Mixed Race Studies

It may be strange, but sometimes I’m embarrassed for not having remarkable stories of racism in my life. As much as I insist on reaffirming my black roots, people always think the opposite. It’s very uncomfortable and it is as terrible as the most pure prejudice. From the moment I became known to the general public, the situation became even more evident. I’m used to being stopped in the streets by people who find it strange the fact that my skin is light, my features are aquiline and my hair straight. They ask why I insist on saying that I am black being “so cute”. It’s absurd. It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color. I am very like my mother, the former model Vera Lúcia Manhães, who has my color. My father, Antônio Pitanga, is black. There were times when I was very saddened by this attitude, but today I face this more naturally. I don’t care, for example, the comments that I heard after being on cover of Raça Brasil (magazine). Some fans wrote and said that they did not understand the fact of me being interviewed by a publication directed toward blacks. I repeat: I’m black.

Marques Travae, “Camila Pitanga on people questioning her blackness: “It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color.”,” Black Brazil Today, February 11, 2012. https://blackbraziltoday.com/camila-pitanga-on-people-questioning-her-blackness/.

Camila Pitanga on people questioning her blackness: “It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color.”

Black Brazil Today
2012-02-11

Marques Travae

Having captured the hearts of millions of Brazilians with her portrayals of several memorable characters in Brazil’s ever popular novelas, Camila Pitanga has earned her wings as a top actress and one of the most visible black actresses on the air. Her success is the fruit of hard work, an early start (appearing in the film Quilombo at age 6 in 1984) and having a famous father couldn’t have hurt (father Antônio Pitanga is a long-time actor). Of her role as Rose, an ex-domestic in the novela, Cama de Gato, Pitanga says: “I identify myself with Rose because she is a fighter and I have this reference in my family. My father is a man of humble origins from Bahia, he was a mailman and it was the arts that created his identity. Rose will not become an artist but she has a dignity that I identify with.”…

Read the entire interview here.

Court declares one must “look like an African descendant in the eyes of the average man” to qualify for affirmative action, rejecting another case of a white student “passing” for black

Black Women of Brazil
2018-11-12

Marques Travae, Creator and Editor

One of numerous examples of fraud, Vinícius Loures defined himself as black to attain access to a Medicine course at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

Court declares one must “look like an African descendant in the eyes of the average man” to qualify for affirmative action, rejecting another case of a white student “passing” for black

In a recent decision that will have huge repercussions on persons who attempt to obtain access to certain jobs and vacancies in universities, a panel upheld a policy that defined that for anyone wishing to qualify through affirmative action, it is not enough that said person be of African descent, but rather must look like an African descendant in the eyes of the average man. This was an argument I made several months ago. A little background here.

Due to the lack of diversity on Brazil’s college and university campuses, the nation began to experiment with affirmative action policies nearly 20 years ago. The discussion on the policies generated debates on race in the public sphere that had never happened to such a degree in Brazil. Sure, the topic of race in Brazil had been studied in academia for decades, but never had the general public had such public debates on the topic. Since the first half of the 20th century, the belief system in Brazil had been that Brazil was a “racial democracy” in which any person, regardless of their racial appearance had an equal opportunity to attain a middle class lifestyle. In fact, because of widespread miscegenation, it was even difficult to determine what race the average Brazilian was anyway…

Read the entire article here