Hyperconsciousness of Race and Its Negation: The Dialectic of White Supremacy in Brazil
2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10702890490883803
ISSN1547-3384
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoAbstract Brazilian social relations—their practices and their representations—are marked by a hyperconsciousness of race. Such hyperconsciousness, while symptomatic of how Brazilians classify and position themselves in the life world, is manifested by the often vehement negation of the importance of race. This negation forcefully suggests that race is neither an analytical and morally valid tool, nor plays a central role in determining Brazilian social hierarchies. The hyperconsciousness/negation of race dialectic allows us to understand how a system that is on the surface devoid of racial awareness is in reality deeply immersed in racialized understandings of the social world. To approach the hyperconsciousness/negation of race conundrum, I review pertinent Brazilian and United States bibliography focusing on problems associated with the racial democracy myth, and utilize ethnographic data and interpret newspapers articles reporting on one of the many events of police corruption and brutality in Rio de Janeiro. Keywords: raceanti-black racismBrazilracial democracy mythgenocide Part of this research was funded by a LLILAS/Mellon Summer Research Fellowship and a Summer Research Grant from the Center for African and African American Studies—both through the University of Texas at Austin. I want to thank Jafari Allen, Edmund T. Gordon, and Charles Hale for friendly encouragement, constructive critique, and support. Anonymous reviewers, as well as the journal's editors, Jonathan Hill and Thomas Wilson, provided useful and insightful suggestions. Moon-Kie Jung had to hear about this more than he wanted, for which I am grateful. At the University of Texas at Austin, I also thank those with whom I have discussed many of the ideas above, especially Mohan Ambikaipaker, Joel Zito Araújo, Rumba Gabriel, Pablo Gonzalez, Celeste Henery, Athayde da Motta Filho, Diva Moreira, Keisha-Khan Perry, Jacqueline Pólvora, and Sônia Santos. In Rio de Janeiro, many thanks to favela activists (whose full name I conceal for their safety), especially Antônio Carlos, Arlete, Biquinho, Itamar, and Regina. Jemima and Felton Pierre have provided much appreciated companionship, critique, and support in Brazil and United States, and have pointed to many of the problems in the Brazilian "racial paradise" I analyze in this essay. Notes 1 Confirming its national and international appeal, and as if to compensate for the previous year's outright rejection, the Academy nominated "Cidade de Deus" for four Oscars in 2004: best director (Fernando Meirelles), best adapted screenplay (Bráulio Montonvani and Paulo Lins), best edition (Daniel Rezende), and best photography (César Charlone). It did not win in any of these categories, but the four nominations were a first for Brazilian cinema. Previously, "Central do Brazil," in 1998, had been the best Brazilian participation when it was nominated for two Oscars: best actress (Fernanda Montenegro) and best Foreign Film (Folha de S.Paulo, 27 January 2004, www.folha.com.br). It did not win in either. The impact of "Cidade de Deus" indicates how the focus on favelas imply the recognition of how race, class, gender, and urban space, create and express markedly unequal experiences in the nation-state. That such recognition almost completely avoided issues of race is not surprising. Indeed, at least in Brazil, the myriad of commentaries about "Cidade de Deus," and the recurring avoidance of race, are expressions of the hyperconsciousness/negation of race dialectic. The following example, although restricted by the relatively privileged background of those involved, is quite illustrative. Among 49 e-mails sent to Folha de S.Paulo between 29 February 2004 and 5 March 2004 discussing the film, there was not a single message that mentioned explicitly the characters' race. Most e-mails, however, talked about favelas as dangerous and violent places. Such dynamic—avoidance of race and recognition of specific areas where blacks are the majority—is at the core of the hyperconsciousness/negation of race dialectic I develop below [www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/especial/2002/cidadedeus/de_sua_opiniao.shtml]. 2 Unless specified, I will utilize Afro-Brazilian, black, non-white, and of color interchangeably. This is not to diminish the ongoing conflicts around race and color classification among blacks, or the relative advantages that lighter-skinned blacks enjoy compared to darker-skinned Afro-Brazilians. Yet, there is data showing that greater social separation exists between Afro-Brazilians and whites than between Afro-Brazilians of different colors (CitationHenriques 2001; CitationSilva and Hasenbalg 1992; CitationTelles 1999). See also CitationDegler (1986 [1971]), CitationFolha de S.Paulo/Datafolha (1995), and CitationSilva and Hasenbalg (1992) for analyses of color and how differences among Afro-descended people, from the perspective of whites, vary by region. 3 There are a few references to "branquela/os," literally "whitey," when characters refer to light-skinned and white people in the movie. However, there are no derogatory terms against black people, which is surprising given their ubiquity in Brazil. 4 The debate between CitationHanchard (2002), on the one hand, and CitationBourdieu and Wacquant (1999), on the other, exemplifies how such accusations are also present in the academic environment. Bourdieu and Wacquant accused Hanchard of superimposing United States racial code, therefore seriously misinterpreting Brazilian social reality. Bourdieu and Wacquant, in their critique of "United States imperialist reasoning," reproduce the same problem they locate in the United States scholar by proposing a "French" solution to Hanchard's purported shortcomings. Bourdieu and Wacquant's lack of knowledge about Brazilian society has been pointed out by CitationFrench (2003). As I argue elsewhere (CitationVargas 2003), there is much to be learned from United States racial history, critique, and analysis, not because they provide parameters to be mindlessly emulated by Brazilianists and anti-racism activists, but because they present us with the possibilities and even shortcomings that strategic forms of racial solidarity generate. For further views on the debate in particular, and on the theoretical and political possibilities a comparison between race in the United States and Brazil, see CitationCunha (1998), CitationFrench (2000), CitationFry (1995), CitationSegato (1998), and CitationD. Silva (1998). 5 Some of my autobiography is relevant to this study. A light-skinned black Brazilian by birth and nationality who speaks (Belo Horizonte) Portuguese as my first language, I have lived in the United States for a decade. While I have maintained close contact with Brazilians and have intensified my visits in the last two years, Brazil has become a familiar but distant place, one that I cannot claim as home. Born in a mixed-race family light enough so that our blackness was carefully concealed by middle-classness, yet growing up among overwhelmingly European whites in the interior of São Paulo state, France, and England, many (although not close to all) of the racial dynamics around whitening and self-hatred I discuss here were experienced first hand. Except for bad-spirited or joking comments, I have yet to be taken as anything but nonwhite in Europe and the United States. Although in Brazil darker-skinned blacks sometimes see me as white, Brazilian Anglos see my whiteness as a concession, the nature of which unmistakably emerges, for example, in what they consider playful comments concerning their impressions about my African traits. Nevertheless, as commonly happens to mixed-race Brazilians who claim blackness, whites (and sometimes nonwhites) will engage with me, if at all, by saying "but you are not black, you are my friend …." At work here, once again, is the hyperconsciousness/negation of race dynamics, so prevalent in Brazilian social relations. Undeniably, light skin generates much relative privilege, in Brazil and in other countries of the African diaspora. Still, there cannot be a book long enough to list and analyze the myriad of comments and actions nonwhite Brazilians are subjected to about color, hair, nose, lips, mouth, teeth, smell, intelligence, marriage, heritage, work, and politics—only to name a few. This article is a small contribution to understanding how race informs and is inflected by many of such thoughts, comments, and actions, and how structural social inequalities are thus maintained. 6 Country-wide sample survey research conducted by Folha de S.Paulo/Datafolha (1995: 13) indicated that whereas eighty-nine percent of Brazilians polled said there was racism in the country, only ten percent admitted being racists. The same research, however, concluded from the analysis of the answers to questionnaires that eighty-seven percent of non-black persons revealed some form of prejudice (17). One of this research's problems is its refusal to engage with the term "race" and how it relates to the multitude of color categories. 7 CitationMunanga (1999: 103) utilizes a quote from Darcy CitationRibeiro (1995: 225), who reported on a dialogue between two black persons, a well-known painter, Santa Rosa, and a young, aspiring diplomat. Commenting on the young man's complaints about discrimination, Santa Rosa replied that he understood the issue well, since he had "also been black." 8 CitationFry (1995), CitationSegato (1998), and CitationSheriff (2001), among others, have warned against reducing the Brazilian mythology to deception. While I share their concerns about simplifying a complex phenomenon, as well as not reducing it to a variant of United States processes (CitationD. Silva 1998), I cannot emphasize enough the profound and sustained negative impacts that such mythology has on Brazilian blacks. 9 The 1996 Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (National Household Sample Survey) observed that in the richest Southeast region—comprising the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Espírito Santo—whereas infant mortality for whites stood at 25.1 per thousand infants born alive, for blacks the rate was 43.1. In the country as a whole, whereas barely 50 percent of black households are connected to a sewage system, the rate is 73.6 percent for white households. The United Nation's Index of Human Development, a measure of life quality on a scale 0–1, stands at 0.796 for the Brazilian population as a whole, but at 0.573 for Afro-Brazilians. Salary disparities confirm the white–black gap. In the São Paulo's metropolitan region, blacks make an average of R$ 2.94/day, whites make R$ 5.50/day (INSPIR et al. 1999: 39). All social-economic data reveal that "non-whites are subject to a 'process of cumulative disadvantages' in their social trajectories" (CitationHasenbalg and Silva 1999: 218), which blocks their social mobility. Whites, on the other hand, are markedly more successful in attaining upward social mobility. The process is similar to what happens in the United States, as evidenced by CitationOliver and Shapiro (1995). 10 Resistance against talking about race and/or identifying oneself as black was common during weekly Rio favela meetings that I attended in 2001 (CitationVargas 2003). 11 According to CitationHuman Rights Watch (1997), in 1998 the police killed, in Rio, an estimated 720 people. On an average day, two persons lost their lives due to police operations. In comparison, in New York City, whose police are often seen as violent, especially among racialized communities, the annual average of deaths perpetrated by the police is less than thirty, which corresponds to less than half the number of deaths committed by Rio police in a month. Predictably, the great majority of those victimized by the Rio police apparatus was black and lived in favelas. Indeed, 73.91 percent of all police homicides in the city of Rio are of favela dwellers. 12 For a description of Gabriel's work in Jacarezinho, see CitationVargas (2003). An example of the many newspaper articles in which he was featured is one entitled "De vilão a aliado da policia [from villain to ally of the police]" (O Globo, 20 July 2001: 14). 13 It is intriguing that, although seventy-six percent of people polled in Rio and São Paulo believe policemen are active in death squads (CitationHuman Rights Watch 1997), there is little, if any, support for organizations and events that protest police brutality that is not of the favelas. A conclusion that can be drawn from this context is that, while there is recognition of the brutality of the police, there is also awareness that this very brutality is a necessary, vital support of social and racial hierarchies. For disproportionate criminalization of blacks by the police and courts, see CitationAdorno (1995) and CitationKahn (1999, 2002). 14 The distinction between commerce and traffic that is made by local activists is the following. Traffic involves the import and export of large amounts of drugs and is coordinated by a few drug traffickers who also sometimes control the merchandise's processing and packaging. Local commerce, on the other hand, is the final process of the greater, transnational drug trafficking and is defined by the selling of small amounts of drugs to individual consumers. There are, of course, intermediaries in every step of the drug-producing and -distributing processes. Well-known drug dealers in Brazil, however, are but middle-men who distribute and coordinate the selling of drugs not only in favelas, but also in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. The point Rumba made about commerce emphasized the fact that drug traffickers and the wealthier, more powerful local drug dealers are not in the favelas. Favelas are only one of the final destinations of drugs. The profits from the trade are neither controlled by those of the favelas, nor are they invested in the favela. Favelas do not produce, process, or distribute drugs; favelas are mere points of sale to individual consumers. 15 For analyses of the drug commerce dynamics, see CitationZaluar (1994). The bureaucratic organization of drug commerce is illustrated in an O Dia article (20 June 2001: 1, 7) in which the detailed bookkeeping (that included the amount paid to the police) provides a glimpse of the operations. A measure of how detailed and precise is drug commerce bookkeeping is given by explanatory notes about missing pages, times of transactions, persons involved, types of cars utilized, and of course the amounts sold. In Jacarezinho, every time I walked past one of the dealer's armed check-point barriers on my way to the neighborhood association, young boys (between 9–12) would implore for a job. Their desperation was testimony to the everyday tensions in the drug commerce and the realization that they would likely be killed or incarcerated. 16 In Jacarezinho, Rio de Janeiro's second-largest favela, it is estimated that those directly involved in the drug trade do not exceed 100 people. Since Jacarezinho has a population of over 150,000, the proportion of those directly involved with the drug commerce is about 0.07 percent. 17 The view coincides with studies about the police in Rio and elsewhere in Brazil conducted by CitationCano (1997), CitationHolloway (1997), CitationKahn (2002), CitationPaixão (1995), and J. CitationSilva (1998). 18 Ethnographic research conducted in Rio and Salvador between the months of June and July, 2003, in company of a dark-skinned Haitian woman and her teenage brother only reinforced such views. It quickly became too obvious for them how, because of their unmistakable blackness, they were considered out of place in predominantly middle-class environments, such as certain beaches and shopping malls. There was never an open manifestation of racism, but the dissimulated uneasiness with which they were ignored and/or treated had a profound, negative impact on them, not accustomed to the hyperconsciousness/negation of race dialectic that characterize the mythical Brazilian racial democracy. As for me, after a decade of residing in the United States as a black person, my light-brown skin signification and privilege in Brazil shifted markedly. Unprompted, vendors spoke with me in English in both Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. I was later told by a black Brazilian that my assertiveness was taken as a sign of foreignness. All of this meant that non-white Brazilians are neither supposed to be in tourist commercial areas, nor are they supposed to demonstrate self-assurance. Thus, if you are nonwhite, assertive, and happen to be in an affluent commercial area, then you must be non-Brazilian. 19 CitationFreyre's Casa Grande & Senzala (1980 [1933]), translated as Masters and Slaves, is organized around the social relations taking place among the enslaved and the masters, a significant proportion of which is inside the master's house. 20 This avoidance may be another trait of what CitationHolanda (1936) locates as Brazilian cordiality. Cordiality implies the seemingly benevolent proximity between those occupying different social positions. The result of this proximity, however, is the maintenance of domination. Hence the widespread use of first names and diminutives, for example, in Brazilian sociability. Though Holanda did not write much about race, attempts to utilize his conceptualization in the realm of race relations are quite revealing (Citationd'Adesky 2001; CitationFolha de S.Paulo/Datafolha 1995). In the framework I am proposing, avoiding race is one of the mechanisms for this perverse cordiality whose result is, precisely, affirming and perpetuating racial hierarchies. 21 Similar preemptive dynamics have been noticed regarding the Los Angeles Police Department officers' beating of Reading Rodney King (CitationGooding-Williams 1993). 22 CitationSugrue (1996) makes an analogous argument in his key study of Detroit starting in the 1930s. 23 The high point of Rio police demoralization, however, took place on 19 July 2001, when it was shown, on prime time national television, during the Jornal Nacional, the massively watched evening news, a videotape of a group of police officers receiving money from drug dealers in the favela Morro da Providência. "In times of war the corrupt police officers would have been executed," said the military police general-commander, Wilton Ribeiro. His words, printed in the largest letters, were in the first page of O Dia on 20 July 2001, next to photographs of the officers receiving money from dealers. 24 Such impressions were reverted when, on 17 October 2001, the four police officers accused of the kidnapping were declared not guilty. Alcides da Fonseca Neto, the judge presiding on the case, stated that the only disciplinary infraction the officers committed was that they turned off the satellite tracking system with which every police car is equipped—at precisely the time in which the kidnapping took place. The judge added that, if anything was clear, was that Costa "lied shamelessly (descaradamente) about key moments of the kidnapping" (O Globo, 18 October 2001). 25 For an analysis of police brutality and racism in Brazil, see CitationMitchell and Wood (1999). CitationHenriques (2001) analyzes wealth distribution, ownership of durable goods, child labor, and housing conditions. The author's main argument is that social and economic differences between blacks and whites in Brazil resist time and the general life improvement of the non-black Brazilian population. Thus, he argues, the need for anti-racist policies and affirmative action in the country. 26 As in the United States and other countries of Africa and the African diaspora, black youths in Brazil, contrary to commonsensical expectations such as those held by police officers, value brand-name clothes and will go to great lengths (work overtime and save) to acquire them. Nike, Adidas, and Reebok, among others, feature as favorites. See CitationCássia and Homero (2003). 27 In Brazil, when one wants to offend a black person, the word sujo/a (dirty) is often added to negra/o. See, for example, CitationDegler (1986 [1971]: 166). 28 In 22 July 2001: 10, O Globo reported that the police in five states were on strike (Paraná, Pará, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, and Alagoas), while in five others they were on standby (Amazonas, Distrito Federal, Espírito Santo, Goiás, and São Paulo). The strikers were asking for salary raises. 29 Data for police officer's place of residence is difficult to gather, since favela dwellers will often conceal their address when applying for jobs. 30 Information in this paragraph was gathered, while conducting ethnographic work in Rio between 2001–2003. 31 O Globo also devoted a full page for the kidnapping. In the top half of the page, three black and white photographs depict the two police officers/kidnappers, guarded by an armed police officer holding an assault riffle; Costa (with his back to the camera) and his lawyer (facing the camera); and golden jewelry confiscated from the police officers/kidnappers. In the text, the same logic present in O Dia operates: while there is no single reference to race and/or ethnicity, the race of all involved is clear. The bottom half of the article focuses on similar cases. In one of them, a small businessman (whose photo is purposefully darkened) narrates how, since November 1999, police officers kidnapped him twice, shot at his car, and made death threats. This man is married to a notorious drug dealer's cousin, but claims to have no involvement in his activities. In the article Mangueira is described as a "drug trafficking area" also known for its "social projects—especially in the areas of sports—for jovens carentes [poor youths]" (O Globo, 5 July 2001: 15). The hyperconsciousness/negation of race dialectic here also operates by substituting urban space and crime for race. 32 Listing and analyzing all such cases of police brutality and misconduct would constitute another study, which I am now beginning to undertake. The newspaper articles collected for this period include pieces from O Dia, Extra, O Globo, and Jornal do Brasil— the major dailies in Rio—as well as reports from Inverta, a socialist weekly, and Viva Favela, a web site dedicated to matters pertaining to Rio's favelas. 33 As it was reported in O Globo on 17 October 2002; the phrase in quotes is the heading of the article, whose argument is that the attacks were part of a greater conspiracy against Rio's government, planned by the most powerful dealers in the city. The dealer's meeting allegedly took place in Rocinha, from where over 300 men, according to the report, were mobilized for the operation. 34 It is interesting to note that in the United States students of racism have perceived a similar transformation of racism, from overt to a more subtle but nevertheless as effective form. See CitationLipsitz (1998) and CitationBonilla-Silva (2003). 35 Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was approved by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260 A (III) on 9 December 1948, entry into force 12 January 1951 in accordance with article XII. 36 Important authors writing on the theory of genocide include CitationAndreopoulos (1994), CitationChalk and Jonassohn (1990), CitationCharny (1991), CitationChurchill (1997), CitationFein (1993), and CitationKuper (1981). For an assessment of the relationship between anthropology and genocide, see CitationHinton (2003).
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