Brazil, though racism's pattern seems very different from that of the United States.
For a long time, pale folk of Brazil would claim that all this racial ambiguity they've built into their categories means there's no racism or less racism in Brazil.
But you know what?
Most of the CEOs in Brazil are pale, regardless of what words they use for the ethnic/racial identity.
When the models go from there (Brazil) to here (U.S.) in order to compete in the Miss Universe contest etc, the models have been historically been very pale to white. (I hope things changed in the age of Obama but the story below indicates, things don't change very fast.)
And according to what I'm reading, the government of Brazil deliberately made racial identity complicated, deliberately set out to make race and therefore racism harder to track by making the racial categories difficult to define.
On Invisibilization
White sociologists in the U.S. actually had debates and became "confused" in the 1980 and 1990s claiming Brazil had a lot less racism than the U.S.
Whiteness does not nominally exclude in Brazil.
You can be as dark as Tiger Woods and Lupita Nyongo's lovechild and try to identify yourself as "white" so long as you can trace you biology to somebody white and you are pale enough in shade (I think? Colorism is a factor too. But I can't always figure out the racial math white Brazilians are doing. It feels so twisted in my head)
You can try to identify as white no matter what shade you are. But I think there's a skin shade box you have to check off in order to identify as "white" too. So if you're like Tiger Woods where being identified as "black" bothers you in Brazil, you have options that seem to mean (in U.S. terms) "brown-skinned," "mixed race", and/or "bi-racial"
As I understand it, many darkish-skinned people fear/hate being identified as black will identify as "white" if there is any way possible in Brazil.
Those that are too dark to claim "white" will claim to be in a group called "brown" And if you start earning a lot of money you can try to change your racial category into a paler one (That is, if you're light brown and poor you're in the group called "brown" (in English) But the same person might be able to claim to be "white" if that person is rich)
This goes a long way in showing just how deep the racism problem is in Brazil, though racism's pattern seems very different from that of the United States.
For a long time, pale folk of Brazil would claim that all this racial ambiguity they've built into their categories means there's no racism or less racism in Brazil.
But you know what?
Most of the CEOs in Brazil are pale, regardless of what words they use for the ethnic/racial identity.
When the models go from there (Brazil) to here (U.S.) in order to compete in the Miss Universe contest etc, the models have been historically been very pale to white. (I hope things changed in the age of Obama but the story below indicates, things don't change very fast.)
And according to what I'm reading, the government of Brazil deliberately made racial identity complicated, deliberately set out to make race and therefore racism harder to track by making the racial categories difficult to define.
On Invisibilization
"When as the former slave owners set about diluting the country’s blackness, they also went to work on their cover story.
In the Brazilian creation myth – the country’s version of Canada’s “cultural mosaic” or the U.S. “melting pot” – the country is a democracia racial, a racial democracy. This official story was built on the idea that from the day slavery ended, Brazilians of all colours were equal. After all, there was no segregation, no apartheid, no Jim Crow. Glossing over the massive disparities between the former owners and the newly freed slaves – who had no education, land or assets – the Brazilian elite, almost entirely white, declared the country uniquely equal and, in effect, postracial.
“It was ‘invisibilization,’” says Marcelo Paixão, who is black and a professor of economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “The discourse was that we don’t have race in Brazil, so you don’t have race problems in Brazil, and you don’t need to discuss the inequality.” "
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazils-colour-bind/article25779474/
White sociologists in the U.S. actually had debates and became "confused" in the 1980 and 1990s claiming Brazil had a lot less racism than the U.S.
But anybody with eyes --people who are not bent on to e-racing racism from view every single place they are able-- can see the racism every time they look at photos and images of the money-ed and powerful of Brazil.
Some will point to Brazil's habitual bragging about carnival and the variety of shades of people singing and dancing on the streets.
My answer? Yeah, well black people in the United States were oppressed as h*ll in this country during the 1960s and 1970s, Yet you would see black folk on television, in commercials, singing and dancing while they were ordering a burger, under the golden arches hourly.
The happy darkies pushed out front don't fool anybody here or there. The affluent and powerful are paler here in the U.S. and in Brazil too, and in a lot of places around the world.
But for all Brazil's attempts at "invisiblization" racism, the overt kind, and the attending poverty seem much worse for Blacks in Brazil.
This photo may seem like a petty example of racism in Brazil to some. But the racism is so very overt here.
Brazil, while having the largest black population outside Africa, was the last country to officially outlaw slavery in 1888. That's a little more than 20 years than after slavery was outlawed in the U.S.
However, Brazil didn't go through the same Slavery Part 2, Jim Crow, like we did here in the U.S. Furthermore, this claiming to be post-racial immediately after slavery, some 100 years before the U.S. even thought about claiming such a thing, was much more effective in maintaining white supremacy.
How police treat black people in Brazil make the police in the United States look like saints.
And cops, same as in the United States, come from the general population. Thy are not imported from Mars. Cops reflect the attitudes of the nation they are raised in.
In 2013, due to an overtly racist response from a sizable portion of the population, the reigning Queen of Carnival dethroned, so to speak, and changed from dark-skinned to light-skinned.
My answer? Yeah, well black people in the United States were oppressed as h*ll in this country during the 1960s and 1970s, Yet you would see black folk on television, in commercials, singing and dancing while they were ordering a burger, under the golden arches hourly.
The happy darkies pushed out front don't fool anybody here or there. The affluent and powerful are paler here in the U.S. and in Brazil too, and in a lot of places around the world.
But for all Brazil's attempts at "invisiblization" racism, the overt kind, and the attending poverty seem much worse for Blacks in Brazil.
 |
Street actors recreating "Aladdin"
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This photo may seem like a petty example of racism in Brazil to some. But the racism is so very overt here.
These actors look like they are walking around out on the street or in a Brazilian Disneyland equivalent or a place very much like Hollywood boulevard. To me the racism displayed here (replacing the cartoon monkey with a dark-skinned black child) is the tip of an iceberg.
That is, you can only see a small part of the Brazil's Racism Iceberg on top of the water, but you know the rest of it is there and big enough to destroy the ship you're on.
Brazil, while having the largest black population outside Africa, was the last country to officially outlaw slavery in 1888. That's a little more than 20 years than after slavery was outlawed in the U.S.
However, Brazil didn't go through the same Slavery Part 2, Jim Crow, like we did here in the U.S. Furthermore, this claiming to be post-racial immediately after slavery, some 100 years before the U.S. even thought about claiming such a thing, was much more effective in maintaining white supremacy.
How police treat black people in Brazil make the police in the United States look like saints.
And cops, same as in the United States, come from the general population. Thy are not imported from Mars. Cops reflect the attitudes of the nation they are raised in.
In 2013, due to an overtly racist response from a sizable portion of the population, the reigning Queen of Carnival dethroned, so to speak, and changed from dark-skinned to light-skinned.
 |
| DARK QUEEN REPLACED |
BACKGROUND:
Apparently there is a Queen of Carnival in Brazil voted in every year. And Nayara Justino was elected to be that Queen in 2013.
Apparently there is a Queen of Carnival in Brazil voted in every year. And Nayara Justino was elected to be that Queen in 2013.
Justino was called everything from a monkey to a darkie, and told she didn’t deserve to be the Globeleza because she was “too Black.” What hurt most, though, were that many Black Brazilians also thought she was unfit for the title because of her dark skin.
“Black people in Brazil are ashamed of being Black,” Neusa Borges, a Black actress explains in the video. “There are very few who will stand up and say, ‘I am Black.'”
As a result of the backlash, Justino was stripped of her title without...notice. “They called me and said, ‘You’re not going to be Globeleza anymore. Thanks for your participation,
Read More
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/02/heres-how-brazilians-treated-its-first-black-globeleza-carnival-queen/After doing some reading on Brazil, you know what I think?
I think it's one thing to be black in this country and have a smallish portion of black and brown folks that internalize racism and despise themselves.
It would be quite another thing
to live in Brazil
where many or most of the people
that WE, in the U.S. WOULD identify as black
and being among
light, medium and dark-skinned people
who want to identify as anything but black.
Clearly, the white racists there are a lot smarter than the ones here, and they have been from the very beginning.
The white people in power there have the middle class white people hating the light people, and the next shade of light people down hating the brown people, and the brown people hating the black people.
I wonder if this has created a gap between the haves and have-nots is astronomically huge a<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">s a result of this higher level of hidden(?) racism and colorism combined with an more overt classism. Again, the Brazilian police that kill black people at will make the white racist cops here look like amateur hour.
I wonder if this has created a gap between the haves and have-nots is astronomically huge a<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">s a result of this higher level of hidden(?) racism and colorism combined with an more overt classism. Again, the Brazilian police that kill black people at will make the white racist cops here look like amateur hour.
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">Brazilian police have out-killed the cops here by 100s of folk, despite being 50% smaller.
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">I know I don't want to live in Brazil. But after reading some of this, I don't even know if I want to visit. I don't want anybody who runs this country or profits from it to have my money.
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">I wish more people felt that way about visiting the United States, truth be told.
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">The thing I know for sure is this: The black folks there have a hell of a battle ahead of them. The classism combined with the colorism and racism seems like a hardier structure to tear down as compared to what we have here.
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">
<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
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