This takes Brazil’s elite racism to the next level #whitesupremacy #whiteinferioritist in action.
Excerpts from the blog Black Women of Brazil
Paragraphs six and fifteen are probably conventional train of though among many whites not only in Brazil but wherever whites and non-whites coexist. Brazilian author Afranio Peixoto pretty much summed up what many whites believe and have practiced with their pseudo eugenics theory. The proof is in their actions.
“Brazilians have come to the startling conclusion in recent years that race affects everything, from education to employment to justice.”
“Racism causes people to continually whiten themselves. For example, many morenos straighten their hair, people search for lighter-skinned marriage partners, and people identify themselves and each other with nicknames indicating a lighter skin tone, such as moreninho (browny), cafe (coffee), mulato, bronzeado (tanned), and escurinho (darky) to name a few. Rarely will someone assume an identity as Negro (black). Even those who call themselves black often have a hard time convincing other Brazilians not to identify them as moreno or mulatto. Calling someone black, for many, is still an insult.”
“The truth is that while there’s no big deal about being white in Brazil it’s definitely a social disadvantage to be black.”
“Blacks in general are burdened with disproportionately high rates of unemployment, illiteracy and infant mortality. And Brazil’s poorest blacks are targets of racial stereotypes that often lead to extreme police violence against them.”
“Advocacy groups adopted a more ambiguous stance with posters showing three people of different shades of blackness under the slogan “Don’t let your colour go unregistered.” Although in Portuguese this is a clever pun, for some it was needlessly confusing, helping whites to maintain divisions among blacks. Whites in power have tried every tactic they can think of to keep themselves in the majority.”
“Most destructive of all to black self-esteem has been the ideology of branqueamento or whitening. This theory was dreamed up in the 1920s to stop Brazil becoming a predominantly black country. White immigration from Europe was encouraged to stem the black tide. The black in Brazil will disappear within 70 years, said one congressman in 1923. Others like author Afranio Peixoto wrote: In 200 years the black eclipse will have passed entirely.”
“Black Brazilians remain the country’s invisible citizens, a status blamed not on racial prejudice but on their economic status. In truth, said sociologist Antonio Sergio Guimaraes, Brazilians were in denial.”
“Racism in Brazil is hard to prove because the myth of racial democracy is carefully cultivated.”
“Every day millions of Afro-Brazilians experience racism. From the family living room, where darker skinned children are often discriminated against, to Church pews, barbershops, classrooms, and the Halls of Congress, racism gnaws at the fabric of Brazilian society.”
“The South American giant is often considered by foreigners and Brazilians as a racial democracy because of the high number of interracial marriages and seemingly easy banter between the races in every day life. Racial Democracy, coined by the Brazilian Sociologist Gilberto Freyre in early 20th century, is the theory that a history of extended miscegenation has created a cultural melange in which all races are equally valued. Nothing is farther from the truth in contemporary Brazil.”
“Black activists say that mass sterilization campaigns run by private groups in Brazil target Afro-Brazilian women precisely for this reason. When South African black leader Nelson Mandela visited recently he was handed a document claiming that 20 million black Brazilian women have been sterilized.”
“Capitalism works to stay in power to exploit the differences within the working class itself in Brazil. They exploit Black people because they are Black and have less power in society, they use these differences maintain control. This is their strategy. We believe that we must understand this strategy, and create a new strategy to fight against this system.”
“Brazil’s range of skin color was once viewed as a debilitating defect by its leaders, prompting them to try to whiten the society by luring European immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”
“A whiter than white ideology is all pervasive. For example, the 1980 census required blacks to fit themselves into one of 136 colour categories – including burnt white, toasted, and cinnamon.”
“The expression “racial democracy” appeared in the 1930s and was intended to mask the intentions of the government, which wanted to “bleach” society by encouraging the “most advanced races”–in other words, white Europeans–to migrate to Brazil. The country had accepted the myth of black racial and intellectual inferiority, and urgently wanted to take action to change the racial make-up of the Brazilian population, where descendants of Africans were in the majority.