"There is a history of black people without Brazil but there is no history of Brazil without black people." - Januario Garcia
“In Brazil there is a huge amount of prejudice against women, and against black women its even worse.” – Nayara Justino, Afro-Brazilian model, dancer and actress
In Brazil, Racism Can Wear A Friendly Face -- But It's No Less Insidious by Diego Iraheta
Click here to read the full article
Click here to read the full article
“My grandmother used to tell my mother, ‘You should marry a white man to improve the race. This continues to this day.’” – Neusa Borges, Afro-Brazilian actress
“Black people in Brazil are ashamed of being black. There are very few people who are openly proud of being black.” Neusa Borges, Afro-Brazilian actress
“There are very few black women who become carnival queens. White women with straight hair and a good body make more commercial sense. They are the ones who make more money for the samba schools. If you pick a black woman she would only attract attention.” – Nayara Justino, Afro-Brazilian model, dancer and actress
The Brazilian carnival queen deemed 'too black'
Nayara Justino thought her dreams had come true when she was selected as the Globeleza carnival queen in 2013 after a public vote on one of Brazil’s biggest TV shows. But some regarded her complexion to be too dark to be an acceptable queen. Nayara and her family wonder what this says about racial roles in modern Brazil
Click here to watch the documentary on the Guardian newspaper online
Nayara Justino thought her dreams had come true when she was selected as the Globeleza carnival queen in 2013 after a public vote on one of Brazil’s biggest TV shows. But some regarded her complexion to be too dark to be an acceptable queen. Nayara and her family wonder what this says about racial roles in modern Brazil
Click here to watch the documentary on the Guardian newspaper online
One Country Two Worlds: Being Black in Brazil, An Outsiders View on Race by Rebekah Moore
Click here to view video
Click here to view video
Dark-Skinned Or Black? How Afro-Brazilians Are Forging A Collective Identity by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro
Click here to read the full article
Click here to read the full article
The lack of black faces in the crowds shows Brazil is no true rainbow nation Felipe Araujo
Click here to read the full article
Click here to read the full article
Blackness's Fear and Stigma Make Brazil a 6% Black Country
Written by Mark Wells
Sunday, 14 January 2007
Brazilian crowd I would now like to turn my attention
to the ever popular argument concerning racial
affiliation in Brazil. Frequently, essays and forum
letters at this website express the popular Brazilian
view that racism and quotas based on racial identity
cannot exist in Brazil because the majority of
Brazilians are of mixed descent.
While I will agree that the majority of Brazilians are
of varying degrees of mixed descent, I would also say
that in my 18 weeks of travel in Brazil, it is rare
that I cannot judge one's predominant racial
phenotype. Countless Brazilian and American social
scientists are under this same impression. This is not
to be confused with the issue of self-affirmation of
racial identity, which is another subject altogether.
In sociologist Edward Telles' book Race in Another
America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, the
author, who has researched racial issues in Brazil
since 1989, included a bar of his interpretation of
racial ambiguity, or lack thereof, in Brazil. The bar
shows the color black fading into the color white from
top to bottom with a very narrow range of grey that
represents those who are difficult to categorize as
one specific race.
In past and future essays, I have and will continue to
use the terms negro (black), afrodescendente
(African-descendent ), negro-mestiço (mixed black) or
afro-brasileiro (Afro-Brazilian) as these are terms
that activists have adopted when speaking of Brazil's
pretos and pardos or negros and mulatos.
Each of these terms have been used abundantly in
studies of racial politics in Brazil with none seeming
to have a clear advantage in popular usage. Thus, I
will use afro-brasileiro because of its historical
value dating back to the First Congresso
Afro-Brasileiro held in Recife in 1934.
I will use negro and afrodescendente because, as
geneticist Sergio Danilo Pena explains, the word negro
fits in the morphological sense while afrodescendente
is related to ancestry (1). I will also use
negro-mestiço because, as Minister of Culture Gilberto
Gil says, it "much better defines the adaptation of
the Africans brought to Brazil"(2). I will use these
terms interchangeably and use the terms preto, pardo,
negro, mulato when it is necessary to make a
comparison.
As I am aware, coming from a North American
perspective, I will automatically be accused of
attempting to apply US racial politics to a Latin
American perspective. To alleviate this problem
immediately, let me establish the facts. The much
debated issue of the infamous US "one-drop (of black
blood) rule" has nothing to do with my racial
ideology.
I have known more than a few white Americans who have
admitted to having some African ancestry but whom I
have never looked upon as anything but white. The
"one-drop rule" is quite unique and for the most part
has no validity in the Latin American context
(although there are clues that Brazil's colonial
elites also subscribed to this ideology of racial
identification) .
From the physical perspective, I am speaking purely of
persons who show obvious signs of African ancestry.
This will become important when dealing with the often
debated issue of quotas for afro-brasileiros to enter
Brazilian universities.
Who is considered black in Brazil is often times a
contradiction. When the argument has to do with
racially-based affirmative action, the Brazilian will
instantly quote the "we're all mixed" or the "who can
tell who's black in Brazil?" argument.
But when the "keep the peace" mentality is challenged,
the truth comes out. Take for instance essays from
April and May of 2003 in Brazzil where the writer says
that Bahia has a "black majority" but then changes his
terminology to "black and mulatto" (3).
In the May 2003 article ("Afrobrazilianists : Such
Arrogance!") , the writer goes on to refer to
politician Alceu Collares, as well as beauty queens
Deise Nunes and Vera Lúcia Couto dos Santos as black.
Anyone who has seen photos of the three aforementioned
individuals will agree that they are all of varying
degrees of mixed African descent.
My point here is that the Brazilian will often times
claim that they do not view blackness in the same
terms as the American but then when it's time to
proclaim that blacks have made great contributions to
Brazilian society, they immediately point to the
Brazilian of mixed descent whom they had previously
categorized as mulato.
From this standpoint, at least from the American
perspective, the individual will remain black
regardless of whether their attributes are positive or
negative. From the Brazilian perspective, if this
person has whatever degree of admixture, there is
always the possibility of 'whitening' them. Take the
case of one of Brazil's most famous writers, Joaquim
Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), for example.
According to historian Emilia Viotti da Costa:
"When Machado de Assis died, one of his friends, José
Veríssimo, wrote an article in his honor. In an
outburst of admiration for the man of modest origins
and black ancestors who had become one of the greatest
novelists of the century, Veríssimo - a mulatto
himself - violated a social convention and referred to
Machado as the mulatto Machado de Assis.
"Joaquim Nabuco, who read the article, quickly
perceived the faux-pas and recommended the suppression
of the word, insisting that Machado would not have
been pleased by it. "Your article," he wrote to
Veríssimo, "is very beautiful but there is one
sentence that caused me chills: "Mulatto, he was
indeed a Greek..."
"I would not have called Machado mulatto and I think
that nothing would have hurt him more...I beg you to
moot this remark when you convert your article into
permanent form. The word is not literary, it is
derogatory.. .For me Machado was a white and I believe
he thought so about himself" (4).
This passage is telling for two reasons. One, when a
prominent Brazilian of mixed African ancestry leaves
an indelible impression on Brazilian society, he
cannot be remembered as being of African descent,
fully or partially. Second, it is important to note
that being a mulatto was deemed to be as derogatory as
being described as negro, a point that I will explore
further later in this essay.
Returning to the question of the Latin American view
of race and the contradictory negro/mulatto argument,
one finds this same contradictory attitude toward the
classification of people of African descent in a
December 2004 forum letter from the Argentine Pablo
Diaz:
"With respect to the few places in the Brazilian
Congress for blacks, or the smaller number of black
Miss Brazils when compared with the U.S., perhaps the
numbers should rise if you take into account the
mulattos (5)."
These contradictory ways of defining blackness have
had detrimental effects on the formation of black
identity in Brazil. Historian Décio Freitas tells us
that the preoccupation of not being black in Brazil is
obsessive (6), so when afrodescendentes are
consistently bombarded with negative images of
blackness or presented with unclear ideals of what
Brazilian society considers to be black, is there any
wonder why census data, based on self-affirmation,
reports Brazil to be a 6% black (preto) country?
As far as racial classification is concerned, it is
important that one establishes not only how one is
classified, but also by whom. A person's identity or
identification can be viewed from at least three
perspectives. One is the way that person classifies
him or herself. Another is how others within or
outside of a social group classifies another person. A
third would be how that society's power elite
classifies that person.
Thus it is quite easy to understand how a Brazilian
could refer to him or herself as a moreno, while a
friend describes him/her as mulato/mulata and
government officials refer to him or her as a
negro/negra. So when the official census of the IBGE
(in which racial identification is declared by the
person interviewed) tells us that Brazil is only 6%
black (preto), it is necessary to consider the words
of Luisa Farah Schwartzmann:
"...the interviewers' answers are in a sense more
"real" than the respondents' answer, since the way
people are seen by others is thought to have greater
consequences for their life chances than the way they
see themselves." (7)
While it is not a secret that common Brazilians may
use a plethora of terms when describing skin color or
physical features, it is the dominant society, the
"powers-that- be", that include, exclude and classify
peoples within that society. For Nilza Iraci,
executive coordinator of the black women's group,
Geledés, this point is clear. Nilza possessing very
light skin, is classified as white on her birth
certificate but considers herself to be a black woman.
As she sees it:
"Presenting myself socially as black, I know that I am
depriving myself of a series of advantages. I have
this advantage (in a job interview, for example) when
competing with someone with darker skin than mine. In
this case, I am a morena. When competing with a white
person, I am a black" (8)
At this point I thought I would offer a few quotes
from Brazilian social scientists (or those foreigners
who have worked in Brazil) in order to get an idea of
who Brazilian society recognizes as black.
"...when we affirm that these black groups are
specific, we don't mean that they are composed only of
"pure" negros, in physical anthropology terms, but,
also of pardos, (mulatos, curibocas, caboclos) those
which, in consequence of the group of social
situations in which they overlap, are marked as negros
by the white society and, at the same time, recognizes
and accepts a connection, total or partial, with his
African roots...
- Sociologia do Negro Brasileiro, Clovis Moura,
Editora Atica, 1988 (emphasis mine)
"By and large, the negro of Brazil is the mulatto. The
negróide"
- Mansions and Shanties: the Making of Modern Brazil.
Gilberto Freyre, 1963.
Summarizing the thesis of the late Afro-Brazilian
militant and intellectual Eduardo Oliveira e Oliveira
entitled, "O mulato, um obstáculo epistemológico" ,
Maria de Lourdes Bandeira writes:
"The social category mulato is not to be confused with
the racial category mulato. The social place
attributed to the mulato, not his place as racial
intermediary, is an obstacle to the comprehension of
racial difference as a form of submission or
oppression. The phenotypic characteristics do not
interfere with this understanding. ..The racial
categories, while indicating the diversity of racial
traces, are not instruments of analysis.... within the
boundaries of the class system, the variations of
color are socially irrelevant in race relations. The
racial origin, not the color, remains as the basis of
classification. " (emphasis mine)
- Território Negro em Espaço Branco, Maria de Lourdes
Bandeira.
Editora Brasiliense, 1988.
"The term "preto" was always used by whites to
designate the negro and the mulato in São Paulo, but
through a stereotyped and extremely negative image
created in the past."
- Integração do Negro na Sociedade de Classes.
Florestan Fernandes. Dominus Editora. Editora da
Universidade de São Paulo. 1965.
"What is the negro? In our definition, negro is a
social place instituted by diverse coordinates: the
color of the skin, popular culture, African ancestry,
slave ancestry (near or distant), poverty, the
attribution of negro identity by the other and the
assumption of this identity by one's self."
- "A Inserção do Negro e seus Dilemas", Joel Rufino
Dos Santos
"..the mulato appears as a negro at the same time
privileged and stigmatized by the double condition of
race and parvenu...the rules of social exclusion
define the position of the mulato in terms quite
firmly in Rio Grande do Sul: "he who escapes being
white, is black". The mulato is a negro, thus, an
inferior, but at the same time, he is a privileged
negro"...
- Capitalismo e Escravidão no Brasil Meridional - O
Negro na Sociedade Escravocrata do Rio Grande do Sul.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Paz e Terra. 1977.
"...whites make a social and cultural distinction
between their black and mulatto neighbors and
themselves. Conversely, blacks and mulattos
distinguish themselves from whites in the same way.
The dichotomy which exists is clear...all non-white
individuals are considered negros."
- Raças e classes sociais no Brasil. Octávio Ianni.
Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1972
"we consider as blacks all those who are dark-skinned,
who possess a pigmentation which is neither white nor
Indian. These 'pardos', who according to IBGE
constitute the majority of non-whites.. .are considered
socially to be blacks."
- "Que é um negro?" Décio Freitas. Folha de S. Paulo
(March 1, 1982) (9)
"...the term negro is as much a conventional category
as branco. Grouping together all the gradations, going
from pardo to preto, including the color of copper. In
the same way, the white category also covers different
colors, even those whites that are not truly white.
Besides this, one can observe that the multiplication
of categories related to skin color, shape of the face
and texture of the hair is a common phenomenon in
multi-racial societies. Translating the desire of
people to group the others into determined racial or
color groups is a banal exercise. But it can
correspond sometimes to a desire of hierarchizing the
others into a chromatic and racial scale (10).
- "Ação Afirmativa e igualdade de oportunidades"
(2000) - Jacques D'Adesky
Taking these definitions as written by Brazilian
social scientists (11) themselves debunks the argument
that North Americans are trying to impose their views
about race upon Brazilians. When analyzing hundreds of
books and Internet articles one will notice that
negros, mulatos, or pretos and pardos are always
grouped together when speaking of Brazil's population
of African descent.
This is not a recent phenomenon. While militants of
Brazil's current Movimento Negro have argued that
these two official census categories should be
combined as representative of Brazil's blacks, in
Gilberto Freyre's classic 1933 work Casa Grande e
Senzala, the author consistently pairs negros and
mulatos together.
Black identity, political identity
"The destruction of black identity is the first
feature of racist violence" (12)
- Iolanda Oliveira
At this point I wish to stress that I (as the
aforementioned Clóvis Moura as well as legendary
activist Abdias do Nascimento have written) am not
speaking of race from a biological perspective. There
is no need to argue about the various genetic studies
and racial-genetic percentages that have been coming
out in recent years. I will contemplate that issue
later on. For now, I will consider the words of Fátima
Oliveira, the executive secretary of Rede Feminista de
Saúde:
In the context of racial mixture, being black
possesses various meanings that result from the choice
of racial identity that has African ancestry as origin
(African-descendent ). Or in other words, to be black,
is, essentially a political position, where one
assumes a black racial identity (13).
University of São Paulo social anthropologist Lilia
Moritz Schwarcz also makes reference to the idea of
black identity as a political position highlighting
the difference between the terms preto and negro:
"Even during the slave years the etymological usage of
these apparently synonymous terms already revealed
differences in sense: Negro referred to the
disobedient, rebellious slave, while Black (preto)
denoted the loyal captive. A news story that appeared
in the Correio Paulistano (The São Paulo Post) in 1886
demonstrates this clearly in employing the terms as if
they referred to two wholly distinct realities:
"One particular day, the black João Congo was quietly
working on his master's farm when he noted that two
fugitive negroes were approaching, who soon said -
'Leave this life behind, old black (preto), it's not
for you' to which the loyal (preto) black replied -
'I'm not going to go wandering about here and there
like some runaway negro.' Irritated, the negroes
retorted - 'Die, then, you black coward'" (14)
In the context of Brazilian terminology and folklore,
'old black' refers to the folkloric figure of the
preto velho, the old, docile, submissive, black slave
that is somewhat reminiscent of the American Uncle Tom
figure. Considering these last two statements, it
becomes obvious that a black identity goes beyond just
one's phenotype or physical appearance.
It is a stance or attitude that joins an individual
with a group in which the individual has something in
common bonded by an express ideology that represents
the interests of a that particular group. As one
probes the complexities of Brazilian racial politics,
this becomes clearer. Senator Benedita da Silva
explains how an uncompromising black identity is
viewed in Brazil:
"The more elevated the social position of the black in
Brazil is, the more uncomfortable the black feels if
he or she continues being a black and keeps defending
the black cause. Blacks become a threat and, as white
elites do not want to yield anything, blacks become a
concrete target for racists." (15)
It is here that the similarities between Brazil's
Movimento Negro and the 1970s African-American Black
Power Movement become most evident. Between the 1950s
and 1970s, African-Americans of all skin tones and
hair textures began to adopt the term black to signify
their politicized racial identity. Within the span of
a few decades, African descendents in the United
States went from being labeled colored to negro to
adopting the term black. As Rosenblum and Travis
explain:
"black emerged in opposition to Negro as the Black
Power movement sought to distinguish itself from the
Martin Luther King-led moderate wing of the civil
rights movement. The term Negro had itself been put
forward by influential leaders WEB DuBois and Booker
T. Washington as a rejection of the term "colored"
that had dominated the mid- to late 19th century" (16)
The differences between these terms can be analyzed
through the exclamation of an irate white person
quoted in a July 30, 1975 Boston Globe article:
"We've always welcomed good colored people in South
Boston but we will not tolerate radical blacks or
Communists.. .Good colored people are welcome in South
Boston, black militants are not" (17)
The feeling from the comment above brings to mind the
common saying that black people "know their place" and
are expected to accept and abide by this social
standard. This proverb is common to both the American
and Brazilian racial hierarchy. According to historian
Emilia Viotti da Costa, writing about Brazil's myths
and histories:
"Whites became more aware of their prejudiced
attitudes once they had to confront blacks where they
had rarely been seen before...or when they had to deal
face to face with an "aggressive" , "uppity" black who
did not play his traditional role of humility and
meekness." (18)
It is important to note here the difference between
physical blackness and blackness as a political
identity. There exists in both Brazil and the US those
types of African descendents who do not strongly
identify with other African descendents as a group.
They prefer to live their lives strictly as
individuals, having no preferences for or affiliations
with others who may look like them.
In this sense, there may be many African descendents
living middle-class lifestyles in either country, but
as long as they don't raise any issues of racial
discrimination, speak out against it or advocate
policies that could improve the situation of any group
that has been historically discriminated against,
society may extend them an honorary "pass" of
mainstream acceptance.
At this point, allow me to reiterate that there is a
difference between the identity one assumes and the
identity that is imposed from the outside. Having
established the differences in terminology, it could
be argued that Brazil's African descent population can
in some ways be defined as simply gente de cor (people
of color) as opposed to black.
Negritude (blackness) in Brazil can be said to still
be an "identity in construction" , as the title of a
recent study by Professor Ricardo Franklin Ferreira
(University of São Marcos) suggests. The main point
that I would like to establish here is that the
concept of blackness and the transition from gente de
cor to negros is not simply an American import.
As early as the 1920s and 30s, Afro-Brazilian
newspapers such as O Clarim da Alvorada (The Morning
Bugle) and A Voz da Raça (The Voice of the Race)
brought to the forefront the importance of black
consciousness and ethnic identity. A Voz da Raça was
the newspaper produced by the Frente Negra Brasileira
(Brazilian Black Front), one of the earliest black
civil rights organizations in Brazil (19).
While analyzing Brazil's official census may establish
some general ideas about Brazil's racial composition,
these statistics are not etched in stone. Several
anthropologists (Telles 2004, Sansone 2003, Heringer
2002) have noted that the way many Brazilians classify
themselves racially is not always in agreement with
how an observer views them.
A study conducted by Rosana Heringer (of the Centro de
Estudos Afro-Brasileiros da Universidade Cândido
Mendes no Rio de Janeiro) showed that 30% of those who
classified themselves as pardos were actually pretos
while 30% of those classifying themselves as brancos
were actually pardos (20).
Livio Sansone (of Universidade Federal da Bahia)
discovered several intriguing details when doing field
research for his book Negritude sem etnicidade. First,
those who declare themselves negro are usually younger
than those who refer to themselves as preto. Also,
those defining themselves as negro usually have a
higher level of education than those who refer to
themselves with some other euphemism.
This is a recent development and is a radical
departure from studies of the 1950s that confirmed
that well educated Brazilians of African descent
tended to whiten themselves. One of the most telling
of Sansone's findings were the ways that Brazilians
classified others in relation to their physical
proximity to those people.
For instance, when asked to describe the race of
someone standing right next to them, some of his
respondents would say moreno. Yet, that same person
would refer to the other as negro when that person
wasn't standing close enough to hear their remarks.
This idea of espaço (space) also came into play when
speaking of places where people of African descent
felt comfortable in displaying and affirming their
blackness.
In places and social situations in which they were the
majority and were practicing some form of cultura
negra (black culture), negro-mestiços were more likely
to declare their negritude (blackness) than other
times when they were in more job-related situations or
in contact with whites (21).
In my view, many Brazilian negro-mestiços adopt a sort
of "light-switch" racial identity which they may turn
on or off depending upon the context of the social
situation. As a political position, black identity can
be perceived as a threat to those of the dominant
(white) society.
Take African-American Omar Wasow (22) for instance. In
the book Face Forward: Young African-American Men in a
Critical Age, Wasow remembers that in high school he
identified himself as mixed while ignoring the fact
that it was easier for whites to deal with him than if
he identified himself as black (23). Wasow is an
African-American of mixed descent, his father Jewish
and his mother black.
Footnotes
1. PENA, SÉRGIO DANILO. "Os múltiplos significados da
palavra raça".
http://publicacoes. gene.com. br/Imprensa_ genealogia/ Os%
20m%C3%BAltiplos% 20significados% 20da%20palavra% 20ra%C3%A7a@ Folha%20de% 20S%C3%A3o% 20Paulo@21- 12-
2002_arquivos/ fz2112200209. htm.
2. DAMIANI, MARCO; Studart, Hugo; Leite, Janaína.
"BENEDITA E O AFRO-TURISMO" .
http://www.terra. com.br/istoedinh eiro/296/ poder/
3. Cristaldo, Janer. "A Trap for Blacks".
http://www.brazzil. com/content/ view/3516/ 31/
Cristaldo, Janer. "Afrobrazilianists: Such Arrogance!"
http://www.brazzil. com/content/ view/503/ 30/
4. Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. The Brazilian Empire:
Myths and Histories. Revised Edition. University of
North Carolina Press. 2000
5. Diaz, Pablo. "A Response to Mark Wells". Brazzil
Forum. http://brazzilrace. com/viewtopic. php?t=6
6. Oliveira, Evilazio de. "Movimento Negro cai na
armadilha acadêmica".
http://www.cartadig ital.com/ materia18. htm
7. Schwartzmann, Luisa Farah. "Does Money Whiten?
Educational Mobility of Parents and the Racial
Classification of Children in Brazil." -
http://www.iuperj. br/rc28/papers/ Luisa_Schwartzma n_paper%5B1% 5D.pdf
8. Alberto Ramos e Marina Oliveira. "Sem medo de
revelar a cor".
http://www2. correioweb. com.br/cw/ EDICAO_20020509/ pri_tem_090502_ 278.htm
9. As quoted in George Reid Andrews' Blacks and Whites
in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988. University of
Wisconsin Press. 1991.
10. D'Adesky. Jacques. "Ação Afirmativa e igualdade de
oportunidades" . FASE, Mimeo, November 2000 .Available
online August 14, 2006.
http://www.achegas. net/numero/ vinteesete/ jacques_27. htm
11. With the exception of Jacques D'Adesky, who did
his doctoral work in social anthropology at the
University of São Paulo, and currently does research
at the Centro de Estudos das Américas of the
University of Cândido Mendes in Rio de Janeiro. He has
also authored or co-authored two books on race
relations in Brazil: Pluralismo Étnico e
Multiculturalismo (Pallas 2001) and Racismo,
Preconceito e Intolerância (with Edson Borges and
Carlos Alberto de Medeiros) (Atual 2002).
12. Oliveira, Iolanda. Desigualdades Raciais:
Construções da Infância e da Juventude. Intertexto,
1999.
13. Oliveira, Fátima. "Ser negro no Brasil: alcances e
limites".
http://www.scielo. br/scielo. php?pid=S0103- 4014200400010000 6&script= sci_arttext& tlng=pt
14. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. "Not black, not white:
just the opposite. Culture, race and national identity
in Brazil".
www.brazil.ox. ac.uk/workingpap ers/Schwarcz47. pdf
15. Da Silva, Benedita. "The Black Movement and
Political Parties: A Challenging Alliance". In Racial
Politics in Contemporary Brazil. Michael Hanchard
(editor). Duke University Press. 1999.
16. Rosemblum, Karen E.; Travis, Toni-Michelle C. The
Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race,
Sex and Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation.
McGraw-Hill. 2003.
17. Moore, Robert B. "Racism in the English Language"
in Rosemblum, Karen E.; Travis, Toni-Michelle C. The
Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race,
Sex and Gender, Social Class,
and Sexual Orientation. McGraw-Hill. 2003.
18. Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. The Brazilian Empire:
Myths and Histories. Revised Edition. University of
North Carolina Press. 2000
19. Moura, Clóvis. História do Negro Brasileiro.
Editora Ática. 1992
20. Ramos, Alberto; Oliveira, Marina. "Sem medo de
revelar a cor".
http://www2. correioweb. com.br/cw/ EDICAO_20020509/ pri_tem_090502_ 278.htm
21. Sansone, Livio. Negritude sem etnicidade: o local
e o global nas relações raciais e na produção cultural
negra do Brasil. Salvador/Rio de Janeiro,
Edufba/Pallas, 2003.
22. Wasow is a Ph.D. candidate in African-American
Studies and Political Science at Yale University. He
is also a co-founder of the website blackplanet. com.
His website is http://www.omarwaso w.com/
23. Okwu, Julian C.R. Face Forward: Young
African-American Men in a Critical Age. Chronicle
Books. 1997.
This is part three of a multi-piece article.
Mark Wells holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology
from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and is
currently working on a Master's Degree in Social
Justice at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan. He
can be reached at quilombhoje72@ yahoo.
Written by Mark Wells
Sunday, 14 January 2007
Brazilian crowd I would now like to turn my attention
to the ever popular argument concerning racial
affiliation in Brazil. Frequently, essays and forum
letters at this website express the popular Brazilian
view that racism and quotas based on racial identity
cannot exist in Brazil because the majority of
Brazilians are of mixed descent.
While I will agree that the majority of Brazilians are
of varying degrees of mixed descent, I would also say
that in my 18 weeks of travel in Brazil, it is rare
that I cannot judge one's predominant racial
phenotype. Countless Brazilian and American social
scientists are under this same impression. This is not
to be confused with the issue of self-affirmation of
racial identity, which is another subject altogether.
In sociologist Edward Telles' book Race in Another
America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, the
author, who has researched racial issues in Brazil
since 1989, included a bar of his interpretation of
racial ambiguity, or lack thereof, in Brazil. The bar
shows the color black fading into the color white from
top to bottom with a very narrow range of grey that
represents those who are difficult to categorize as
one specific race.
In past and future essays, I have and will continue to
use the terms negro (black), afrodescendente
(African-descendent ), negro-mestiço (mixed black) or
afro-brasileiro (Afro-Brazilian) as these are terms
that activists have adopted when speaking of Brazil's
pretos and pardos or negros and mulatos.
Each of these terms have been used abundantly in
studies of racial politics in Brazil with none seeming
to have a clear advantage in popular usage. Thus, I
will use afro-brasileiro because of its historical
value dating back to the First Congresso
Afro-Brasileiro held in Recife in 1934.
I will use negro and afrodescendente because, as
geneticist Sergio Danilo Pena explains, the word negro
fits in the morphological sense while afrodescendente
is related to ancestry (1). I will also use
negro-mestiço because, as Minister of Culture Gilberto
Gil says, it "much better defines the adaptation of
the Africans brought to Brazil"(2). I will use these
terms interchangeably and use the terms preto, pardo,
negro, mulato when it is necessary to make a
comparison.
As I am aware, coming from a North American
perspective, I will automatically be accused of
attempting to apply US racial politics to a Latin
American perspective. To alleviate this problem
immediately, let me establish the facts. The much
debated issue of the infamous US "one-drop (of black
blood) rule" has nothing to do with my racial
ideology.
I have known more than a few white Americans who have
admitted to having some African ancestry but whom I
have never looked upon as anything but white. The
"one-drop rule" is quite unique and for the most part
has no validity in the Latin American context
(although there are clues that Brazil's colonial
elites also subscribed to this ideology of racial
identification) .
From the physical perspective, I am speaking purely of
persons who show obvious signs of African ancestry.
This will become important when dealing with the often
debated issue of quotas for afro-brasileiros to enter
Brazilian universities.
Who is considered black in Brazil is often times a
contradiction. When the argument has to do with
racially-based affirmative action, the Brazilian will
instantly quote the "we're all mixed" or the "who can
tell who's black in Brazil?" argument.
But when the "keep the peace" mentality is challenged,
the truth comes out. Take for instance essays from
April and May of 2003 in Brazzil where the writer says
that Bahia has a "black majority" but then changes his
terminology to "black and mulatto" (3).
In the May 2003 article ("Afrobrazilianists : Such
Arrogance!") , the writer goes on to refer to
politician Alceu Collares, as well as beauty queens
Deise Nunes and Vera Lúcia Couto dos Santos as black.
Anyone who has seen photos of the three aforementioned
individuals will agree that they are all of varying
degrees of mixed African descent.
My point here is that the Brazilian will often times
claim that they do not view blackness in the same
terms as the American but then when it's time to
proclaim that blacks have made great contributions to
Brazilian society, they immediately point to the
Brazilian of mixed descent whom they had previously
categorized as mulato.
From this standpoint, at least from the American
perspective, the individual will remain black
regardless of whether their attributes are positive or
negative. From the Brazilian perspective, if this
person has whatever degree of admixture, there is
always the possibility of 'whitening' them. Take the
case of one of Brazil's most famous writers, Joaquim
Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), for example.
According to historian Emilia Viotti da Costa:
"When Machado de Assis died, one of his friends, José
Veríssimo, wrote an article in his honor. In an
outburst of admiration for the man of modest origins
and black ancestors who had become one of the greatest
novelists of the century, Veríssimo - a mulatto
himself - violated a social convention and referred to
Machado as the mulatto Machado de Assis.
"Joaquim Nabuco, who read the article, quickly
perceived the faux-pas and recommended the suppression
of the word, insisting that Machado would not have
been pleased by it. "Your article," he wrote to
Veríssimo, "is very beautiful but there is one
sentence that caused me chills: "Mulatto, he was
indeed a Greek..."
"I would not have called Machado mulatto and I think
that nothing would have hurt him more...I beg you to
moot this remark when you convert your article into
permanent form. The word is not literary, it is
derogatory.. .For me Machado was a white and I believe
he thought so about himself" (4).
This passage is telling for two reasons. One, when a
prominent Brazilian of mixed African ancestry leaves
an indelible impression on Brazilian society, he
cannot be remembered as being of African descent,
fully or partially. Second, it is important to note
that being a mulatto was deemed to be as derogatory as
being described as negro, a point that I will explore
further later in this essay.
Returning to the question of the Latin American view
of race and the contradictory negro/mulatto argument,
one finds this same contradictory attitude toward the
classification of people of African descent in a
December 2004 forum letter from the Argentine Pablo
Diaz:
"With respect to the few places in the Brazilian
Congress for blacks, or the smaller number of black
Miss Brazils when compared with the U.S., perhaps the
numbers should rise if you take into account the
mulattos (5)."
These contradictory ways of defining blackness have
had detrimental effects on the formation of black
identity in Brazil. Historian Décio Freitas tells us
that the preoccupation of not being black in Brazil is
obsessive (6), so when afrodescendentes are
consistently bombarded with negative images of
blackness or presented with unclear ideals of what
Brazilian society considers to be black, is there any
wonder why census data, based on self-affirmation,
reports Brazil to be a 6% black (preto) country?
As far as racial classification is concerned, it is
important that one establishes not only how one is
classified, but also by whom. A person's identity or
identification can be viewed from at least three
perspectives. One is the way that person classifies
him or herself. Another is how others within or
outside of a social group classifies another person. A
third would be how that society's power elite
classifies that person.
Thus it is quite easy to understand how a Brazilian
could refer to him or herself as a moreno, while a
friend describes him/her as mulato/mulata and
government officials refer to him or her as a
negro/negra. So when the official census of the IBGE
(in which racial identification is declared by the
person interviewed) tells us that Brazil is only 6%
black (preto), it is necessary to consider the words
of Luisa Farah Schwartzmann:
"...the interviewers' answers are in a sense more
"real" than the respondents' answer, since the way
people are seen by others is thought to have greater
consequences for their life chances than the way they
see themselves." (7)
While it is not a secret that common Brazilians may
use a plethora of terms when describing skin color or
physical features, it is the dominant society, the
"powers-that- be", that include, exclude and classify
peoples within that society. For Nilza Iraci,
executive coordinator of the black women's group,
Geledés, this point is clear. Nilza possessing very
light skin, is classified as white on her birth
certificate but considers herself to be a black woman.
As she sees it:
"Presenting myself socially as black, I know that I am
depriving myself of a series of advantages. I have
this advantage (in a job interview, for example) when
competing with someone with darker skin than mine. In
this case, I am a morena. When competing with a white
person, I am a black" (8)
At this point I thought I would offer a few quotes
from Brazilian social scientists (or those foreigners
who have worked in Brazil) in order to get an idea of
who Brazilian society recognizes as black.
"...when we affirm that these black groups are
specific, we don't mean that they are composed only of
"pure" negros, in physical anthropology terms, but,
also of pardos, (mulatos, curibocas, caboclos) those
which, in consequence of the group of social
situations in which they overlap, are marked as negros
by the white society and, at the same time, recognizes
and accepts a connection, total or partial, with his
African roots...
- Sociologia do Negro Brasileiro, Clovis Moura,
Editora Atica, 1988 (emphasis mine)
"By and large, the negro of Brazil is the mulatto. The
negróide"
- Mansions and Shanties: the Making of Modern Brazil.
Gilberto Freyre, 1963.
Summarizing the thesis of the late Afro-Brazilian
militant and intellectual Eduardo Oliveira e Oliveira
entitled, "O mulato, um obstáculo epistemológico" ,
Maria de Lourdes Bandeira writes:
"The social category mulato is not to be confused with
the racial category mulato. The social place
attributed to the mulato, not his place as racial
intermediary, is an obstacle to the comprehension of
racial difference as a form of submission or
oppression. The phenotypic characteristics do not
interfere with this understanding. ..The racial
categories, while indicating the diversity of racial
traces, are not instruments of analysis.... within the
boundaries of the class system, the variations of
color are socially irrelevant in race relations. The
racial origin, not the color, remains as the basis of
classification. " (emphasis mine)
- Território Negro em Espaço Branco, Maria de Lourdes
Bandeira.
Editora Brasiliense, 1988.
"The term "preto" was always used by whites to
designate the negro and the mulato in São Paulo, but
through a stereotyped and extremely negative image
created in the past."
- Integração do Negro na Sociedade de Classes.
Florestan Fernandes. Dominus Editora. Editora da
Universidade de São Paulo. 1965.
"What is the negro? In our definition, negro is a
social place instituted by diverse coordinates: the
color of the skin, popular culture, African ancestry,
slave ancestry (near or distant), poverty, the
attribution of negro identity by the other and the
assumption of this identity by one's self."
- "A Inserção do Negro e seus Dilemas", Joel Rufino
Dos Santos
"..the mulato appears as a negro at the same time
privileged and stigmatized by the double condition of
race and parvenu...the rules of social exclusion
define the position of the mulato in terms quite
firmly in Rio Grande do Sul: "he who escapes being
white, is black". The mulato is a negro, thus, an
inferior, but at the same time, he is a privileged
negro"...
- Capitalismo e Escravidão no Brasil Meridional - O
Negro na Sociedade Escravocrata do Rio Grande do Sul.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Paz e Terra. 1977.
"...whites make a social and cultural distinction
between their black and mulatto neighbors and
themselves. Conversely, blacks and mulattos
distinguish themselves from whites in the same way.
The dichotomy which exists is clear...all non-white
individuals are considered negros."
- Raças e classes sociais no Brasil. Octávio Ianni.
Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1972
"we consider as blacks all those who are dark-skinned,
who possess a pigmentation which is neither white nor
Indian. These 'pardos', who according to IBGE
constitute the majority of non-whites.. .are considered
socially to be blacks."
- "Que é um negro?" Décio Freitas. Folha de S. Paulo
(March 1, 1982) (9)
"...the term negro is as much a conventional category
as branco. Grouping together all the gradations, going
from pardo to preto, including the color of copper. In
the same way, the white category also covers different
colors, even those whites that are not truly white.
Besides this, one can observe that the multiplication
of categories related to skin color, shape of the face
and texture of the hair is a common phenomenon in
multi-racial societies. Translating the desire of
people to group the others into determined racial or
color groups is a banal exercise. But it can
correspond sometimes to a desire of hierarchizing the
others into a chromatic and racial scale (10).
- "Ação Afirmativa e igualdade de oportunidades"
(2000) - Jacques D'Adesky
Taking these definitions as written by Brazilian
social scientists (11) themselves debunks the argument
that North Americans are trying to impose their views
about race upon Brazilians. When analyzing hundreds of
books and Internet articles one will notice that
negros, mulatos, or pretos and pardos are always
grouped together when speaking of Brazil's population
of African descent.
This is not a recent phenomenon. While militants of
Brazil's current Movimento Negro have argued that
these two official census categories should be
combined as representative of Brazil's blacks, in
Gilberto Freyre's classic 1933 work Casa Grande e
Senzala, the author consistently pairs negros and
mulatos together.
Black identity, political identity
"The destruction of black identity is the first
feature of racist violence" (12)
- Iolanda Oliveira
At this point I wish to stress that I (as the
aforementioned Clóvis Moura as well as legendary
activist Abdias do Nascimento have written) am not
speaking of race from a biological perspective. There
is no need to argue about the various genetic studies
and racial-genetic percentages that have been coming
out in recent years. I will contemplate that issue
later on. For now, I will consider the words of Fátima
Oliveira, the executive secretary of Rede Feminista de
Saúde:
In the context of racial mixture, being black
possesses various meanings that result from the choice
of racial identity that has African ancestry as origin
(African-descendent ). Or in other words, to be black,
is, essentially a political position, where one
assumes a black racial identity (13).
University of São Paulo social anthropologist Lilia
Moritz Schwarcz also makes reference to the idea of
black identity as a political position highlighting
the difference between the terms preto and negro:
"Even during the slave years the etymological usage of
these apparently synonymous terms already revealed
differences in sense: Negro referred to the
disobedient, rebellious slave, while Black (preto)
denoted the loyal captive. A news story that appeared
in the Correio Paulistano (The São Paulo Post) in 1886
demonstrates this clearly in employing the terms as if
they referred to two wholly distinct realities:
"One particular day, the black João Congo was quietly
working on his master's farm when he noted that two
fugitive negroes were approaching, who soon said -
'Leave this life behind, old black (preto), it's not
for you' to which the loyal (preto) black replied -
'I'm not going to go wandering about here and there
like some runaway negro.' Irritated, the negroes
retorted - 'Die, then, you black coward'" (14)
In the context of Brazilian terminology and folklore,
'old black' refers to the folkloric figure of the
preto velho, the old, docile, submissive, black slave
that is somewhat reminiscent of the American Uncle Tom
figure. Considering these last two statements, it
becomes obvious that a black identity goes beyond just
one's phenotype or physical appearance.
It is a stance or attitude that joins an individual
with a group in which the individual has something in
common bonded by an express ideology that represents
the interests of a that particular group. As one
probes the complexities of Brazilian racial politics,
this becomes clearer. Senator Benedita da Silva
explains how an uncompromising black identity is
viewed in Brazil:
"The more elevated the social position of the black in
Brazil is, the more uncomfortable the black feels if
he or she continues being a black and keeps defending
the black cause. Blacks become a threat and, as white
elites do not want to yield anything, blacks become a
concrete target for racists." (15)
It is here that the similarities between Brazil's
Movimento Negro and the 1970s African-American Black
Power Movement become most evident. Between the 1950s
and 1970s, African-Americans of all skin tones and
hair textures began to adopt the term black to signify
their politicized racial identity. Within the span of
a few decades, African descendents in the United
States went from being labeled colored to negro to
adopting the term black. As Rosenblum and Travis
explain:
"black emerged in opposition to Negro as the Black
Power movement sought to distinguish itself from the
Martin Luther King-led moderate wing of the civil
rights movement. The term Negro had itself been put
forward by influential leaders WEB DuBois and Booker
T. Washington as a rejection of the term "colored"
that had dominated the mid- to late 19th century" (16)
The differences between these terms can be analyzed
through the exclamation of an irate white person
quoted in a July 30, 1975 Boston Globe article:
"We've always welcomed good colored people in South
Boston but we will not tolerate radical blacks or
Communists.. .Good colored people are welcome in South
Boston, black militants are not" (17)
The feeling from the comment above brings to mind the
common saying that black people "know their place" and
are expected to accept and abide by this social
standard. This proverb is common to both the American
and Brazilian racial hierarchy. According to historian
Emilia Viotti da Costa, writing about Brazil's myths
and histories:
"Whites became more aware of their prejudiced
attitudes once they had to confront blacks where they
had rarely been seen before...or when they had to deal
face to face with an "aggressive" , "uppity" black who
did not play his traditional role of humility and
meekness." (18)
It is important to note here the difference between
physical blackness and blackness as a political
identity. There exists in both Brazil and the US those
types of African descendents who do not strongly
identify with other African descendents as a group.
They prefer to live their lives strictly as
individuals, having no preferences for or affiliations
with others who may look like them.
In this sense, there may be many African descendents
living middle-class lifestyles in either country, but
as long as they don't raise any issues of racial
discrimination, speak out against it or advocate
policies that could improve the situation of any group
that has been historically discriminated against,
society may extend them an honorary "pass" of
mainstream acceptance.
At this point, allow me to reiterate that there is a
difference between the identity one assumes and the
identity that is imposed from the outside. Having
established the differences in terminology, it could
be argued that Brazil's African descent population can
in some ways be defined as simply gente de cor (people
of color) as opposed to black.
Negritude (blackness) in Brazil can be said to still
be an "identity in construction" , as the title of a
recent study by Professor Ricardo Franklin Ferreira
(University of São Marcos) suggests. The main point
that I would like to establish here is that the
concept of blackness and the transition from gente de
cor to negros is not simply an American import.
As early as the 1920s and 30s, Afro-Brazilian
newspapers such as O Clarim da Alvorada (The Morning
Bugle) and A Voz da Raça (The Voice of the Race)
brought to the forefront the importance of black
consciousness and ethnic identity. A Voz da Raça was
the newspaper produced by the Frente Negra Brasileira
(Brazilian Black Front), one of the earliest black
civil rights organizations in Brazil (19).
While analyzing Brazil's official census may establish
some general ideas about Brazil's racial composition,
these statistics are not etched in stone. Several
anthropologists (Telles 2004, Sansone 2003, Heringer
2002) have noted that the way many Brazilians classify
themselves racially is not always in agreement with
how an observer views them.
A study conducted by Rosana Heringer (of the Centro de
Estudos Afro-Brasileiros da Universidade Cândido
Mendes no Rio de Janeiro) showed that 30% of those who
classified themselves as pardos were actually pretos
while 30% of those classifying themselves as brancos
were actually pardos (20).
Livio Sansone (of Universidade Federal da Bahia)
discovered several intriguing details when doing field
research for his book Negritude sem etnicidade. First,
those who declare themselves negro are usually younger
than those who refer to themselves as preto. Also,
those defining themselves as negro usually have a
higher level of education than those who refer to
themselves with some other euphemism.
This is a recent development and is a radical
departure from studies of the 1950s that confirmed
that well educated Brazilians of African descent
tended to whiten themselves. One of the most telling
of Sansone's findings were the ways that Brazilians
classified others in relation to their physical
proximity to those people.
For instance, when asked to describe the race of
someone standing right next to them, some of his
respondents would say moreno. Yet, that same person
would refer to the other as negro when that person
wasn't standing close enough to hear their remarks.
This idea of espaço (space) also came into play when
speaking of places where people of African descent
felt comfortable in displaying and affirming their
blackness.
In places and social situations in which they were the
majority and were practicing some form of cultura
negra (black culture), negro-mestiços were more likely
to declare their negritude (blackness) than other
times when they were in more job-related situations or
in contact with whites (21).
In my view, many Brazilian negro-mestiços adopt a sort
of "light-switch" racial identity which they may turn
on or off depending upon the context of the social
situation. As a political position, black identity can
be perceived as a threat to those of the dominant
(white) society.
Take African-American Omar Wasow (22) for instance. In
the book Face Forward: Young African-American Men in a
Critical Age, Wasow remembers that in high school he
identified himself as mixed while ignoring the fact
that it was easier for whites to deal with him than if
he identified himself as black (23). Wasow is an
African-American of mixed descent, his father Jewish
and his mother black.
Footnotes
1. PENA, SÉRGIO DANILO. "Os múltiplos significados da
palavra raça".
http://publicacoes. gene.com. br/Imprensa_ genealogia/ Os%
20m%C3%BAltiplos% 20significados% 20da%20palavra% 20ra%C3%A7a@ Folha%20de% 20S%C3%A3o% 20Paulo@21- 12-
2002_arquivos/ fz2112200209. htm.
2. DAMIANI, MARCO; Studart, Hugo; Leite, Janaína.
"BENEDITA E O AFRO-TURISMO" .
http://www.terra. com.br/istoedinh eiro/296/ poder/
3. Cristaldo, Janer. "A Trap for Blacks".
http://www.brazzil. com/content/ view/3516/ 31/
Cristaldo, Janer. "Afrobrazilianists: Such Arrogance!"
http://www.brazzil. com/content/ view/503/ 30/
4. Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. The Brazilian Empire:
Myths and Histories. Revised Edition. University of
North Carolina Press. 2000
5. Diaz, Pablo. "A Response to Mark Wells". Brazzil
Forum. http://brazzilrace. com/viewtopic. php?t=6
6. Oliveira, Evilazio de. "Movimento Negro cai na
armadilha acadêmica".
http://www.cartadig ital.com/ materia18. htm
7. Schwartzmann, Luisa Farah. "Does Money Whiten?
Educational Mobility of Parents and the Racial
Classification of Children in Brazil." -
http://www.iuperj. br/rc28/papers/ Luisa_Schwartzma n_paper%5B1% 5D.pdf
8. Alberto Ramos e Marina Oliveira. "Sem medo de
revelar a cor".
http://www2. correioweb. com.br/cw/ EDICAO_20020509/ pri_tem_090502_ 278.htm
9. As quoted in George Reid Andrews' Blacks and Whites
in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988. University of
Wisconsin Press. 1991.
10. D'Adesky. Jacques. "Ação Afirmativa e igualdade de
oportunidades" . FASE, Mimeo, November 2000 .Available
online August 14, 2006.
http://www.achegas. net/numero/ vinteesete/ jacques_27. htm
11. With the exception of Jacques D'Adesky, who did
his doctoral work in social anthropology at the
University of São Paulo, and currently does research
at the Centro de Estudos das Américas of the
University of Cândido Mendes in Rio de Janeiro. He has
also authored or co-authored two books on race
relations in Brazil: Pluralismo Étnico e
Multiculturalismo (Pallas 2001) and Racismo,
Preconceito e Intolerância (with Edson Borges and
Carlos Alberto de Medeiros) (Atual 2002).
12. Oliveira, Iolanda. Desigualdades Raciais:
Construções da Infância e da Juventude. Intertexto,
1999.
13. Oliveira, Fátima. "Ser negro no Brasil: alcances e
limites".
http://www.scielo. br/scielo. php?pid=S0103- 4014200400010000 6&script= sci_arttext& tlng=pt
14. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. "Not black, not white:
just the opposite. Culture, race and national identity
in Brazil".
www.brazil.ox. ac.uk/workingpap ers/Schwarcz47. pdf
15. Da Silva, Benedita. "The Black Movement and
Political Parties: A Challenging Alliance". In Racial
Politics in Contemporary Brazil. Michael Hanchard
(editor). Duke University Press. 1999.
16. Rosemblum, Karen E.; Travis, Toni-Michelle C. The
Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race,
Sex and Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation.
McGraw-Hill. 2003.
17. Moore, Robert B. "Racism in the English Language"
in Rosemblum, Karen E.; Travis, Toni-Michelle C. The
Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race,
Sex and Gender, Social Class,
and Sexual Orientation. McGraw-Hill. 2003.
18. Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. The Brazilian Empire:
Myths and Histories. Revised Edition. University of
North Carolina Press. 2000
19. Moura, Clóvis. História do Negro Brasileiro.
Editora Ática. 1992
20. Ramos, Alberto; Oliveira, Marina. "Sem medo de
revelar a cor".
http://www2. correioweb. com.br/cw/ EDICAO_20020509/ pri_tem_090502_ 278.htm
21. Sansone, Livio. Negritude sem etnicidade: o local
e o global nas relações raciais e na produção cultural
negra do Brasil. Salvador/Rio de Janeiro,
Edufba/Pallas, 2003.
22. Wasow is a Ph.D. candidate in African-American
Studies and Political Science at Yale University. He
is also a co-founder of the website blackplanet. com.
His website is http://www.omarwaso w.com/
23. Okwu, Julian C.R. Face Forward: Young
African-American Men in a Critical Age. Chronicle
Books. 1997.
This is part three of a multi-piece article.
Mark Wells holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology
from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and is
currently working on a Master's Degree in Social
Justice at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan. He
can be reached at quilombhoje72@ yahoo.