Marina Silva, Green Party Candidate for President of Brazil
Through a glass darkly: A United States lens on Brazilian Politics and Race.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47 and Guest Commenter mpimpa
My good friend, and fellow anthropologist Maria Pimpa-Junqueira from Brazil is currently visiting me here in the States. Our conversation has of course turned to politics, both of the US and of Brazil; President Obama, one year after...and the upcoming elections in Brazil.
Maria, who has dual Brazilian-U.S. citizenship, worked actively here during the primaries registering voters in PA and has been a long time activist, including participating in the US Civil Rights movement in the 60’s when she came here as a student from Brazil.
One of the most interesting comments she made to me via phone from Sao Paulo on the day after Barack Obama’s election was that Brazilians were ecstatic – and that they thought he "looked Brazilian".
Maria: the election of Obama for Brazilians is inspirational not only because he is a "black American" but because he is a change from long years of Bush." The framing of him as ‘black’ is confusing to Brazilians who do not understand the racial divide in the US.
This does not mean that Brazil does not have racial divides. But the lens through which Brazilians view "race" is completely different from the "one drop rule" of hypodescent practiced in the US.
Maria: Consequently from a Brazilian perspective Barack Hussein Obama is viewed by some as "an Arab", which in lieu of the current US wars and Islamophobia, his Islamic heritage made his win all the more shocking. In Brazil surnames have ethnic meaning. He was also viewed as "pardo/mixed", not a typical American – "the white man with blue eyes" a descriptive used by President Lula recently. But "black" is a distinct racial category in Brazil, separate and apart from having African ancestry.
I have very fair skin and straight hair so I am white. Regardless of the fact that I have some ancestors who were African. I "look white" therefore I am"
To be "afro-descendente" in Brazil does not make you black as it does in the States. There is a proverb in Brazil which shows how color is used, ‘If you are white and poor you are black. If you are black and rich you are white’
"Looking white" is also a matter of lens. What "looks white" to a person in Brazil may in the US "look black".
There is a growing "black movement" in Brazil, and they did embrace Obama’s election as a symbolic "black President" however, as the following article points out – there is no monolithic "Black Brazilian" political position.
Obama: In Brazil, an idol still
SAO PAULO, Brazil — It was to be a moment of racial awakening for Brazil. The United States, about one-eighth black and with a history of legal segregation, had elected a black president. Brazil, half-black by some counts, with no post-slavery history of race-based laws and a popular image of racial harmony, was nowhere close to such a feat. Afro-Brazilian leaders hoped for a reaction something like: "Geez, they say that we are more than 50 percent, and there, they’re 13 or 14 percent. How could they achieve what we haven’t?" according to Jose Candido, a 68-year-old black politician who serves in the Sao Paulo legislature. GlobalPost spoke to four black leaders about how Obama is viewed one year later, and if anything has changed: Candido, businessman Joao Carlos Borges Martins, educator Jose Vicente and journalist Mauricio Pestana.
There was an overall agreement that the American president’s domestic travails were only of passing interest, and that he was still regarded in Brazil as a hero, a role model, even a game-changer. "Obama was one of those great events whose mere occurrence was already a great thing, independently of whether he governed well or not," said Vicente, the rector of Zumbi dos Palmares, Brazil’s first black university. "But it seems that in this first year he has at least minimally managed to realize some important things for Americans, principally what is going on in the area of health care. I also think he’s changed the United States’ stance a bit. Instead of talking softly and carrying a big stick, he’s still talking softly, but has put the stick down next to his chair."
Pestana, who heads the editorial board for Raca Brasil, Brazil’s biggest magazine aimed at blacks, thinks the Obama presidency has directly affected potential black politicians here. "His impact is so great that blacks here, who before were very skeptical about politics, have started to realize that that is our only way out," he said. "We’re going to see we have more black candidates in this year’s elections." Candido, who says he is one of just two black elected deputies in his state’s 94-seat chamber, is not quite as sure. He said it can be damaging when black leaders split along religious lines, among black evangelicals, black Catholics and blacks who practice syncretic Afro-Brazilian religions. "It’s very difficult to make all three religions think of the same objective," he said, "We are all black, and we all need to improve our self-esteem. As blacks we need to insist on uniting."
This lens is affecting how United States media reports on the current Presidential race in Brazil.
Both traditional US media sources like the NY Times and black blogs like The Root have made much of the candidacy of former Minister of the Environment and social justice activist Senator Marina Silva. The reports on her heading the Green Party ticket also dub her "black".
A Child of the Amazon Shakes Up a Nation’s Politics
FOR Marina Silva, life began in the heart of the Amazon. From the age of 11, she walked nine miles a day helping her father collect rubber from trees.These days, as an icon in the environmental movement, she has dedicated her life to protecting that same rainforest.Illiterate and seriously ill from hepatitis, Ms. Silva left her home when she was 16 and headed by bus to the city of Rio Branco seeking medical care and an education. There she learned how to read and write, graduated from college and became a teacher and a politician.
She worked closely with her friend Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper and environmental activist, before he was gunned down in 1988 by ranchers opposed to his activism. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected Brazil’s president in 2002, he picked Ms. Silva to be his environmental minister, and on her watch Brazil devised a national plan to combat deforestation and created an indigenous reserve roughly the size of Texas.
...
Her candidacy would pit her against Dilma Rousseff, President da Silva’s chief of staff and his choice to succeed him. Political analysts say the two women have been at odds since 2003 over the country’s economic development policy, including energy projects that Ms. Silva has questioned for environmental reasons. Ms. Silva has "shaken up the race, mixed up all the cards," said David Fleischer, a political science professor at the University of Brasília.
If either woman wins, history will be made. Brazil has never had a woman as president. In addition, the country has never had a black president; Ms. Silva is black.
(my bold)
Around the same time as the NYT piece, and referencing it, The Root had this headline:
Meet Brazil's Black Female (Green) Presidential Candidate
Maria: I am a strong supporter of Marina's candidacy, because of her emphasis on issues of social justice, and her work as a labor organizer. Her move to the Green Party was, I think, not a smart one, since it is one of the smaller parties - we have quite a few parties in Brazil, and will have a problem building a strong enough coalition with other parties to win the presidency. Though pollsters are predicting she will come in last, they said the same thing when she ran for the Senate - and she proved them wrong. But to classify her as a black presidential candidate is simply US ethnocentrism; a refusal to accept differential social constructions of race in the Americas.
For those of you who don't understand Brazilian politics - wikipedia has a fairly accurate list of Brazilian Political parties.
Brazil has a multi-party system with numerous political parties sharing the vote, in which no single party has a chance of gaining power alone, so that they must work with each other to form coalition governments. The ideologies of the different parties should be taken with a grain of salt, as many of them are in fact loose coalitions of local and individual leaderships.
Above the broad range of political parties in Brazilian Parliament since there is no election threshold, the Workers' Party (PT), the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and the Democrats (DEM) together control the absolute majority of seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies[1], and effectively have dominated Brazilian political landscape since the returning of democracy in 1985. Smaller parties often make alliances with at least one of these four major parties.
Maria: There have been Presidents in Brazil's history who are of African descent, including the current President Lula and his predecessor, (below)Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is "white".
Lula self-identified his race on the census as "pardo". He also states he is "afro-descendente".
Lula when he was a labor organizer and as President.
Professor Diniz José Eustaquio Alves writes in:
Qual a cor do presidente Lula? (What color is president Lula?) which I have translated using google translator and had Maria check:
I've heard several people and researchers saying that Brazil has never had a black president although there is a great presence of black people in the whole population of the country. But another day a student asked me, "Is Lula not a black president?
Well, to answer this question we need to know what is considered "black" in Brazil.
Most Brazilian researchers construct the classification of black from the data on skin color surveyed by the IBGE (census). Black would be the sum of people who self declare "Brown" and "Black."
It is not, therefore, a physical or biological classification based on genotype. Browns and Blacks are the classification categories of skin color taken from the self identification of the person answering the question of the IBGE.
Thus, an interviewer may find that the skin color
of a person is black, but the interviewee himself chooses the color brown or white. This is what happened not long ago with the player Ronaldo who declared himself as white, although his parents (when he was born) said he was brown (pardo).
Obviously this could be one more difficulty that the
"Phenomenal Ronaldo" has to distinguish between "colors" and "shapes", but a self declaration of skin color reflects the feeling and desire of the person at the moment of the interview and if he says he is white it is as white he should be classified. In the methodology adopted by IBGE - where in each household there is only one person who responds for all residents - self-declaration of the person who answering the survey is the one that is valid.
Taking the case of Ronaldo, if he were to answer the research he would have said that he is white, but if it was his father who answered, he would classify his son as brown.
Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo
Returning to our original question: Is Lula a black president?
Undoubtedly, President Lula is mixed - as are most of us, most of the people of Brazil. But he is a indian white mix or black-indian mix? Or he is the son of an mixed woman with a mulatto?
Whatever the answer, there is no doubt that President Lula is mestizo. Probably he must have self-declared "Brown" to the IBGE. So to all researchers and scholars issues of "race" that adopted the definition of black as the sum of "black" and "brown", the answer is unequivocal: President Lula is black and, to the surprise of those who believe that the elite of European origin monopolizes the country's top office, Brazil has a non-white president.
Certainly, all this long digression about the color of the president will not alter the fact that Lula as an individual will remain what he is, as Brazil will continue to be the same. But considering the complexity of the question, perhaps the discussion of color / race is a little less Manichean and researchers will look less to the color contrasts and more for dichromatic diversity of colors of the rainbow, which better reflects the richness of Brazilian miscegenation.
Maria: Lula has changed the question of race and color in the 2010 census. They will now be separate, since "pardo (brown) is not a race, but is a skin color.
Several of our early Presidents were mulato; it is always interesting to see how official Presidential portraits "whiten" them.
Nilo Procópio Peçanha, 7th President of Brazil
Nilo Procópio Peçanha (2 October 1867 – 31 March 1924) was a Brazilian politician. President of Rio de Janeiro State (1903-1906). Elected vice-president in 1906, he assumed the presidency in 1909 following the death of President Afonso Augusto Moreira Pena and served until 1910. He was disputably the only mulatto president of Brazil.
Biography
Nilo Peçanha was born to Sebastião de Sousa Peçanha, a baker popularly called "Sebastião da Padaria" (Bakery Sebastian) and Joaquina Anália de Sá Freire, the descendent of a rich and noble family from northern Rio de Janeiro State. He was one of seven siblings (five boys and two girls). His family lived in a state of poverty in the remote and poor neighborhood of Morro do Coco, Campos dos Goytacazes, and moved to the downtown area when he started elementary education.
He was frequently described as being a mulatto and often ridiculed in charges and jokes in the press for his skin color. During his youth, the local Campos dos Goytacazes social elite alluded to him as the "mestiço of Morro do Coco" (the half-breed from Morro do Coco district). In 1921, when he ran for the Presidency of Republic, letters falsely attributed to the other candidate Artur Bernardes were published by the press and caused a political crisis because they insulted both the former president Marshal Hermes da Fonseca and also Peçanha, another former president, claiming he was a mulatto. Gilberto Freyre mentioned his "mulatismo" in Brazilian politics as the same that prevailed in Brazilian soccer. According to some scholars, his presidential photographs were touched up to whiten his dark skin.
It is very interesting to me, that many of the former leaders of countries in Latin America, could never have been elected to the US Presidency, simply because had they lived here, they would never have been "white". A whisper of "the touch of the tar-brush" would have been enough to sink their campaigns. To acknowledge African ancestry in the last 10 generations, here in the US, permanently places you in a marked caste, no matter your skin color. But then we also have no "Native American" Presidents either.
Maria: Marina, and Lula are also viewed as caboclo a term applied to those with mixed Amerindian heritage, but that term also includes Amerindian-African mixtures as well.
Since I lived in the States for many years, I have learned to understand your racial system, and I was very amused to assign myself as "black" on your census, though I am white, afro-descendente in Brazil. Denise who is "black" here in the US was quite surprised to discover, when she stayed with me, that she is white in Brazil as well.
I hope that this introduces you to our lens on "race" and our politics, and I will be here to answer any questions. Next week Denise and I will discuss our Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé and Umbanda, which are currently under racist attack from the rising wave of Evangelical Christians in Brazil, some of whom are connected to funding sources, and backed by a rightwing in the US.
I am happy to have Maria with me here on the porch today and next week. I feel that we here in the US pay far too little attention to the politics, and cultures of our neighbors to the South. Brazil as the country with the largest black population in the world, other than Nigeria is not covered or understood by most of us.
I thank minha irmã for joining us today, and look forward to a lively discussion.
Bemvindo a varanda (welcome to the front porch) Maria.
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New York Time: In Houston, 2 Cases Raise Tough Racial Questions
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This is a town that prides itself on being among the most diverse and tolerant cities in the country, but two recent cases of alleged police brutality against young black men have stirred anger among civil rights leaders and left some residents wondering just how far race relations in their city have come.
Chad Holley, who said the police beat him during his arrest.
Two weeks ago, a black teenager and his family came forward and said that eight officers had brutally beaten him on the ground in the parking lot of a storage facility, after he had surrendered to them. A surveillance camera at the business caught the episode on videotape, which a black community organizer, named Quanell X, turned over to the mayor and the police chief.
Then, on Tuesday, a jury in Houston acquitted a police sergeant who had shot an unarmed black man in his family’s driveway in the upscale neighborhood of Bellaire, after another officer had mistaken him for a car thief.
The sergeant, Jeffrey Cotton, testified that he saw the young man, Robert Tolan, jump up, spin around and draw his hand across his waistband as if he were pulling a gun. The shooting occurred in dim light during a chaotic scene on the last night of 2008, just after the police had ordered Mr. Tolan to lie down on the walkway to his front door and had physically forced his mother up against a garage door.
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The answer to this next question is obvious. Tennessean: Why are blacks first to be falsely blamed?
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I was reading through the Associated Press wire services Tuesday, checking to see what was going on in the nation's capital and elsewhere around the country. And there it was, a story that hit me dead on. Not again, I said to myself. This can't be true.
But there it was, excuse the pun, in black and white. And of all places, in the City of Brotherly Love.
In the story from Philadelphia, the AP reported: "A white city police sergeant made up a story about being shot by a black man while on patrol last month and actually intentionally shot himself for unknown reasons, the city's police commissioner said Tuesday.
"Sgt. Robert Ralston, 46, confessed to making up the story and will have to pay the costs of the massive manhunt that followed, Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. Ralston has been suspended with intent to dismiss, but will not face criminal charges because granting immunity was the only way to obtain his confession, Ramsey said at a news conference."
Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.
Remember Susan Smith? Remember Charles Stuart? Both of them got caught with this same type of stupidity.
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This is a real shame. Homeboy Industries institution dedicated to helping gang members quit lives of crime has been unable to raise the $5 million it needs. A quarter of the staff will remain. LA Times: L.A.'s Homeboy Industries lays off most employees.
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Homeboy Industries, the Los Angeles institution whose mission for more than 20 years has been to turn jobs into a recipe for saving the lives of gang members, laid off most of its employees Thursday because of crushing financial problems.
Father Gregory Boyle, who started Homeboy Industries in Boyle Heights during the height of the city's gang wars, said 300 people were laid off, including all senior staff and administrators. Boyle said he has stopped taking a paycheck.
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"We let people know so they could apply for unemployment, which I'm going to do as well," he said.
Inside the organization's headquarters at Alameda and Bruno streets in Chinatown, employees — many of them former gang members — took turns embracing and consoling Boyle. Young men crowded around him and promised to come back even without pay.
"We love you, G. We'll be here tomorrow," said one. The 55-year-old priest called it a "Frank Capra moment," but he was noticeably dejected.
For two decades, Homeboy Industries has offered counseling, removed tattoos and helped gang members find jobs. Its motto: "Nothing stops a bullet like a job."
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We all ways support giving back. EUR Web: Lionel Richie Has Big Plans for Alma Mater Tuskegee.
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*Lionel Richie announced several plans to donate services and materials to his alma mater, Tuskegee University, during the school’s 125th Annual Commencement Exercises held last Sunday (May 9).
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, who graduated from Tuskegee in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in business, addressed the more than 500 graduates, plus thousands of their families and other spectators via a live interactive satellite broadcast on a massive high-definition TV screen that served as the backdrop for the ceremony. The presentation showcased the university’s new capabilities, made possible by Richie and other supporters.
"I want to bring this technology to Tuskegee in an expanded form, making it a virtual learning facility as well as an expanded brick and mortar reality," he told students. "Students everywhere can learn first-hand from instructors here and from around the world. We need to bring more of this exciting University—Tuskegee— to the world and more of the world to Tuskegee."
Richie also announced plans to make Tuskegee’s Lionel Richie Museum the "final destination" for all of his memorabilia and artifacts. The school is also building the Lionel Richie Center for Communications and the Performing Arts to be built on campus.
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The number is one to celebrate, but now comes the hard part, with the spotlight off, we must make sure it's spent correctly. CNN: $1.3 billion donated for Haiti relief.
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Despite the economy, donors opened their wallets to give more than $1 billion in the first four months of the relief effort in earthquake-devastated Haiti, a generous response for an international disaster.
The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University estimates that donors contributed $1.3 billion - about the same amount raised for the 2004 Asian tsunami - to 96 private charities like the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund.
Though it is less than the $5.3 billion generated after Hurricane Katrina, the center's executive director, Patrick Rooney, said the Haiti response was huge.
He said Haiti's proximity to the United States and extreme poverty may have tugged at American hearts.
"I think it's a little surprising that response was as strong as it was," Rooney said.
He said the economy did not influence giving, since most people donate small amounts that don't require a reallocation of household budgets - the average gift was $50.
About one-third of the total amount went to the American Red Cross, which raised $444 million, according to a list compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Red Cross collected some of its money by allowing people to text a $10 donation from their mobile phones.
Thousands of aid agencies are currently working in Haiti as 2 million Haitians are enduring the rainy season in makeshift camps and struggling to buy food and provisions.
But Rooney expects donations for Haiti to drop off precipitously. They always do when media coverage fades and aid agencies shift from emergency operations like food drops and medical care to longer-term recovery measures.
"We're a nation with a short attention span," Rooney said. "Three to six months after a disaster, donations approach zero."
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With a futuristic design, sky car and marble finish, the Moses Mabhida stadium has become one of Durban's leading tourist attractions ahead of the World Cup in South Africa. BBC: South Africa World Cup 'just for the rich'?
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The new $450m (£300m) arena was named after an anti-apartheid activist and hero of the black working class but some South Africans say his memory is being trampled on by people who are using the stadium to harass the poor.
"They should have called this stadium PW Botha - an oppressor - not Moses Mabhida, our father. It just makes a mockery of what he represented," says Johannes Mzimela, who sells ice cream for a living.
Mr Mzimela is upset at what he calls "hostile raids" by Durban's municipal police, against traders found operating near the stadium or any of the sites earmarked for the World Cup.
Regulations imposed by football's world governing body Fifa on host countries stipulate that no-one but its commercial partners be allowed trade or promote their products in the immediate vicinity of all World Cup sites.
Clement Zulu, who has been selling ice cream for the past 25 years, accuses the Durban municipal police and the Moses Mabhida management of promoting inequalities between the "haves and the have-nots".
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The recent misfortunes of models Beverly Peele and Noemie Lenoir are a sad reminder that with fashion, one day you're in, and the next, you're so out. Particularly when you're black. The Root: When a Supermodel's Career Fades to Black
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There are few things as short-lived as the career of a fashion model. These exquisite creatures are elevated to fashion fame before they are old enough to vote and declared obsolete by the time they can take their first legal drink of alcohol. For models of color, their time in the spotlight--when their name is on every designer's lips and their face in all the glossies--is cut even shorter.
These days, only the most die-hard followers of fashion could probably put faces to names such Noemie, Beverly, Kiara, Alek and Oluchi. But they, and a handful of other black models, all had their time on fashion's biggest catwalks. Most of them had their greatest success in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
I had just started covering the fashion industry, and at the time, I thought they'd be around forever. They seemed poised to become the next generation of iconic black models. Surely, they would follow in the footsteps of women like Naomi Simms, Beverly Johnson and Iman--women who broke through color barriers and went on to become modern symbols of beauty and successful entrepreneurs. Or so it seemed.
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Tuesday Wake Up Music
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