February 15, 2022

07:02

Rômulo D’ Castro – from Cenarium Magazine

ALTAMIRA (PA) – Diego William felt the weight of racism in his childhood, but it took him a long time to understand that those jokes, apparently innocent, carried prejudice for the simple fact that the color of his skin was different from other classmates. The racism rooted in Brazilian culture happened among the black students themselves, as Diego recounts. “I remember that some children at that time denied their origin. Some had lighter skin tones and said they were brown and not black. It’s interesting that I witnessed it at school,” he says.

Even after going through high school and college, where he graduated in Biology, Diego knows that prejudice accompanies black people like him. The young man is part of the statistic that increases year after year in a country where blacks played a fundamental role in the construction of the Brazil we know today. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), last year more than a thousand complaints were made to official government agencies, 30 of them in Pará.

With the data collected in 2021, Pará tripled the cases that reached the state authorities. In 2020, only ten records were observed. The expectation is that this year the state will beat a new record, following the wave of revolt that has formed with recent cases, such as that of the young Moïse Kabagame, who was beaten to death in Rio de Janeiro on the 24th.

The numbers seem derisory if they are compared to the black/farmer population of the country: 56%, or about 130 million Brazilians. But, for Daniela Silva, a member of movements for young blacks in Pará, the increase in records “is important because people are seeking to denounce. On this side it is good”, she believes.

Daniela deals daily with victims of racism and its perpetrators. “Directly I have never suffered prejudice because of my skin, but it always happens in a veiled way,” she explains. Even though she hasn’t been a victim of open racism, Daniela knows up close the reality of those who face racism. She helps to denounce cases like the ones witnessed by Diego William and other young people and teenagers who, even though they live with prejudice, at some point they need to, but don’t have or don’t know who to turn to.

Racism, impunity, and legislation

In a country where racism is a daily reality, fighting prejudice requires immediate action. One of the tools in this fight is the denunciation that can be made personally at the Civil Police stations, Public Defender’s Office and, depending on the context of a specific case, at the Public Ministry of each municipality.

For the lawyer Joaquim Freitas Neto, the hardening of laws that treat racism as a crime that should be punished with prison sentences, and not with soft measures, would help to reduce cases that we see on a daily basis, such as that of the Congolese Moïse Kabagame and hundreds of young Brazilians, tourists or immigrants who seek shelter in the country.

The current law provides for imprisonment of up to 30 years for those who commit racism in Brazil, but there are many examples in which the perpetrators are set free days or even hours after the crime. For this reason, combat measures must be stricter and analyzed from a specific angle. “Brazilian legislation considers cases of racism as imprescriptible, that is, they have no date to be judged, and can occur at any time. It is a way of allowing stronger and more precise investigations for the cases”, explains Joaquim Freitas Neto.

Historical Context

Racism has been ingrained in Brazil’s DNA since the Portuguese arrived in the country and took over the lands inhabited by traditional peoples. Decimating a considerable part of the local population, the invaders enslaved the few that remained and brought back African troops forced to work in the soils of the newly “discovered” nation.

The word “slavery” was used as normal for 350 years until such work was made illegal. But, even today, slavery still exists and the evils of prejudice against black people are carried by the descendants of a miscegenated country. The sociologist Luiz Antônio evaluates that, besides the prejudice pulsating in a large part of the population, the Brazilian government gives its support so that racist practices continue to exist.

Violent Government

The government led by Jair Messias Bolsonaro “not only disdains, but stimulates violent practices that involve black people”. Luiz Antônio also believes that the actions fed by Bolsonaro’s movements stimulate the maintenance of the so-called structural racism, when society starts to evaluate as normal crimes such as prejudice against blacks, poor people, LGBTQIA+ and other groups considered minorities and marginalized.

Also according to the sociologist, decisions, actions and speeches of a government such as the one currently ruling Brazil reiterate the massacre against these minorities and become seen as normal even within institutions that should defend causes ignored by a government that considers itself extreme right-wing and assumes the role of a state of extermination. “These practices are celebrated. The president of the Palmares Foundation [Sérgio Camargo], in a scoundrel and criminal way, said that Moïse was murdered because after all he was hanging out with bad elements.”

The statement referred to by the sociologist was made in a social network of the foundation’s president, who should demand investigations in cases such as Moïse’s and try to understand how the killing of black people in Brazil is much more than a war in which “stronger bums” win, as he also wrote in the polemic statement. Moïse’s family is suing Sergio Camargo.

Beyond blacks

Brazil is a country built on structural racism, from which attempts are made to justify criminal actions that we have carried for centuries. CENARIUM MAGAZINE consulted a historian to understand how racism has behaved throughout time until today. Otoni Mesquita uses an example that he applied in his research. It happened in Amazonas, in the 1920s, when a black movement, the “Batuque da Mãe Joana”, was condemned by the press of the time for being outside the standards that society considered appropriate.

“The editor [of the newspaper that published the article about the movement] was aware that it was a religious thing, but prejudice existed and he used terms such as ‘mess’, ‘brats’, and ‘hellish shambles’ to classify the blacks gathered there. After the police were called, all the members of the religious party were expelled from the place and some were taken to the police station.

The disqualification of human beings because of the color of their skin is a chronic problem that has only adapted to each era without ceasing to be a reality, especially in the poorer classes and in the periphery, where opportunities are scarce and young people live on the margins of society. And it is not limited to black people.

Historian Otoni Mesquita researches the various forms of prejudice. About structural racism, he evaluates that, just like black people, indigenous people have always suffered discrimination and are still criminalized, especially in states where traditional peoples are the social base.

In Pará, for example, “in the 19th century, the indigenous people were inserted in the capital Belém, which was the fourth largest city in the country, and were still used as slaves, manual laborers,” says the Brazilian history researcher.