{"id":36783,"date":"2014-06-30T21:48:06","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T21:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36783"},"modified":"2014-06-30T21:48:06","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T21:48:06","slug":"neymar-and-the-disappearing-donkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36783","title":{"rendered":"Neymar and the Disappearing Donkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/africasacountry.com\/neymar-and-race-in-brazil\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Neymar and the Disappearing Donkey<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/africasacountry.com\" target=\"_blank\">Africa is a Country<\/a><br \/>\n2014-06-17<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achal Prabhala<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Bangalore, India<\/em><\/p>\n<p>By the time you read this, it\u2019s possible that every single person on the planet will know who <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neymar\" target=\"_blank\">Neymar da Silva Santos J\u00fanior<\/a> is&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;You could come to any number of conclusions from Neymar\u2019s remarkable transformation. For instance, you could conclude that race doesn\u2019t exist in Brazil, which is the favourite line of a specific tribe of Brazilians \u2013 impeccable liberals all, who just happen to be upper-class, white and at the top of the heap.<\/p>\n<p>Or you could conclude that everyone in Brazil is indeed mixed \u2013 which is, incidentally, the second-favourite line of the selfsame tribe.<\/p>\n<p>Or you could wonder what happened to this boy.<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s too easy to condemn Neymar for pretending to be white: judging by the images, he is partly white. It\u2019s silly to accuse him of denying his mixed-race ancestry, because the simplest search throws up hundreds of images of him as a child, none of which he seems to be ashamed of. There is this: when asked if he had ever been a victim of racism, he <a href=\"http:\/\/globoesporte.globo.com\/platb\/marvio-dos-anjos\/2014\/05\/01\/neymar-nao-se-acha-negro-canalhice-ou-desinformacao\/\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>, \u201cNever. Neither inside nor outside the field. Because I\u2019m not black right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Actually, the word he used was <em>preto<\/em>, which is significant, since, in Brazil, when used as a colour ascribed to people \u2013 rather than things, like rice or beans \u2013 it is the equivalent of the n-word; <em>negro<\/em> and <em>negra<\/em> being the acceptable ways of describing someone who is truly black. (And <em>moreno<\/em> or <em>morena<\/em> being standard descriptors for someone dark-skinned, as well as, occasionally, euphemisms for blackness). Technically speaking, however, his logic was faultless \u2013 and even kind of interestingly honest: the Neymar who made that statement was an unworldly eighteen-year-old who had never lived outside Brazil. And in Brazil, Neymar is not black&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/africasacountry.com\/neymar-and-race-in-brazil\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neymar and the Disappearing Donkey Africa is a Country 2014-06-17 Achal Prabhala Bangalore, India By the time you read this, it\u2019s possible that every single person on the planet will know who Neymar da Silva Santos J\u00fanior is&#8230; &#8230;You could come to any number of conclusions from Neymar\u2019s remarkable transformation. For instance, you could conclude [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,83,21,8,394],"tags":[17561,16443,17560,17559],"class_list":["post-36783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-achal-prabhala","tag-africa-is-a-country","tag-neymar","tag-neymar-da-silva-santos-junior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}