By MÁRIO MAESTRI*
The complaint was sponsored by an NGO with American roots, which is paradoxical, given the authority and official and public status of the Minister of Racial Equality.
Editora Record announced the suspension of the publication of a new scheduled book by Sílvio Almeida and of a second edition of Structural racism, the much-vaunted secular Bible of black identity politics, which elevated, in a vapt-vupt, the great anti-racist atheoretical author in Brazil and, later, Minister of State for Human Rights and Citizenship of Brazil, in the fourth PT government. [FSP, 5/11/2024.]
Structural racism, of 2019, is a cornerstone of the proposal of racism as part of the structure of the production and reproduction of social exploitation in Brazil, from the Discovery to the present day. In other words, it is integral and essential to the logic of exploitation, in our past and present. “Racism provides the meaning, logic and technology for the reproduction of the sources of inequality and violence that shape contemporary social life.” [SILVIO: 2019, 15.]
Since always
The formulation “structural racism,” of a Brazilian society driven by the exploitation of “blacks” by “whites,” ever since Cabral set foot on Brazilian shores, has become an axiom defended daily by the mainstream media and embraced, in the blink of an eye, by the Academy, by multitudes of intellectuals, and by the most powerful public institutions in the country. It has become what we call the self-evident truth.
Sílvio Almeida's thesis leveraged his dazzling success and that of a multitude of characters, black and white, who surfed the wave of structural racism, an elucidation imported directly from the USA, as always, and poorly translated to Brazil. A political-ideological proposal launched, supported and promoted by decisive factions interested in big imperialist and globalist capital, as has been customary for a long time. [WANDERSON, 2019; MAESTRI, 2022.]
In a general sense, “structural racism” is part of the vague wokista-identity driven strongly by the Democratic Party, since, by embracing the American industrial relocation, especially during the Bill Clinton Era [1993 to 2001], it exchanged the manufacturing working class, as its electoral base, for the middle class driven by globalization, through the defense of exacerbated identity-individualist rights. The wokism-identitarianism would be the new revolution of postmodernity. A policy that contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016 and to the recent overwhelming Trumpist tide.
Clearing the Capital Bar
I do not like the book, the thesis and the author in question. After the publication of structural racism, I presented in summary form the reasons that I believe challenge the crude and flawed defense of “racism” as a structural element of the production and reproduction of exploitation in Brazil. A narrative that absolves, in the past and present, the responsibility of the dominant classes, big capital and large property as a structure of social oppression. A proposal that identitarianism buries under the rhetoric of structural racial oppression.
The proposal of “structural racism” is commonly supported by the uninformed and the uninformed who confuse it with the correct statement that “anti-black racism” is a tradition deeply rooted in our culture, with undeniable consequences. In Brazil, it is a pathological culture of an extent surpassed only by male homophobia, disseminated throughout our society, without exception – men and women of all colors and social segments.
I regret not having spoken out more emphatically, as others have done so with more information, against what has already been suggested as an “operation” that led to the deposition of the former minister, through his extrajudicial execution, last September. [MAESTRI, 8/09/2024.] All this after the still vague complaint made by his ministerial colleague, of “sexual harassment”, which, according to her, had dragged on for well over a year.
Presumption of innocence
Proposal of “harassment” embraced explicitly and harshly by the President of the Republic and the media-friendly First Lady. And, soon followed by a flood of sympathetic denunciations, about past successes, in the style of #metoo Yankee. The complaint was sponsored by an NGO with American roots, which is paradoxical, given the authority and official and public status of the Minister of Racial Equality.
This operation appears to have developed in the wake of the search for the replacement of Sílvio Almeida, promptly carried out, by a new minister, a PT member and a woman, appointed at the highest levels, who would not sympathize with the ousted man. In order to materialize, the magnitude of the deposition would have required the singular brutality of the treatment given to the complaint, embraced by the presidential administration, without the constitutional respect for the presumption of innocence, until proven otherwise.
All of this was done against a minister who was very black, which, I can't get out of my head, may have counted against him. As I have already suggested, there is “a strong racial imbalance between the complainant and the accused. To say that both are equally black is sheer nonsense. Was there also an unconscious racist remnant in this operation” that resulted in the “moral and personal devastation of Sílvio Almeida? If he were not as black as he is, would he have been treated equally?” “Two blacks/two sizes/if light/there is no exit/dark/door forbidden/. (CUTI, Colorism.) [MAESTRI, 8/09/2024.]
Black black dance first
The recent demonstrations by “Terreiros and entities of African origin”, with popular roots, against the management of Anielle Franco, little reported by the mainstream press, reinforce the impression of a confrontation with political, class and even racial biases, little explored and little understood, underlying the common extrajudicial execution of Sílvio Almeida.
Three months after the events, the public has not been sufficiently informed by the complainant about the harassment she allegedly suffered for many months, despite being a woman of undeniable public and functional power, as a minister and sister of Marielle Franco, the late, combative and courageous community leader. The harassment suggested so far has been inappropriate compliments, erotic whispers, a physical touch and, apparently, not much else.
Is there any excuse for harassment, even minor ones, if it occurred? None. Harassment of women, to varying degrees, is a fairly common behavior in the Brazilian male community, to stay within our borders.
General machismo
It is hard to find a woman who has not gone through this experience, often several times. Among those I consulted, I did not find a single one. Not to mention the millions of women who suffer this agony in factories, offices, universities, buses, and streets, at a time when security cameras record such acts without fail.
These are practices that are commonly semi-naturalized and must be combated and repressed in all their forms, from the most minor to the most serious. However, repression must correspond to the gravity of the act, once it has been proven. To this end, the Justice system uses the principle of “penalty dosage.”
If there is no relationship between the act and the punishment, the punishment becomes violence, aggravated by being carried out in the shadow of the power of the State. A punishment that is eventually more serious than the offense eventually committed.
horny nigger
This is a case in which Sílvio Almeida seems to fit, morally massacred for all time. When I mentioned the problem to a university colleague, she jokingly defended the punishment, without much fuss, of the “perverted black guy”.
There is a huge difference, in quality, that cannot be obliterated, between rape and an importunate or insistent proposal. Just as there is between a racist phrase in an argument and a police officer physically attacking a citizen because he is black. A racial slur never comes close to an American-style lynching. This is something that some judges in Brazil are forgetting.
Sílvio Almeida was accused and punished, definitively, with such violence that it is now imperative that his guilt and conviction be proven by the courts, in order to justify an execution that preceded the trial and its conclusion. If a severe and exemplary conviction is not handed down, those who participated in these events that occurred at the highest levels of our public administration will be execrated.
Fahrenheit 451
It is in the context of the need for necessary blame, whether or not Sílvio Almeida is guilty, that the bizarre action of suspending the publication of his books was reported, part of the movement to cancel Sílvio Almeida which, despite the legality of the act, violates the assumptions of a real regime of democratic access to information.
A procedure that brings back memories of sad times from the past. Initiatives like this are becoming common in our country, on the part of the so-called public authorities, under the pretext of repressing fake news, excesses of freedom of speech and so on.
Bibliographic production, of any nature, when completed, becomes autonomous from its author. It becomes part of the general body of human knowledge, regardless of its intrinsic moral and scientific quality. It must be kept free from censorship under various excuses, especially moral ones, given to its authors.
Slave owners, racists and anti-Semites
José de Alencar was a staunch slaveholder who fought for the maintenance of slavery. Monteiro Lobato was a card-carrying racist. His novel O black president: clash of races, of 1926, is genocidal. It defends, for the preservation of American “Aryan purity”, the total extinction of the black population.[MAESTRI, 16/03/2011.]
In 1933, at the height of the rise of Nazi-fascism, Gilberto Freyre wrote, in Big house and slave quarters, pages of atrocious anti-Semitism. “Technicians of usury, such have the Jews become almost everywhere through a process of almost biological specialization that seems to have sharpened their profile into that of a bird of prey, their mimicry in constant gestures of acquisition and possession, their hands in claws incapable of sowing and creating.” [FREYRE, p.377.]
These and other works must not and cannot be banned or retouched due to their questionable content.. And, logically, much less, for the acts of the authors, even when they are socially toxic individuals. In extreme cases, Hitler would have deserved the death penalty, if he had not committed suicide. But there is no reason to prohibit the publication of My fight.
Identity-based good-guyism
Sílvio Almeida's works were publicly rejected, materially and symbolically, in the sectarian examination of wokism cultural and feminist identity, due, as far as we know, to inappropriate behavior by the author towards a woman, which has not yet been proven. Confirmation by the Justice system, which, we repeat, cannot extend the eventual punishment to his cultural production.
In the United States, the wokism cultural already habitually challenges works based on the content and character of the authors. White filmmakers, fiction writers, poets, historians, and painters are canceled for addressing, even from a progressive perspective, a black theme. [The world, 9/11/2024.]
And don't think that this is just a thing for Estites. Something similar has been done here for a long time. The poetry of the great Castro Alves, because he is white, has already been accused of bordering on racism. It is frightening to think what will happen to Brazilian literary and scientific production if this moralistic and racializing furor passes through the sieve of identity among our intellectuals of the past and present.[1]
* Mario Maestri is a historian. Author, among other books, of Sons of Ham, sons of the dog. The enslaved worker in Brazilian historiography (FCM Editora).
References
ALMEIDA, Silvio. Structural racism. São Paulo: Sueli Carneiro; Pollen, 2019.
FREYRE, Gilberto. Big House & Senzala: formation of the Brazilian family under the regime of the patriarchal economy. 47th ed. rev. São Paulo: Global, 2003.
MAESTRI, Mário. Monteiro Lobato. The black president painted himself white and straightened his hair. Citizenship Mail, 16/03/2011.
MAESTRI, Mário. The black question: the Ford Foundation and the Cold War. the earth is round, 27;12/2022. https://dpp.cce.myftpupload.com/a-questao-negra-a-fundacao-ford-e-a-guerra-fria/
MAESTRI, Mário. Silvio Almeida – nothing justifies. The Commune Magazine, 8/09/2024. https://acomunarevista.org/2024/09/08/silvio-almeida-nada-justifica/
WANDERSON Chaves. the black question: The Ford Foundation and the Cold War (1950-1970). Curitiba, April, 2019.
Note
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