You are beautiful, the color of your skin is beautiful, and your hair is beautiful, understand?
brehsileiros getting woke. tis a beautiful thang
Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
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brehsileiros getting woke. tis a beautiful thang
Brazilian protesters call for President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment - BBC News
Brazilian protesters call for President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment
- 17 August 2015
- From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean
Thousands gathered at the famous Copacabana beach in Rio calling for the president to step down
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in protests across Brazil calling for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
Support for Ms Rousseff has fallen to single-digit figures in recent polls.
Many voters have accused her of failing to stamp out corruption and blame her for the economy's worst slump in 25 years.
Marchers took over Copacabana beach in Rio and also demonstrated outside congress in the capital Brasilia.
Many wore the yellow shirts of the Brazilian football team, and sang the national anthem, carrying banners saying "Dilma Out".
About 350,000 people took part in protests in Sao Paulo, police say.
Another 25,000 people took part in a demonstration in the capital, Brasilia.
The national day of action is the third major protest against Ms Rousseff and her left-wing Workers' Part this year. Hundreds of thousands took part in demonstrations in March and April.
"We want things to change and if the people don't go in the street that's impossible," said retired engineer Elino Alves de Moraes, who joined the march in Brasilia.
Ms Rousseff is less than a year into her second term as president.
There have also been demonstrations in recent months showing support for the embattled leader, with many claiming calls for her impeachment amount to a coup attempt.
Analysis: Wyre Davies, BBC News, Sao Paulo
People took to the streets to demand the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, even though the perceived mood across the country in recent days has been one of reconciliation. There's been an acceptance that to remove a democratically elected president might do more harm than good.
Overwhelmingly white and middle class, the protesters in Sao Paulo were having none of that argument. In generally jovial mood, they condemned the ruling Workers Party for its role in the corruption scandal surrounding Petrobras.
Ms Rousseff may have more to worry about further down the line, if Brazil's economy continues to decline after a decade of growth.
If inflation creeps above 10% and the economy goes into recession, that could alienate not only the privileged protesters of Sao Paulo, but her own working class base.
Read more from Wyre
Anti-government protesters say Ms Rouseff must have known about a corruption scandal in the state oil firm, Petrobras, as alleged bribery took place when she was head of the company.
She was exonerated in an investigation by the attorney general and denies involvement. However, several senior members of her government have been implicated.
Government austerity measures are also hugely unpopular with the electorate, correspondents say, as are rising unemployment and inflation rates.
A survey by the Brazilian company Datafolha showed support for Ms Rousseff's impeachment was strongest in the poorest areas, which backed her in the last election.
Ain't no Black people calling for her impeachment, though. This is just some middle class cacs.
newworldafro
DeeperThanRapBiggerThanHH
What?You get on indeed.com and look for work in Tocantins??
‘English Is For Sissies!’ - Crisis As Boys Rejecting English Language
A recent survey by the British Council has found that the tendency of Jamaican boys to view reading and language proficiency as a mark of effeminacy has contributed to the decline in students' performance in English over the last few years.
The survey, which was a precursor to the implementation of a 'Teaching teachers to teach English' programme in Jamaica, saw language consultants from outside the island visiting six non-traditional high schools, one primary school, one traditional high school and two teacher-education colleges to do assessments.
The team noted in the report of its findings that the decline in students' performance in English was being fuelled by a non-reading culture, the use of Patois as refuge against standard Jamaican English, as well as boys seeing reading and language proficiency as effeminate.
These factors, the team found, have contributed to the inability of some Jamaicans to speak English and a less-than-stellar performance in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) English.
"There has been a decline in the pass rate at the CSEC level. That within itself is an indication of the level of assimilation of the English language," said project manager at the British Council, Morland Wilson.
There was a 1.4 per cent, decline in CSEC English passes this year. Only 65.8 per cent, or 26,872, of the total grade-11 cohort of 40,148 students elected to sit the examination.
Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that only 65 per cent of the 26,419 students who actually sat the exam got a passing grade. Approximately 72.5 per cent of the females who sat the exams received a passing grade in comparison to 54.9 per cent of males.
The fact that boys are refusing to speak Standard English because of a fear of being teased does not come as a surprise to Professor of Linguistics Dr Silvia Kouwenberg.
"This observation is not new to me. Nor is it surprising, considering that we live in a society where boys earn prestige by being 'rude'," said the professor from the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
NOT UNIQUE TO JA
She said this situation is not necessarily unique to Jamaica and means that boys oftentimes do not do well in situations where they are expected to be well behaved.
According to Kouwenberg, boys and girls sometimes use speech to express their gender identities.
"In the linguistic reality of Jamaica, English is associated with being well behaved in the classroom - as girls are expected to be. This in turn makes English a 'girlish' language. So a boy who does well at English is seen as girlish by his peers," she said.
The professor noted that, in reality, English is a second language for most persons locally and the first language for only a minority of Jamaicans.
In fact, because it is not widely used, a lot of people lack the confidence to speak it.
"The truth is that a language which is learnt and used only at school and does not make the transition to other social contexts is unlikely to thrive," she said.
The study conducted by the British Council also pointed to the fact that teachers themselves are not always confident in their use of English while in the classroom.
The team of language specialists noted that there are obvious issues with teachers' subject content knowledge.
"... the teachers refer to 'the writing process' but the structured progressive journey of speaking and listening (vocabulary), reading and writing is not always clear to the teachers and, therefore, not constructed for children," stated the report, which also noted that the concentration of workbooks and worksheets didn't always provide opportunities for extended learning.
Kouwenberg believes that the idea that children will be able to learn English as well as native speakers simply by being exposed to it in school is a pipe dream.
"At this time, in my opinion, teachers are not equipped with a useful method of English language teaching where most of their charges speak Jamaican Creole," she said.
"It is well known, and was exposed in a series of Gleaner articles a few years ago, that about half the age cohort is not given an opportunity to fail CSEC English as the schools will not allow these children to go up for the examination," she noted.
But Education Minister Ronald Thwaites believes the planned introduction of an oral presentation aspect to CSEC English in the coming years will encourage students to better appreciate the use of the language.
The same will be done for the Grade Six Achievement Test.
"If you are going to cut off your nose to spite your face, by thinking that it makes people think you are effeminate, well, you won't be doing well in those subjects," he warned those who refuse to speak Standard English because they fear being teased by their peers.
Thwaites said he had heard of the linkage being made between English proficiency and effeminacy within the Jamaican context, but found it surprising that boys, especially, were actually conforming to this view.
ENGLISH ESSENTIAL
"Boys want to grow into men who are accomplished and responsible and professional and can earn money and please girls and all those things. What we need to get across to them is that a command of the English language is absolutely essential to do this," he said.
He admitted there was still more work to be done to improve students' grasps of English and CSEC passes.
"We are on an arc of improvement, but still not where we would want to be, and I think the reason is because we don't recognise that for many people, English is a second language, and we need to teach it as a second language, which the ministry is now doing," said Thwaites.
The 'Teaching teachers to teach English' programme has already been introduced to more than 100 countries spanning six continents, but Jamaica will be the only English-speaking country worldwide to benefit because Jamaicans are considered to be bilingual.
‘English is for sissies!’ - Crisis as boys rejecting English language
A recent survey by the British Council has found that the tendency of Jamaican boys to view reading and language proficiency as a mark of effeminacy has contributed to the decline in students' performance in English over the last few years.
The survey, which was a precursor to the implementation of a 'Teaching teachers to teach English' programme in Jamaica, saw language consultants from outside the island visiting six non-traditional high schools, one primary school, one traditional high school and two teacher-education colleges to do assessments.
The team noted in the report of its findings that the decline in students' performance in English was being fuelled by a non-reading culture, the use of Patois as refuge against standard Jamaican English, as well as boys seeing reading and language proficiency as effeminate.
These factors, the team found, have contributed to the inability of some Jamaicans to speak English and a less-than-stellar performance in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) English.
"There has been a decline in the pass rate at the CSEC level. That within itself is an indication of the level of assimilation of the English language," said project manager at the British Council, Morland Wilson.
There was a 1.4 per cent, decline in CSEC English passes this year. Only 65.8 per cent, or 26,872, of the total grade-11 cohort of 40,148 students elected to sit the examination.
Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that only 65 per cent of the 26,419 students who actually sat the exam got a passing grade. Approximately 72.5 per cent of the females who sat the exams received a passing grade in comparison to 54.9 per cent of males.
The fact that boys are refusing to speak Standard English because of a fear of being teased does not come as a surprise to Professor of Linguistics Dr Silvia Kouwenberg.
"This observation is not new to me. Nor is it surprising, considering that we live in a society where boys earn prestige by being 'rude'," said the professor from the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
NOT UNIQUE TO JA
She said this situation is not necessarily unique to Jamaica and means that boys oftentimes do not do well in situations where they are expected to be well behaved.
According to Kouwenberg, boys and girls sometimes use speech to express their gender identities.
"In the linguistic reality of Jamaica, English is associated with being well behaved in the classroom - as girls are expected to be. This in turn makes English a 'girlish' language. So a boy who does well at English is seen as girlish by his peers," she said.
The professor noted that, in reality, English is a second language for most persons locally and the first language for only a minority of Jamaicans.
In fact, because it is not widely used, a lot of people lack the confidence to speak it.
"The truth is that a language which is learnt and used only at school and does not make the transition to other social contexts is unlikely to thrive," she said.
The study conducted by the British Council also pointed to the fact that teachers themselves are not always confident in their use of English while in the classroom.
The team of language specialists noted that there are obvious issues with teachers' subject content knowledge.
"... the teachers refer to 'the writing process' but the structured progressive journey of speaking and listening (vocabulary), reading and writing is not always clear to the teachers and, therefore, not constructed for children," stated the report, which also noted that the concentration of workbooks and worksheets didn't always provide opportunities for extended learning.
Kouwenberg believes that the idea that children will be able to learn English as well as native speakers simply by being exposed to it in school is a pipe dream.
"At this time, in my opinion, teachers are not equipped with a useful method of English language teaching where most of their charges speak Jamaican Creole," she said.
"It is well known, and was exposed in a series of Gleaner articles a few years ago, that about half the age cohort is not given an opportunity to fail CSEC English as the schools will not allow these children to go up for the examination," she noted.
But Education Minister Ronald Thwaites believes the planned introduction of an oral presentation aspect to CSEC English in the coming years will encourage students to better appreciate the use of the language.
The same will be done for the Grade Six Achievement Test.
"If you are going to cut off your nose to spite your face, by thinking that it makes people think you are effeminate, well, you won't be doing well in those subjects," he warned those who refuse to speak Standard English because they fear being teased by their peers.
Thwaites said he had heard of the linkage being made between English proficiency and effeminacy within the Jamaican context, but found it surprising that boys, especially, were actually conforming to this view.
ENGLISH ESSENTIAL
"Boys want to grow into men who are accomplished and responsible and professional and can earn money and please girls and all those things. What we need to get across to them is that a command of the English language is absolutely essential to do this," he said.
He admitted there was still more work to be done to improve students' grasps of English and CSEC passes.
"We are on an arc of improvement, but still not where we would want to be, and I think the reason is because we don't recognise that for many people, English is a second language, and we need to teach it as a second language, which the ministry is now doing," said Thwaites.
The 'Teaching teachers to teach English' programme has already been introduced to more than 100 countries spanning six continents, but Jamaica will be the only English-speaking country worldwide to benefit because Jamaicans are considered to be bilingual.
‘English is for sissies!’ - Crisis as boys rejecting English language
sensationalist title but touches on real issues
the Jamaican language controversy is a real issue that ppl don't talk about
- In Focus
- 2:21 PM ET
- 36 Photos
ALAN TAYLOR
Reuters photographer Alexandre Meneghini has spent the past year documenting the lives of Cubans. He has captured images of students, athletes, farmers, performers, and workers in the Caribbean nation during a time of transition. Starting in 2013, Cuban officials began having secret talks with the United States, and this summer, the two nations resumed formal relations. The U.S. embassy in Havana reopened in August for the first time in half a century.
HINTS: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.
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Pre-university students pose for a photo during the first day of class for the 2015-2016 course in downtown Havana on September 1, 2015. Universal free education is one of the pillars of the socialist society built in Cuba since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. #
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Cowboy Raul Albeja, 60, stands as he listens to the national anthem during the International Livestock Fair Show in Havana on March 16, 2015. #
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Cuban soldiers hold torches during a march in celebration of the 162nd birth anniversary of Cuba's independence hero Jose Marti, in Havana on January 27, 2015. Thousands of members from the Cuban Communist Youth Union (UJC) and student organizations participated in the march. #
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A dancer from the Cuban National Ballet practices during a rehearsal before the 24th International Ballet Festival in Havana on October 22, 2014. #
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Cristian Daguada, 11 (left), plays futbolito, or little soccer in Spanish, with his neighbor Brian Meson, 11, in Havana on March 12, 2015. #
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Pedro Sili, 51, picks tobacco leaves at a farm in Cuba's western province of Pinar del Rio on February 16, 2015. #
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Dancer Cristian Perez, 20, (right) and informatics student Ariana Dexido, 17, dance near the sea in Havana on July 12, 2015. #
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The neighborhood of El Vedado is seen from a tall building in Havana on July 1, 2015. #
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Revelers get ready to perform at a carnival parade in Havana on August 7, 2015. #
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A dancer from the Deep Roots Dance Company performs during a training session in an old theatre in downtown Havana on October 14, 2014. #
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Retiree Madeline Barcelo swims at the beach with her granddaughter in Varadero, Cuba, on August 26, 2015. Cubans are flocking to the beach in record numbers before a possible end to the U.S. travel ban that would open the gates to American tourists and bump up prices. #
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Jonatan Leliebre, 10 (left), and Oscar Torres, 9, exercise before a wrestling practice session at an old Basque ball gymnasium in downtown Havana on October 30, 2014. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters - Cuba's Capitol, or El Capitolio as it is called by Cubans, is seen in Havana on July 9, 2015. Cubans are once again touring their Capitol, an imposing structure previously shunned as a symbol of U.S. imperialism but now undergoing renovation and set to reopen as the new home of the Communist government's National Assembly. #
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A tourist takes pictures at Cuba's Capitol, or El Capitolio on July 9, 2015. #
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Victor Capote, a 46-year-old rancher, works on a horseshoe on his mare "Muneca", or "doll" in Spanish, on his ranch near San Antonio de los Banos village, in Artemisa province, Cuba, on August 6, 2014. #
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Circus performer Olga Morales, 18, takes part in a training session in Havana on September 25, 2014. #
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Actress Aimee Perez, 19, poses for a photo as she has her body painted to perform as part of the creation "Mutacion Forzada", or Forced Mutation, by Cuban Artist Alberto Lescay during the 12th Havana Biennial in Havana on May 31, 2015. #
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Kevin Lachaise, 8, watches a recorded TV show on the screen of a computer in the living room of his home in Havana on February 10, 2015. Netflix Inc had just launched its movie and TV streaming service in Cuba, joining the list of U.S. companies looking to take advantage of thawing diplomatic relations between the United States and the communist-ruled island country. #
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U.S. singer Ramsey Aburdene, 26, (left), sings hip-hop with tattoo shop owner Felipe Suni, 23, in Havana, on March 18, 2015. #
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Ballet dancer Laura Quesada, 23, warms up before performing for journalists in Camaguey, Cuba, on June 20, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Street vendor Alain Rivera, 37, holds his 10-month-old nephew in a barber shop in downtown Havana on July 14, 2015. #
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Civil engineering PhD students Arazai Garcia, 28, (left), and Maidelin Pacheco, 21, chat during lunch time at the University of Camaguey in Camaguey, Cuba, on June 19, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Cigar enthusiasts smoke as they compete for the longest ash during the XVII Habanos Festival in Havana on February 26, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Children practice during a fencing class at the "Martyrs of Barbados" gymnasium in downtown Havana on December 3, 2014. About 100 students train at the gymnasium, which was named after 73 Cuban fencers, known as the "Martyrs of Barbados", who were killed in a 1976 attack when a bomb blew up a Cubana airliner in Barbados. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Pre-university students hold a Cuban flag as they walk in downtown Havana to mark the first day of class for the 2015-2016 course on September 1, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Mechanic Carlos Rodriguez, 29, calls to relatives to turn on the water for his high-pressure cleaner, as he washes the bottom of a Russian-made Moscovich car in downtown Havana on February 19, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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A baby Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) which just arrived from Havana National Zoo is placed in an enclosure at Zapata Swamp National Park on June 4, 2015. Ten baby crocodiles were delivered to a Cuban hatchery in hopes of strengthening the species and extending the bloodlines of a pair of Cuban crocodiles that former President Fidel Castro had given to a Soviet cosmonaut as a gift in the 1970s. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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A boy plays on a street in downtown Havana on December 5, 2014. #
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Cowboy Ariel Peralta, 25, watches a rodeo at the International Livestock Fair in Havana on March 22, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Cuban tourists sail in a rented sailboat at the beach in Varadero, Cuba, on August 26, 2015. Cubans are flocking to the beach in record numbers before a possible end to the U.S. travel ban that would open the gates to American tourists and bump up prices. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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People take pictures of waves breaking on Havana's seafront boulevard 'El Malecon' on January 25, 2015. #
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Boys practice wrestling in downtown Havana on October 30, 2014. #
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Odelia Pedroso, 59, hangs clothes in the courtyard of her home in downtown Havana on July 30, 2015. #
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Medical student Electo Rossel, 20, wearing a shirt with a picture of U.S. President Barack Obama, listens to music at the Malecon seafront outside the U.S. embassy in Havana on August 14, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
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Ivan Pineda, 17, waits backstage of the Bertolt Brecht Theatre to perform during the VI International Pantomime Festival Havana 2015, in Havana, on June 14, 2015. #
Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters
Dancers for TV shows, (from left) Yasel Rodriguez, 26, Yudisvani Rabi, 32 and Maykel Puentes, 30, dance during a contemporary dance training session as part of "Proyecto Divino" ("Divine Project" in Spanish), in downtown Havana, on February 4, 2015.
A Year in Cuba
Black foreigners residing in Brazil detonate our reputation as a “country without racism”
American Ky Adderly, with his family, resides in Rio de Janeiro
Note from BW of Brazil: Although this blog, other websites, books and academic studies have long proven that racism has been and continues to be a serious problem in Brazilian society, this point hits home perhaps 100 times stronger when a person experiences the fact first hand. This has been the case with numerous foreigners either living in or visiting Brazil over the years. In fact, the legendary African-American dancer Katherine Dunham’s experience with Brazilian-styled racial discriminationwas the reason for the passage of Brazil’s first official law against racism back in the early 1950s. Since then, foreign experiences with Brazil’s so-called ‘racial democracy’haven’t stopped.
American Jonathan Duran learned first hand how black children are treated in Brazil. Photos above were posted on his Facebook page.
Back in March, the American Jonathan Duran said his son was expelled from a clothing store on Rua Oscar Freire (street), in São Paulo, because he was black. The confusion happened on Saturday, March 28th, in the Animale store which is famous for its luxury brand stores. Duran said through a social network that he was outside the hotel with his child, who is 8 years old, and stepped away to make a call, was approached by a store employee. The woman had mistaken the boy for a street vendor. In an irritated tone, the employee told me: ‘He can not sell things here.’ I looked at her seriously and said, ‘He’s my son’. “In some places in São Paulo, the skin of your child could have the wrong color.”
Accounts of racism experienced by foreigners in Brazil recently came to the forefront again recently with yet another incident that we will feature in a coming article. The piece we present below was originally featured on the American radio network National Public Radio, NPR, back in May and was subsequently translated into Portuguese and featured on numerous Brazilian blogs including Socialista Morena,Projeto Ponte, Instituto Humanitas Unisinos and RAP É O SOM (meaning ‘rap is the sound’). This and other articles may serve to show that Brazilians can continue to deceive themselves about the race problem and point the finger at others (individualsor countries), but when non-Brazilians start sharing their experiences, the cat may be permanently out of the bag!
Black foreigners residing in Brazil detonate our reputation as a “country without racism”
By Lourdes Garcia-Navarro
There is a joke among Brazilians that a Brazilian passport is the most coveted on the black market because no matter what your background — Asian, African or European — you can fit in here. But the reality is very different.
I’m sitting in café with two women who don’t want their names used because of the sensitivity of the topic. One is from the Caribbean; her husband is an expat executive.
“I was expecting to be the average-looking Brazilian; Brazil as you see on the media is not what I experienced when I arrived,” she tells me.
American Ky Adderley (center top photo) with his wife, Shanna Farrar Adderley, and their daughter, Gisela Sky, live in Brazil. He says being an educated black man feels like a subversive act in Brazil. “All the blacks that I see are in service jobs, and the darker you are, the less you are seen,” he says. “Your job is maybe back in the kitchen and not out waiting a table.”
As is the case for many people from the Caribbean basin, she self-identifies as multiracial. The island where she is from has a mixture of races and ethnicities, so she was excited to move to Brazil, which has been touted as one of the most racially harmonious places in the world.
“When I arrived, I was shocked to realize there is a big difference between races and colors, and what is expected — what is your role, basically — based on your skin color,” she says.
Moving to a new country can be difficult; when you throw racial issues into the mix things can get even more complicated. The other woman is from London, and she also relocated to Brazil because of her husband’s job. She describes herself as black.
“My skin is very dark, so going out with my children, on occasions people would say to me, ‘Are you the nanny for these children?’ And I’d have to explain to them, no, these are my children, I look after them,” she says.
A quick lesson on race and class in Brazil: The country was the last place in the Americas to give up slavery. It also imported more than 10 times as many slaves as the U.S. — some 4 million. That’s meant that more than 50 percent of the population is of African descent, but those numbers haven’t translated to opportunity.
For example, these days among the whiter, wealthier classes, it’s common to have a nanny, or babá, who is darker-skinned. The woman from London says that the babásare required to wear all white (1).
“My 3-year-old has started to come home from school and … rub my arms and my skin. He said ‘mummy, I’m trying to get the brown off.'”
An expat woman from London who describes herself as black
“I promptly stopped wearing white,” she says, because it was tiresome to have to constantly explain that her children were in fact her children, despite Brazilians’ assumptions. “I got rid of the white that’s in my wardrobe, and I do not wear white anymore.”
As a black woman with lighter-skinned children, she says she fears being stopped by the police, who regularly target people of color in Brazil. She always carries ID that shows she is the mother of her two kids — something she didn’t have to do in London.
Ky Adderley, an American from Philadelphia who runs an education consultancy in Rio de Janeiro, says he too was shocked when he moved to Brazil. – “I feel like the racism here is much deeper than I’ve ever felt anywhere,” he says.
He says he knew how to navigate being a black man in the U.S — “regardless of people’s skin tone, there was a sense in the black community that if you have a little bit in you, then you were black, and so then we were able to build community really quickly” — but in Brazil he found it really hard to find that same support network. So he created his own with other expatriate black men.
“We have a group called Bros in Brazil,” he says. “And it is a group of maybe 15 guys now that come from Europe, Africa, the United States, and are living and working in Brazil as professionals.”
They talk about race a lot. Brazil, Adderley says, is deeply segregated along racial lines, especially in Rio. When he walks his dog, if he isn’t wearing a suit, he often gets asked if he’s a professional dog-walker.
He says simply being an educated black man in Brazil feels like a subversive act.
“As a black person, what is your place in Rio de Janeiro? All the blacks that I see are in service jobs — and the darker you are, the less you’re seen,” he says. “So the role that you may have may be back in the kitchen and not out waiting a table.”
Most people in Brazil tell him there isn’t a racism problem, and he says that’s the root of the issue: People aren’t addressing it. The worry for him is how the race question in Brazil will affect his daughter. A woman who was photographing his then-newborn told him that he needed to modify her features.
“Well you can fix her nose, you know — you just pinch it. If you just pinch her nose every day and just keep pinching it, she won’t have that wide nose,” he recounts her telling him.
The woman from London says the racism in Brazil has started to affect her kids, too.
“My 3-year-old has started to come home from school, and he’s started to rub my arms and my skin,” she says. “He’d say, ‘Mummy, I’m trying to get the brown off.'” (2)
But there is a positive side — the woman from the Caribbean says being in Brazil has made her a lot more conscious about issues of race. She refuses to stop wearing her favorite color, white.
“Why should you let a color of clothing signify who you are, or your color of skin signify who you are?” she says. “I am who I am. I don’t care what you think — this is who I am, I’m going to continue being me.”
Source: G1, Socialista Morena, NPR
Note
American Ky Adderly, with his family, resides in Rio de Janeiro
Note from BW of Brazil: Although this blog, other websites, books and academic studies have long proven that racism has been and continues to be a serious problem in Brazilian society, this point hits home perhaps 100 times stronger when a person experiences the fact first hand. This has been the case with numerous foreigners either living in or visiting Brazil over the years. In fact, the legendary African-American dancer Katherine Dunham’s experience with Brazilian-styled racial discriminationwas the reason for the passage of Brazil’s first official law against racism back in the early 1950s. Since then, foreign experiences with Brazil’s so-called ‘racial democracy’haven’t stopped.
American Jonathan Duran learned first hand how black children are treated in Brazil. Photos above were posted on his Facebook page.
Back in March, the American Jonathan Duran said his son was expelled from a clothing store on Rua Oscar Freire (street), in São Paulo, because he was black. The confusion happened on Saturday, March 28th, in the Animale store which is famous for its luxury brand stores. Duran said through a social network that he was outside the hotel with his child, who is 8 years old, and stepped away to make a call, was approached by a store employee. The woman had mistaken the boy for a street vendor. In an irritated tone, the employee told me: ‘He can not sell things here.’ I looked at her seriously and said, ‘He’s my son’. “In some places in São Paulo, the skin of your child could have the wrong color.”
Accounts of racism experienced by foreigners in Brazil recently came to the forefront again recently with yet another incident that we will feature in a coming article. The piece we present below was originally featured on the American radio network National Public Radio, NPR, back in May and was subsequently translated into Portuguese and featured on numerous Brazilian blogs including Socialista Morena,Projeto Ponte, Instituto Humanitas Unisinos and RAP É O SOM (meaning ‘rap is the sound’). This and other articles may serve to show that Brazilians can continue to deceive themselves about the race problem and point the finger at others (individualsor countries), but when non-Brazilians start sharing their experiences, the cat may be permanently out of the bag!
Black foreigners residing in Brazil detonate our reputation as a “country without racism”
By Lourdes Garcia-Navarro
There is a joke among Brazilians that a Brazilian passport is the most coveted on the black market because no matter what your background — Asian, African or European — you can fit in here. But the reality is very different.
I’m sitting in café with two women who don’t want their names used because of the sensitivity of the topic. One is from the Caribbean; her husband is an expat executive.
“I was expecting to be the average-looking Brazilian; Brazil as you see on the media is not what I experienced when I arrived,” she tells me.
American Ky Adderley (center top photo) with his wife, Shanna Farrar Adderley, and their daughter, Gisela Sky, live in Brazil. He says being an educated black man feels like a subversive act in Brazil. “All the blacks that I see are in service jobs, and the darker you are, the less you are seen,” he says. “Your job is maybe back in the kitchen and not out waiting a table.”
As is the case for many people from the Caribbean basin, she self-identifies as multiracial. The island where she is from has a mixture of races and ethnicities, so she was excited to move to Brazil, which has been touted as one of the most racially harmonious places in the world.
“When I arrived, I was shocked to realize there is a big difference between races and colors, and what is expected — what is your role, basically — based on your skin color,” she says.
Moving to a new country can be difficult; when you throw racial issues into the mix things can get even more complicated. The other woman is from London, and she also relocated to Brazil because of her husband’s job. She describes herself as black.
“My skin is very dark, so going out with my children, on occasions people would say to me, ‘Are you the nanny for these children?’ And I’d have to explain to them, no, these are my children, I look after them,” she says.
A quick lesson on race and class in Brazil: The country was the last place in the Americas to give up slavery. It also imported more than 10 times as many slaves as the U.S. — some 4 million. That’s meant that more than 50 percent of the population is of African descent, but those numbers haven’t translated to opportunity.
For example, these days among the whiter, wealthier classes, it’s common to have a nanny, or babá, who is darker-skinned. The woman from London says that the babásare required to wear all white (1).
“My 3-year-old has started to come home from school and … rub my arms and my skin. He said ‘mummy, I’m trying to get the brown off.'”
An expat woman from London who describes herself as black
“I promptly stopped wearing white,” she says, because it was tiresome to have to constantly explain that her children were in fact her children, despite Brazilians’ assumptions. “I got rid of the white that’s in my wardrobe, and I do not wear white anymore.”
As a black woman with lighter-skinned children, she says she fears being stopped by the police, who regularly target people of color in Brazil. She always carries ID that shows she is the mother of her two kids — something she didn’t have to do in London.
Ky Adderley, an American from Philadelphia who runs an education consultancy in Rio de Janeiro, says he too was shocked when he moved to Brazil. – “I feel like the racism here is much deeper than I’ve ever felt anywhere,” he says.
He says he knew how to navigate being a black man in the U.S — “regardless of people’s skin tone, there was a sense in the black community that if you have a little bit in you, then you were black, and so then we were able to build community really quickly” — but in Brazil he found it really hard to find that same support network. So he created his own with other expatriate black men.
“We have a group called Bros in Brazil,” he says. “And it is a group of maybe 15 guys now that come from Europe, Africa, the United States, and are living and working in Brazil as professionals.”
They talk about race a lot. Brazil, Adderley says, is deeply segregated along racial lines, especially in Rio. When he walks his dog, if he isn’t wearing a suit, he often gets asked if he’s a professional dog-walker.
He says simply being an educated black man in Brazil feels like a subversive act.
“As a black person, what is your place in Rio de Janeiro? All the blacks that I see are in service jobs — and the darker you are, the less you’re seen,” he says. “So the role that you may have may be back in the kitchen and not out waiting a table.”
Most people in Brazil tell him there isn’t a racism problem, and he says that’s the root of the issue: People aren’t addressing it. The worry for him is how the race question in Brazil will affect his daughter. A woman who was photographing his then-newborn told him that he needed to modify her features.
“Well you can fix her nose, you know — you just pinch it. If you just pinch her nose every day and just keep pinching it, she won’t have that wide nose,” he recounts her telling him.
The woman from London says the racism in Brazil has started to affect her kids, too.
“My 3-year-old has started to come home from school, and he’s started to rub my arms and my skin,” she says. “He’d say, ‘Mummy, I’m trying to get the brown off.'” (2)
But there is a positive side — the woman from the Caribbean says being in Brazil has made her a lot more conscious about issues of race. She refuses to stop wearing her favorite color, white.
“Why should you let a color of clothing signify who you are, or your color of skin signify who you are?” she says. “I am who I am. I don’t care what you think — this is who I am, I’m going to continue being me.”
Source: G1, Socialista Morena, NPR
Note
- A long-standing social standard in Brazil that displays the difference between boss and servant (and often times whiteness and blackness), the most recent example of this standard involved a well-known white television host/model and her two black babysitters. See the original story here and its repercussions here.
- It is not rare to hear stories of preto (black) and pardo (brown) children attempting to rub the darkness off of their skin. In the Geni Guimarães book A Cor da Ternura (The color of tenderness) for example, the Geni character goes through a process of self-rejection which leads her to rubbing her skin with a crushed brick mixture that her mother used for cleaning utensils in order to remove the black from her skin. She child became disappointed with the words of her teacher who told her in class that blacks were slaves brought to Brazil from Africa and forced to work for nothing.
Afro Colombian women are mobilizing against the government: Inicio
Women who take care of their territories and their daughters and sons
to the caregivers and caregivers of Dignified Life, Simple and Solidarity.
We are brave, we feel tired, hackneyed by this government that does not keep his word, with this Government that we need to respect and treat us as second, which treats us as beggars, the national government makes peace one speech, you forget that there is no peace if not able to take care of life, if not life of all beings over transnational interests, Peace is having profound importance each of the deaths of San Antonio ago one year, of the following in Santa Rita, in Rosal, in Magui Payan, but the lives of people who live in community are worth, it seems that our lives are at very high risk and are traded well in the stock markets, the less our lives are greater profits for very few here, and very few outside in the middle of violations of national government, we who came to him proposing concrete actions, we realize that these actions do not want them and therefore we believe that we are worth just dead.
People around the world know that in November last year, ancestral mining in northern Cauca, black women go out to mobilize to share the road that leads to life care and ancestral lands. We went for a walk to tell the mining unconstitutional and illegal mining are leaving us without family, snatching the roots, robbing the possibilities to continue to live where we buried the navel.
They also know that we walked to Bogota and were in permanent session at the House of the Giralda, that there were asking because economic interests are above our rights, because the ratio is greater investment and protection of private initiative to our lives.
The defaults are systematic, and simple arrangements, remember? First, that all illegal and unconstitutional mining in Cauca stop. They have not gone backhoes del Cauca, by contrast, have now gone to other basins like the river Palo Guachené, we are told that we must resort to the Court if we as the qualifications awarded suspend without prior consultation free and informed. Second, that the failed agreements of the past, the agreements Popayán- Incoder 2013, Santander de Quilichao of May 7, 2014 and mobilizing black women for the care of life and ancestral territories are met including the implementation of auto 005 2009 of the Constitutional Court, communities between 21 and January 23 in assembly constructed in Santander de Quilichao the proposal for implementation, but according to the Government that there is no budget, to take care of life no resources or political will to implement other war in our territories.
With the Plan of Comprehensive Care is the same, we build proposals meeting with much effort, proposals which have not been read or answered by the government, that plan of care includes the proposal to study from a human rights approach sociocultural damage, socioeconomic, caused by gold mining, they send the message that we must get used to the idea of get used to living with the worry of not knowing how to mitigate and repair the water poisoning caused by mercury and cyanide, that we are now drinking with which we bathe, with which prepare food and wash clothes, that both mercury and cyanide and circulates through our veins.
On Comprehensive Protection Plan, the answer is as previous, lack of budget, we have come to say that we invent ourselves and threats.
There are four months of default, are years and years of duty late that you do not want to advance, we wonder why there is so much resistance to what we propose? Why the mind and will of the much-crows are not shown in the reality of our territories and our lives? It is a fact that now we walk to a little alert and if fearful of our daughters, our children, our mothers, our fathers, our sisters and our brothers.
Since the signing of repeated agreements, six meetings have done, leaving Chuck family responsibilities run because we believe in the word committed Interior Minister Fernando Cristo, the deputy ministers of the Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Environment, and Defense Deputy Minister of Interior for Participation and Human Rights Carmen Inés Vásquez, does not meet in front of the guarantees of our rights as black people, but if you go to the United States to speak in the framework of the Decade of African Descent of campaigning racism in Colombia. We wonder, is it not racism the institutional neglect of the state against the systematic violation of our rights as black communities?
They called and postponed a day for another meeting, to which the Government comes without preparation, without context of mobilizing and their agreements without comprehensive responses to our proposals mean for us lack of interest, will, we have had to summon the guarantors parties, the public prosecutor so there guarantees.
The National Government has as its delay advances, meanwhile our situation worsens; We say that advances are living changes that allow us to recover life in our territories. And that's why is we get up weary of both handling and only'll talk when the Minister of the Interior, the deputy ministers of Environment, Mining, Defense, and the Attorney General, who promised to advance research against situations violation of our rights, including threats and forced displacement, give us answer specific changes against the guarantees of our rights for which we mobilized.
Just as we know that this same disrespectful treatment is the government doing to many people throughout the length and breadth of the territory.
The plans for this country, the future do without the black communities without indigenous communities without peasant communities without the communities below. But, if we use as a pretext for doing business at the expense of staying in poverty.
Therefore, it is our turn to do to us and we present we want, and we must summon and mobilize together and together, all trade unions, student, environmental, women, indigenous communities, black communities, rural communities, teachers, and everyone who cares and loves life. We must build the possibility of real peace and that's only possible to generate transformations that allow a decent life for all and for all, and that also goes for not allowing death is the cost of uncontrolled mining that seems untouchable in this country.
THE LAND IS LIFE AND LIFE IS NOT FOR SALE, loves, DEFEND!
Mobilization
We are north African black women Cauca, descendants of Africans that were enslaved, aware of the ancestral value with our territories, we know that many of them play them pay with his life our freedom, we know the blood that spilled our ancestors and ancestras for get this land, we know that worked years and years of bondage dejárnosla condition, we were taught that the land is not sold, they understood that we guarantee the resurgent stay in the territory.
It's been four centuries and memory is our memory, our practices are handed down from our grandmothers and grandfathers practices; our daughters and our children today continue reaffirming our identity as free people.
Many of us we have had to raise our sons and daughters alone, punt, the hoe and spade have witnessed this, the territory has been our partner and has been with us in times of joy and sorrow. Our grandmothers as Mrs. Paulina Balanta taught us that "the territory is life and life is priceless," "the territory is the dignity and this is priceless"
And that is why despite the abandonment of the state have remained in resistance to megaprojects, in the name of his vision and speech development to eradicate poverty, have been generating conditions of dispossession, exile and misery.
Today our lives are in danger and possibilities exist as people of African descent is minimal, many men and women are threatened with death, we have lived in the ancestral mining as an activity that allowed our ancestors to buy your freedom and ours. This activity has been articulated to the agriculture, fishing, hunting and ancestral knowledge that majorities and midwives have instilled in us as people to stay.
There are many actions that have been carried out in favor of protecting our life, we rulings of the Constitutional Court, protections of National Unity, visits by international commissions, complaints to the prosecution, the personality and advocacy, we have informed the UN office, and even the police have attended and what they say is that we invent the risk and threat, while the institutions only makes communications and postal services, while we force us to confinement, to endure harassment , fearing for the lives of our daughters, our children, to fear for their own lives.
We wonder, what else should we do? wonder Where else can we go?
Solidarity
Want to help? Our struggle needs your support
West Bank - Savings Account No. 043-85119-5
Yolombo Women's Association
Or if you like you can write to email: mujeresnegrascaminan@gmail.com.
Women who take care of their territories and their daughters and sons
to the caregivers and caregivers of Dignified Life, Simple and Solidarity.
We are brave, we feel tired, hackneyed by this government that does not keep his word, with this Government that we need to respect and treat us as second, which treats us as beggars, the national government makes peace one speech, you forget that there is no peace if not able to take care of life, if not life of all beings over transnational interests, Peace is having profound importance each of the deaths of San Antonio ago one year, of the following in Santa Rita, in Rosal, in Magui Payan, but the lives of people who live in community are worth, it seems that our lives are at very high risk and are traded well in the stock markets, the less our lives are greater profits for very few here, and very few outside in the middle of violations of national government, we who came to him proposing concrete actions, we realize that these actions do not want them and therefore we believe that we are worth just dead.
People around the world know that in November last year, ancestral mining in northern Cauca, black women go out to mobilize to share the road that leads to life care and ancestral lands. We went for a walk to tell the mining unconstitutional and illegal mining are leaving us without family, snatching the roots, robbing the possibilities to continue to live where we buried the navel.
They also know that we walked to Bogota and were in permanent session at the House of the Giralda, that there were asking because economic interests are above our rights, because the ratio is greater investment and protection of private initiative to our lives.
The defaults are systematic, and simple arrangements, remember? First, that all illegal and unconstitutional mining in Cauca stop. They have not gone backhoes del Cauca, by contrast, have now gone to other basins like the river Palo Guachené, we are told that we must resort to the Court if we as the qualifications awarded suspend without prior consultation free and informed. Second, that the failed agreements of the past, the agreements Popayán- Incoder 2013, Santander de Quilichao of May 7, 2014 and mobilizing black women for the care of life and ancestral territories are met including the implementation of auto 005 2009 of the Constitutional Court, communities between 21 and January 23 in assembly constructed in Santander de Quilichao the proposal for implementation, but according to the Government that there is no budget, to take care of life no resources or political will to implement other war in our territories.
With the Plan of Comprehensive Care is the same, we build proposals meeting with much effort, proposals which have not been read or answered by the government, that plan of care includes the proposal to study from a human rights approach sociocultural damage, socioeconomic, caused by gold mining, they send the message that we must get used to the idea of get used to living with the worry of not knowing how to mitigate and repair the water poisoning caused by mercury and cyanide, that we are now drinking with which we bathe, with which prepare food and wash clothes, that both mercury and cyanide and circulates through our veins.
On Comprehensive Protection Plan, the answer is as previous, lack of budget, we have come to say that we invent ourselves and threats.
There are four months of default, are years and years of duty late that you do not want to advance, we wonder why there is so much resistance to what we propose? Why the mind and will of the much-crows are not shown in the reality of our territories and our lives? It is a fact that now we walk to a little alert and if fearful of our daughters, our children, our mothers, our fathers, our sisters and our brothers.
Since the signing of repeated agreements, six meetings have done, leaving Chuck family responsibilities run because we believe in the word committed Interior Minister Fernando Cristo, the deputy ministers of the Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Environment, and Defense Deputy Minister of Interior for Participation and Human Rights Carmen Inés Vásquez, does not meet in front of the guarantees of our rights as black people, but if you go to the United States to speak in the framework of the Decade of African Descent of campaigning racism in Colombia. We wonder, is it not racism the institutional neglect of the state against the systematic violation of our rights as black communities?
They called and postponed a day for another meeting, to which the Government comes without preparation, without context of mobilizing and their agreements without comprehensive responses to our proposals mean for us lack of interest, will, we have had to summon the guarantors parties, the public prosecutor so there guarantees.
The National Government has as its delay advances, meanwhile our situation worsens; We say that advances are living changes that allow us to recover life in our territories. And that's why is we get up weary of both handling and only'll talk when the Minister of the Interior, the deputy ministers of Environment, Mining, Defense, and the Attorney General, who promised to advance research against situations violation of our rights, including threats and forced displacement, give us answer specific changes against the guarantees of our rights for which we mobilized.
Just as we know that this same disrespectful treatment is the government doing to many people throughout the length and breadth of the territory.
The plans for this country, the future do without the black communities without indigenous communities without peasant communities without the communities below. But, if we use as a pretext for doing business at the expense of staying in poverty.
Therefore, it is our turn to do to us and we present we want, and we must summon and mobilize together and together, all trade unions, student, environmental, women, indigenous communities, black communities, rural communities, teachers, and everyone who cares and loves life. We must build the possibility of real peace and that's only possible to generate transformations that allow a decent life for all and for all, and that also goes for not allowing death is the cost of uncontrolled mining that seems untouchable in this country.
THE LAND IS LIFE AND LIFE IS NOT FOR SALE, loves, DEFEND!
Mobilization
We are north African black women Cauca, descendants of Africans that were enslaved, aware of the ancestral value with our territories, we know that many of them play them pay with his life our freedom, we know the blood that spilled our ancestors and ancestras for get this land, we know that worked years and years of bondage dejárnosla condition, we were taught that the land is not sold, they understood that we guarantee the resurgent stay in the territory.
It's been four centuries and memory is our memory, our practices are handed down from our grandmothers and grandfathers practices; our daughters and our children today continue reaffirming our identity as free people.
Many of us we have had to raise our sons and daughters alone, punt, the hoe and spade have witnessed this, the territory has been our partner and has been with us in times of joy and sorrow. Our grandmothers as Mrs. Paulina Balanta taught us that "the territory is life and life is priceless," "the territory is the dignity and this is priceless"
And that is why despite the abandonment of the state have remained in resistance to megaprojects, in the name of his vision and speech development to eradicate poverty, have been generating conditions of dispossession, exile and misery.
Today our lives are in danger and possibilities exist as people of African descent is minimal, many men and women are threatened with death, we have lived in the ancestral mining as an activity that allowed our ancestors to buy your freedom and ours. This activity has been articulated to the agriculture, fishing, hunting and ancestral knowledge that majorities and midwives have instilled in us as people to stay.
There are many actions that have been carried out in favor of protecting our life, we rulings of the Constitutional Court, protections of National Unity, visits by international commissions, complaints to the prosecution, the personality and advocacy, we have informed the UN office, and even the police have attended and what they say is that we invent the risk and threat, while the institutions only makes communications and postal services, while we force us to confinement, to endure harassment , fearing for the lives of our daughters, our children, to fear for their own lives.
We wonder, what else should we do? wonder Where else can we go?
Solidarity
Want to help? Our struggle needs your support
West Bank - Savings Account No. 043-85119-5
Yolombo Women's Association
Or if you like you can write to email: mujeresnegrascaminan@gmail.com.
