The myth of racial democracy in Brazil

Image: Darius Krause
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By DANIEL SANTIAGO B. DA SILVA*

The ideal of whiteness is forcibly imposed on people in Brazilian society and institutions.

Before talking about the myth of democracy, it is important to keep in mind the concept of these terms, to understand the construction of this ideology. The term democracy is derived from the Greek word ““Democracy”, composed of Demos (people) and Kratos (power), democracy in its concept, would be “power of the people”. These terms, from the idea of ​​popular participation and social and political harmony.

During the contemporary era, democracy has become widespread in social spheres, such as the sociopolitical participation of the population of a given country, in the various spheres that affect the community, from participation in social and student movements, protests, public discussions, that is, activities that encompass other issues, in addition to formal politics. As for the concept of “myth”, which derives from “mythos”, meaning “narrative” or story”, on the other hand, in common sense, myth is considered a lie or something false, it is in these two concepts that the “myth of democracy” is found.

Society believed and still believes in the idea of ​​“racial democracy”, a national ideology that expanded in 1930, during the Vargas Era.[I](1930-45), in which a strong wave of nationalism intensifies, bringing a characteristic of the Western State, the “unifying essence” (CLASTRES, 2004, p. 61), transforming the “multiple into the One” (CLASTRES, 2004, p. 59), in which an idea of ​​“Brazilian”, as a single people, becomes the basis.

This conception is reinforced by Brazilian intellectuals and interpreters, such as Gilberto Freyre, author of Casa Grande and Senzala, a book that contributes to the construction of a possible “racial democracy” in Brazil. According to this ideology, the Brazilian people would have mixed so much that they would have reached a so-called “racial democracy” in which inequalities would not be due to a racial issue, bringing focus that there is harmony between Brazilian ethnicities, black, indigenous and white.

 As in Brazil there was no “apartheid"[ii] and “explicit racial segregation”[iii]As in the United States, since it “did not have” this explicit form of racism, it was believed that people could not be racist and that the country was free from racism. However, these aspects of explicit racism are not necessary for racism to exist in a country.

The tendency to compare other countries with Brazil is one of the key points for an illusion of a non-racist international and national Brazil (Brazil with a “z”, refers to the idealization and narrative of what Brazil is, but not the true reality of the country, which is cruel and perverse); veiled racism “is sophisticated and perverse, this form of racism” (CARNEIRO, 2022, YouTube), is a false democracy, which does not exist; this ideology reproduces a way of thinking about what “Brazil” with a “Z” would be, and not “Brazil” with an “S”, the real one, the one of violence, discrimination, racism. The film Rio de Janeiro: city of splendor (1936), shows how this false racial democracy is seen internationally, and reinforced nationally.

“Skin color does not always determine one's social position; the racial color line, in fact, seems so thin that it has become a haven of tolerance for all races.” (JAMES A. FITZPATRICK, 1936).

Perpetuating an ideology that does not correspond to reality, which is reinforced through racial blindness. In a country where the majority of the population is black, and this ethnic group is in situations of disadvantage, such as economic inequality, precarious housing and living conditions, a lack of representation of black people in the media, culture and education system, a majority in the prison system, and the extermination of the black population, so, yes, skin color influences social position.

 The “myth of racial democracy” has been disseminated and intensified internally and externally, showing an idea of ​​“Brazil” that is not true. This conception places the black collective and individuality in a position to remain static, because if there is no racism, there is no problem, and if there is no problem, it does not need to be fought and contested culturally, socially, politically and psychologically.

 The narrative is based on the idea that racism does not exist in Brazil. It has a distorted perspective on Brazilian racial relations, presenting a “reality” of racial harmony between ethnic groups in the country, which in reality is just a narrative, as it brings the concept and common sense of what is a myth. In the following decades, this false democracy became a fundamental part of the Brazilian State and the narrative of a whiteness and a “non-racist” Brazil, which is reinforced to this day, bringing a depth to the theory that has taken root in the popular imagination of society.

 In this context, throughout the construction of Brazil, the political participation of black people was restricted, limited, exclusionary and selective, black people were excluded from this system, in a totally systematic way, in which the black community was considered sub-human.[iv] and therefore they were not citizens to participate in the country's “democracy.” The myth began to be questioned by authors such as Abdias do Nascimento, who brought the distortions of this premise to public and academic debate, focusing on situations of genocide, prejudice, discrimination and racial stereotypes in relation to black people in Brazilian society and the State.

About the mechanisms

Abdias do Nascimento, in chapter IX, mentions that the dominant classes, which is a white elite, have control of all social apparatuses in the country, and how this influences our conceptions, also contributing to a genocide of black people, through these social apparatuses, in which racism is perpetuated, and a denial of it, such as, for example, the idea of ​​a “racial democracy” in Brazil.

These instruments are used to perpetuate racism, and through this discrimination, to destroy black people as individuals and collective builders and bearers of their own cultural identity in the country. These devices create mechanisms of theoretical and practical difficulties that impede and affect black people in their social and psychological construction within society. “Both theoretical and practical obstacles have prevented African descendants from asserting themselves as valid, integral, self-identified elements of Brazilian cultural and social life.” (NASCIMENTO, 1978, p. 94).

The means of social and cultural control in Brazil are based on the dissemination of false ideologies, such as the concept of racial democracy, which, when reproduced without question, influence the imagination of the masses, generating an “unconscious racism” that is perpetuated.

 “Unconscious racism,” a type of “unconscious bias,” in which an automatic prejudice is created that influences decisions without people realizing it. This becomes so profound that it permeates black people themselves, affecting them psychologically, socially, and physically. These aspects are perpetuated by whiteness, which occupies a place of superiority and “structural advantage in societies structured by racism” (SCHUCMAN, 2000? np).

Whiteness often blames Black people, unfairly holding them responsible for economic, political, social, and criminal issues. This blame perpetuates “unconscious,” structural, and conscious racism, ignoring systemic and social inequality, institutional repression, discrimination, and social exclusion, and diverts attention from complex social problems to a historically marginalized group: Black people.

The educational system

“The [Brazilian] educational system is used as a control apparatus in this structure of cultural discrimination. At all levels of Brazilian education – elementary, secondary, university – the list of subjects taught, as if carrying out what Sílvio Romero had predicted, constitutes a ritual of formality and ostentation from Europe and, more recently, from the United States. If consciousness is memory and future, when and where is African memory, an inalienable part of Brazilian consciousness? Where and when were or are the history of Africa, the development of its cultures and civilizations, the characteristics of its people, taught in Brazilian schools? When there is any reference to Africans or blacks, it is in the sense of distancing and alienating black identity. Nor does the black-African world have access to Brazilian universities. The European or North American model is repeated, and Afro-Brazilian populations are driven away from the university grounds like leprous cattle. […] and constitutes a difficult challenge for the rare Afro-Brazilian university students” (NASCIMENTO, 1978, p. 95)

Abdias do Nascimento emphasizes that there is no anti-racist education in this system, whether at the elementary, secondary or university levels. In schools, African history is not taught, and in universities, black identity is not discussed. The possibility of addressing black identity in an educational context is “the same as provoking all the wrath of hell” (NASCIMENTO, 1978, p. 95). At the same time, despite the growing visibility of anti-racist education in the XNUMXst century, the Brazilian educational system is still outdated and outdated, without adequately considering the reality of black Brazilians.

This educational system, deeply Eurocentric and with Americanized elements, contributes to a great “genocide, effectively, in physical death, but also in symbolic death” (GARIGHAN, 2017, np), characterizing an “ethnic and cultural genocide” (NASCIMENTO, 1978, p. 155), which is the systemic destruction and erasure of knowledge and cultural identity, the death of Worldview[v] black. Brazil has never recognized cultural manifestations of African origin since the founding of the colony, demonstrating a lack of commitment and neglect towards an entire ethnic group. This reveals the construction of a structurally racist, epistemicidal, ethnocidal and genocidal State, which aims to erase an entire culture, since its existence affects this “unification”.

“The State wants and proclaims itself to be the center of society, the whole of the social body, the absolute master of the various organs of this body. Thus, in the very core of the substance of the State, one discovers the active force of the One, the vocation to refuse the multiple, the fear and horror of difference. At this formal level in which we currently find ourselves, one finds that ethnocidal practice and the State machinery function in the same way and produce the same effects: under the guise of Western civilization or the State, the will to reduce difference and otherness, the sense and taste for the identical and the One, are always revealed.” (CLASTRES, 2004, p. 60, 61.)

The Brazilian structure is not designed for black people, but rather for them to fail. Black people are the majority of the population; however, they are an economic minority and a minority in the educational system, especially in higher education. In the context of the 20th century, public schools were considered to be of good quality, and black people were excluded from participating in these schools.

Housing conditions are of very poor quality; many live in favelas (after the abolition of slavery in Brazil, the black population went to live in favelas, and with a lack of government planning to be able to relocate this population), “[…], but there were no subsequent measures of citizenship for the black population. The black people left the slave quarters to live in the favela” (SANTOS, 2008, np), and, without “minimum necessities of hygiene and human comfort, these places are inhabited mainly by black groups.” (NASCIMENTO, 1978, p. 84). This structure, which does not consider the black Brazilian, because it sees him as “bad, savage, immoral and ugly”, is constituted by the State.

Black is bad, it's ugly, it's immoral, it's savage

Abdias do Nascimento, in Chapter VII, emphasizes that the association between “good appearance” and “white” becomes almost synonymous, to the point that, in practice, they are considered equivalent in law. The Aurélio dictionary, which is one of the great references in research on concepts and semantics of words used in Brazil, reinforces this idea:

“The 'Aurelio' as to the terms black and white. White: 'Said of an individual of the white race. Without stain, innocent, pure, candid, naive: white soul' (FERREIRA, 1986. p. 282, our emphasis). Black: 'Said of an individual of the black race, Dirty, grimy. Cursed, perverse. Slave' (op. cit.: 1187). This also refers to derivatives of the word such as, for example, black people, defined as 'groups of individuals given to revelry or disorder'. (SOUZA, 2005, p. 106).

The “costume”[vi] of white is worn by white people, specifically whiteness, and black people do not need to wear a costume, as they already exist in verisimilitude[vii] of implausibility, that is, a truth within a lie, in the imaginary narrative of whiteness, always stigmatizing a blackness. According to the philosopher Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), in the “collective unconscious”, the black person is perceived as “bad”, “ugly”, “immoral” and “savage”, but the White person, through this costume, becomes the opposite: good, beautiful, moral and civilized, he may not be this, but in the social structure it does not matter that he is not, because in the social and ideological unconscious, the black person will be bad and the White person will be Good.[viii]

The ideal of whiteness is forcibly imposed on people in Brazilian society and institutions. And since this is done in such a way that, especially on alienated people, and those who are not alienated, they do not notice this manifestation of unconscious racism, this “racism” also becomes “unconscious”, because it is in the “social unconscious”.[ix]

In this context, it also reveals “white ignorance,” in which people at the top of this structure believe they are fully aware of their actions, but in fact, they are perpetuating racist ideals that have been instilled in them over generations and centuries, resulting in “conscious-unconscious” racism, which consists of consciously and unconsciously reproducing racism. That is, when racism is reproduced, people have an individualization of this racism, entering into a process of individual responsibility in these racial relations, but since it is “reproduced” and not produced, it also becomes unconscious, because it was imposed on the psychological, cultural, social, educational and political imagination. Therefore, “unconscious” comes after “conscious,” because the unconscious stands out, controlling without you realizing it.

This is far from removing the individual responsibility of those who are reproducing, but the main point when entering this issue, about “The genocide of the Brazilian black”, is that the central problem lies in the social and state structure of Brazilian society, which was historically constructed to “genocide”,[X] marginalize and disadvantage the black population, which not only reproduces, but produces this ideal of whiteness, in which white people are always in a good situation, and black people in a bad situation.

*Daniel Santiago B. da Silva is a graduate in Management of Solidarity Economic Enterprises at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ).

References


BIRTH, Abdias. The genocide of black Brazilians: the process of masked racism.Rio de Janeiro: Peace and Land, 1978. Chap. IX. pp. 93-95 Chap. VII. pp. 82-85.

FANON, Frantz. Black Skins, White Masks.Bahia, Edufba. 2008. Cap 2. p. 53. Chapter 5 p.121. Chapter 6. p. 163 p. 144.

PEREIRA, Lucas. “Apartheid (South Africa)”. Available at: Apartheid (South Africa): understand what it was and how it ended – Toda Matéria (todamateria.com.br).

SANTOS, Gilney C. What is place of speech. Health debate. RIO DE JANEIRO, V. 43, SPECIAL N. 8, P. 360-362, DEC 2019.

PENNA, Carla. GARCIA, Claudia A. Reflections on the concept of the Social Unconscious. Subjectivities Journal, Fortaleza, 15(1): 46-56, April., 2015.

FARIAS, Erika. Researcher explains the concept of whiteness as a structural privilege. CCS/Fiocruz.

Rio de Janeiro 'City of Splendour'. Director: James A. FitzPatrick. Narrator: James A. FitzPatrick. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1936.

Instituto Unibanco. Ep 1 The Myth of Racial Democracy. Youtube. December 5, 2022. Available at: https://youtu.be/tvBIG_XG2Lw?si=Qf1b9HO7JPGS5r9S.

CAMPOS, Tiago S. Racial segregation in the United States. Available at: https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/historia-america/segregacao-racial-nos-estados-unidos.ht.

SOUSA, Francisca Maria do N. School Languages ​​and Production of Prejudice. Anti-racist education: paths opened by Federal Law 10.639/03. Brasília – DF, v. 1, p. 106, 2005.

GARIGHAN, Grégorie. Epistemicide and the structural erasure of African knowledge. UFRGS – University Journal, 2021. Available at: Epistemicide and the structural erasure of African knowledge – (ufrgs.br).

MIRANDA, Luis Uribe. Propaedeutics of the concept of democracy. Articles. São Paulo. Transformation, Marília, v. 44, no. 3, p. 215-244, Jul./Sept., 202.

CLASTRES, Pierre. Of Ethnocide. In: Archaeology of Violence. Research in Political Anthropology. New York: Routledge, 2004 (pp. 59, 61, 186).

“Sub-human”, in: Priberam Dictionary of the Portuguese Language [online], 2008-2024, https://dicionario.priberam.org/sub-humano.

Mikannn. WHY DID GOT ​​STOPPED MAKING SENSE? | GAME OF THRONES AUTOPSY #03. Youtube. Apr 29, 2020. Available at: https://youtu.be/ypR7NfyYa8o?si=sWy-0r6Nbn7c44mR.

G1. 'Black people left the slave quarters to live in the favela', says minister. 2008. Available at: G1 > Brazil – NEWS – 'Black people left the slave quarters to live in the favela', says minister (globo.com)

Miss Bira. The Dog's Mark. Youtube. Nov 27, 2020. Available at: https://youtu.be/i9554JWJDy0?si=MCshjXPZtcXC1aEU.

Notes


[I] Period in which Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954) governed Brazil.

[ii] One of the institutionalized racial segregation regimes in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.

[iii] “laws like Jim Crow, which brought about the systematic separation of whites and blacks in public transportation, schools and in aspects of daily life, bringing about social segregation such as black and white neighborhoods. Also Redlining, which systematically denies loans and services to black neighborhoods.”

[iv] That is lower than what is considered normal in humans.

[v] Worldview, understanding of the world by the subject. In translation Welt: World, view: Conception

[vi] Representing a social garment, in which the wearer is always included in the ideology in a positive way, becoming a privilege before social institutions.

[vii] What seems real

[viii] One is in lowercase and the other in uppercase to reinforce this idea.

[ix] “cultural heritage, myths and unknown and repressed motives that belong to a given society”.

[X] Neologism created from the term “genocide”.


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