The right colourPosted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2011-10-08 03:31Z by Steven |
Index on Censorship
Volume 28, Issue 1, 1999
Special Issue: The Last Empire
pages 110-114
DOI: 10.1080/03064229908536514
Daniela Cestarollo
Five hundred years after the arrival of the Portuguese, Brazilians are only Just beginning to address the legacy of slavery
Brazil is at last revealing its other face. After 500 years of seeking to shape itself in the image of a white, western Catholic country, Brazil is having to come to terms with its immense ethnic diversity and the social and economic implications this brings with it. An extensive report published in 1996 by the daily Folha de São Paulo revealed to the nation that almost half its 160 million people are black. This amounts to the realisation that Brazil had the largest black population in the world after Nigeria. The report also presented figures on racial prejudice, illiteracy, unemployment and income distribution among blacks from all over Brazil. The figures shocked a nation that has always believed itself to be the racial democracy of the southern hemisphere.
The myth of racial democracy has since the 1930s marketed Brazil as the sunny country where people of all races mix happily together on the beach, on the football pitch and in the Carnival parade. However, the myth has in reality served as a buttress for one of the most perverse and sophisticated forms of modern racism. By contrast to the apartheid system of South Africa, Brazil reveals a number of examples of disguised discrimination, such as in job advertising or television programming. Job adverts, which often ask for a ‘good appearance, in reality mean that blacks are not expected to apply. Television dramas, meanwhile, typically portray blacks within extremely limited, stereotyped roles, such as domestic servants or thieves. Not surprisingly, a recent poll on racial origins showed that only 5 per cent of Brazilians identified themselves as black. Most preferred to be called brown, bronze or coffee-coloured.
Discrimination based on skin colour was made a criminal offence in 1951, but the law was completely ignored and almost no-one was aware of its existence. During the military dictatorship (1964-1985), any…
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