Note: This is very much a work in progress.
Black Brazil (1538? – ) is made up of those of African descent in Brazil. They are about half of Brazil and half of the African Diaspora.
The numbers: This post uses “Black” in the English sense of the word, meaning anyone of African descent. That means anyone who marks their colour on the Brazilian census as preto (black) or pardo (brown). That is a good first approximation, but note that some pardos are a mix of White and Native. In 2010 Brazil was 43% pardo and 8% preto. Only in the south-east – and on television – are most people branco (White).
History: When the pope divided the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal, Portugal got Africa and Brazil. Roughly half of all African slaves who crossed the Atlantic were sent to Brazil. There, at gunpoint, they made Europe rich, growing sugar and mining diamonds and gold.
Brazil and the US have gone through roughly the same stages of history:
- Colonization – founded as a colony by a western European power.
- Slavery – African slaves build up the country, a local White elite gets rich.
- Independence – from Europe. Rule by the local White elite, which lasts to this day.
- Emancipation – slaves are freed, in 1865 in the US by the Thirteenth Amendment, in 1888 in Brazil by the Golden Act.
- White immigration – Now that Blacks are free, they are seen as holding the country back. Starting in the 1880s, the government puts in place immigration policies to make the country Whiter. In Brazil this is called branqueamento, whitening. This is supported by the rise of scientific racism and social Darwinism.
- Colour-blind racism – and melting pot ideologies, in the middle to late 1900s. The White elites declare racism is over – but remain strangely White. In Brazil this is known as racial democracy. Whites want to think racism is over, but racial discrimination continues apace. Racial quotas are put in place at universities, by the 1970s in the US, by the 2000s in Brazil. Police violence is at hideous levels even according to government numbers. The mass media under-represents and stereotypes Blacks.
- Whites become a minority – in 2042 in the US, in 2010 in Brazil.
Main differences: In Brazil, unlike the US:
- Slaves were not mere property – rooted in Roman law, Brazilian law saw slaves as human, allowing them certain rights.
- No One Drop Rule – the Portuguese colonizers did not bring their women. They had children with the Black and Native women of Brazil and did not readily disown them. This made race in Brazil more a rainbow than a black-or-white thing.
- No Jim Crow – unlike South Africa or the US, the law did not formally separate the races. But the police still might stop you from going to a (White) tourist beach.
- Money whitens – if you have money or education, you will seem less Black. This makes Brazil seem less racist than it is to Black tourists from North America.
- No Hollywood – Brazil is way more affected by US mass media and its image of Blacks, even of Black Brazilians, than vice versa.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
607
Just wondering if you have traveled around Brazil.
I have been to Rio, Sao Paulo, Curitiba and Foz do Iguacu 2-3 times each and several towns in between. Rio does not seem more black to me than the areas in the US where I grew up (ie, DC and Baltimore) and Sao Paulo seems noticeably more white to me than New York City. Curitiba is very white, at least as white as Boston – which many blonds/ blue-eyed people. Foz do Iguacu, if anything, seems to have more Mestizo types, maybe being on the border of Paraguay and Argentina.
Rio and S.P. are the two largest cities, so it might make sense to compare them to New York, LA or Chicago, and I don’t think the ones in Brazil are necessarily less white.
I know that the northeast of Brazil is more black — maybe it would have been more like what the Deep South was like before the Great Migrations. I would like to see Salvador next time, as well as the Amazon region.
Also, there were significant Asian Brazilian contingents in Sao Paulo and Curitiba.
In short, to me, the racial mix in Brazil did not seem startlingly different from the USA, except maybe
– more people of Portuguese, Spanish and Italian descent (and fewer of German, English, Irish, although there are some)
– a large number of people of multiracial background (although the US is growing in this regard – even my family is getting more triracial and quadriracial). The percentage of the population that is more than 75-80% African is about the same in Brazil and the US; Brazil has a much larger proportion of people in the 30-50% range. But that means that in the USA, you should also include half the Latinos.
– fewer Asians in Brazil than in the USA, but still noticeable. Most Asian Brazilians are Brazilian born (2nd or higher generation).
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I thought the Confederados were an interesting sub-culture.
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@ jefe
I have not been to Brazil. But from what I understand their cities are laid out differently. In the US poor Black people tend to live in the “inner city”. In Brazil they tend to live in the “periferia”, the outer city so to speak. In Brazil, like in many other countries, people get poorer the further you go out from the city centre. In the US you have a poor Black or Latino inner city and then the White middle-class suburbs. On certain demographic maps US cities look like donuts.
Salvador is famous for being a Black city. But when Henry Louis Gates was there he was the only Black person he saw at his hotel and at the restaurants he went to. Because the city centre was where all the rich White people lived. He might as well have been in Portland. Likewise, the famous beaches of Rio also look Whiter than the city as a whole – in part because of the police, in part because they are in the Whitest part of town (not an accident – it is prime real estate).
So it depends on how you experienced Brazil. As a tourist or business traveller it is going to seem Whiter (and richer) than it is, more so than it would in the US.
Every time I come back to the US I am always struck by how Black and poor it is. But that is because I do not experience the US as a tourist. When I went to New Zealand I did not see how Maori and poor it is – because I went as a tourist and because the one person I knew there was White and middle-class.
All that said, I agree that Blacks in Brazil are far more mixed than in the US.
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You do know that former confederate soldiers went to brazil after the war and lived there for generations right. Also the black Brazilians didn’t go threw any kind of Black reconstruction era which would have benefited them after slavery considering a lot them weren’t given too many opportunities
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@ john
You do know the US went through Jim Crow, the Klan and lynchings, right?
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@abagond,
Thank you for your reply. Just a couple remarks.
Well, that should be on top of your must go destinations. I would go back to visit Brazil in a heartbeat if it weren’t so damn far from where I am now.
Mm-m-m-h.
I think that is how they how they are in the North, Midwest and West coast, maybe not how they are in the South, or in Washington, DC. From DC, going south (in Maryland or Virginia) you enter black suburbs, which meld into black exurbs and black rural areas in Southern Maryland and Tidewater Virginia. If you recall, southern Maryland and Tidewater Virginia are where African slavery was first established, and they have had large black populations, if not majorities since the 1600s. I think from Washington, DC, you could just about travel in a contiguous line through majority black cities and counties all the way to southeastern Texas.
I could probably pick a dozen cities in the South (eg, Richmond, Norfolk, Colombia, Charleston, Macon, Savannah, Montgomery, Jackson, New Orleans, etc. and to some extent Atlanta and Memphis) where we would find the same thing. You can travel from the inner city to suburbs to rural hinterland and stay in majority black neighborhoods the whole entire way.
In DC, the neighborhoods closest to downtown are white. The majority Asian, Latino and most of the majority black neighborhoods are in Maryland.
Most of the foreign tourists who came to visit me in the USA, or who joined me to the USA from overseas, were struck by how more black and non-white in general it was than they expected (based on Hollywood movies). They were also surprised at how much Spanish is spoken and how Asians there are and how big NY Chinatown is. But then again, they visited me / I took them to DC and NY, which are much more multiracial than the rest of the country. But they are respectively the national capital and the largest city (ie, like New Delhi and Bombay in India or Beijing and Shanghai in China) so they should represent at least the urban populations of each place.
This is what I noticed about Brazil.
If we were to measure the fraction of the population with 80% or more black African ancestry, then we might get about 7% each in Brazil and the USA. But I remember when I was in High School looking at a mode graph of African ancestry in the USA around 1970, and there were two modes, one at around 80% and one at around 6%. The majority of “blacks” in the USA were between 50% and 95% African, clustering close to 80%. Those around the 6% mode tended to identify as white. Between 20% and 50%, the numbers were very low and the graph was flat. Generations of Anti-miscegenation laws created two modes. Since 1970, the area between the two modes has started to fill in a bit.
But in Brazil, it is obvious that there is a huge population in that range, ie a huge “cafe-au-lait” population. There may be a slight mode at around 80%, but it is a gradual slope all the way to zero. The majority of Brazilians have at least some African ancestry. We may see more of this in the USA as multiracial blacks marry more and more Eurasians and Latinos.
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@ jefe
Just a curiosity. Being multiracial yourself, do you find yourself more at easy in a society like Brazil or in your mother-country USA?
Some mulattoes in my country sometimes express a vivid admiration for Brazil which they describe as “the mulatto land”. It is as they would prefer to relocate to Brazil if given the opportunity!
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@ Abagond, Are you experiencing wanderlust? Is the siren call of the Brazilian beauties calling you. (LOL)
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well max cavalera is from brasil dont know how to say that en portugues
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@ jefe
I have seen Black inner city turn into Black suburbia driving out from DC, Atlanta and Newark. I used live in a Black middle-class suburb of Newark. But much if not most of my life I have lived near colour lines where I could walk a few blocks and the race suddenly changes. That stuff is burned into my brain, thanks in part to the police.
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@ jefe
I agree, people in the the 49% to 20% African range is a rarity in the US, super common in Brazil.
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@Abagond,
Of your examples, I think Newark is different, as although Newark has a majority black inner city and adjacent suburbs, New Jersey does not have large areas of majority black rural areas, so it would not be conceivable that black suburbs meld into black exurbs and black rural area. It would be possible in DC and Atlanta (traveling in a southern and SE direction), and the norm in all directions for the cities in or adjacent to the “Black Belt” (which you could see in the Census maps).
I guess you would find a similar thing in the cities in the SW for Mexican or Latino American communities.
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@munubantu
For me, the society that felt the most at ease for me was in Hawaii, which has a huge hapa population. It was quite the norm to have a half a dozen different racial and ethnic ancestries, but pick one or two to lean more in the direction of. Also, people found it quite acceptable that others may not look exactly like the “norm” of the ethnic identities they identified more closely with.
I think of Bruno Mars. His mother was Filipino, and his father is Puerto Rican / Ashkenazi Jewish, but he tends to adopt motifs associated with Black Americans in his musical themes. What is he supposed to be? Perhaps part of his appeal is his multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural identity. I wonder if that applies to Dwayne Johnson too.
I experienced it again to a lesser extent when I visited the Philippines, but in that case, people wondered if I were some kind of Filipino, and it is quite common to be a multiracial Filipino. The fact that I could understand their Taglish (ie, Tagalog/English) would cause people to challenge me “Are you sure you’re not Filipino?).
These two experiences were quite different from my two parent groups who tended to treat me as an outside other. And the communities I grew up in are all majority black, and they treat me as an outside other too.
Singapore reminds me a little of the USA in that regard – although it too is a multi-ethnic, multiracial society, people tend to have fixed ideas about what ethnic and racial identity means.
Which brings us to Brazil.
Brazil is a little more fluid than the USA, and it has a huge population falling within the bounds of “octoroon” “quadroon” and mulatto (sorry if people may be offended by these Jim Crow terms – I am only using them descriptively), but it is not clear how I would fit in that kind of spectrum. However, Brazil, being more racially fluid in general, would have a large tolerance and acceptance of multiracialism. Even Asian Brazilians and Native American Brazilians have mixed with all of the other racial and ethnic groups there.
There is still a coloristic mindset there. People who are very dark are still viewed in some kind of negative defective way. The worst favelas have a noticeably darker complexion, and you will see police chase and beat people with darker skin.
But there is a change underway in some of the US metro areas, with the growth of triracial and quadriracial children being born. For example, my cousin’s grandson is about 3/8 black, 3/8 white and a quarter Chinese. My godmother’s grandson is Filipino / Polish and he has two young kids with his biracial black wife. My own great nephews (my brother’s grandsons) are quadiracial. One of my close friends is triracial Piscataway Indian who had daughters with an Iranian-American. This kind of complexity was absent in my childhood.
We even have celebrities doing this too, for example, Jason Mamoa forming a family with Lisa Bonet. Not sure where it is going. Each person will make their own choice. It seems that Tiger Woods has decided to try to be more white.
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Rest In Peace Marielle Franco
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I have been reading about the late Marielle Franco was a brave woman who had a heart for the poor people in the favelas especially the the poor black people who are victims of police brutality and also the LBGT community, and all those who had no voice. Reading about Marielle Franco who was very brave activist gives me pause. May she Rest In Peace and Power.
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I added to the post a picture of the prototypical preta, parda and branca female faces in Brazil:
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@Abagond
I had to google what your post implied. So this is racial identification of Brazilian women. I only have rudimentary knowledge of the anti blackness in Latin American countries like Brazil. I can’t imagine how someone with a deep ebony skin tone and prominent African features is probably not treated very well.
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@ Mary
Anyone not White is not treated well.
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Re: Abagond’s observation above ^
This is what is happening to indigenous tribes in Brazil:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/world/americas/brazil-amazon-tribe-killings.amp.html
https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/uncontacted-brazil
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@abagond
Are you going to do an analysis of the running candidates in the 2018 election wrt race issues?
If this may help:
Marina Silva: considers self as Black
Ciro Gomes: racist
Fernando Haddad: he is a puppet of Lula (racist) and has no opinion for himself
Bolsonaro: his wife is 1/4 Black, and the vice president (Mourão) is 1/2 “indiana
Alckmin: probably not racista
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Sorry for the typographical erros, the pornographic corrector keeps changing English words for Português
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@ Alberto Monteiro
I will be doing a post on Bolsonaro.
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@ Alberto Monteiro
Funny that you seem to imply that the PT candidate is “racist” but Bolsonaro isn’t.
Are you sure that you didn’t confuse/misplace the names?
Because most people outside Brazil think two things:
1. That most recent PT policies helped a lot the Brazil’s poor including Black Brazilians; those policies helped many people to enter the middle class.
2. That Bolsonaro is one of most reactionaries politicians emerged in Brazil in the last decades.
So what are the facts?
Can you explain your sentences please?
Or are you a Bolsonarista campaigning for him?
Just a few questions!
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@ Alberto Monteiro
I agree with munubantu. That is the impression I got too.
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Does a race mean in Brazil [and the rest of luzophone world] as much as in the USA?
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I will wait the post about Bolsonaro to comment about him.
About PT ‘s policy: it was a total disaster. When every country in the world has GDP growth in the 7-10% range, Brazil had 2-3%. And it was built as a sand castle. One trillion poor brazilians raised to the middle class, but that’s just because PT redefined middle class as anyone earning more than 200 dollars a month.
As for blacks in Brazil: never before so many blacks have been murdered by the organized crime.
I will try to get some sources, if you don’t mind reading Portuguese
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Brazilian economy under PT:
http://economia.ig.com.br/balanco-do-governo-lula-20032010-uma-avaliacao-nao-complacente/a1237812318976.html
Lula ‘s racism:
http://www.politicanarede.com/2014/12/o-lula-nunca-suportou-negros-ele-sempre.html?m=1
Black genocide during PT’s government (from a communist source):
https://www.pstu.org.br/golpes-fatais-o-genocidio-negro-sob-os-governos-petistas/
How PT raised billions from poor to rich: by redefining rich as a monthly income of 300 dollars:
https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/reinaldo/depois-de-inventar-a-classe-media-dos-r-300-pt-esta-prestes-a-declarar-oficialmente-o-fim-da-miseria-que-a-rigor-ja-nao-existia-veja-como-e-por-que/
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@ abagond
True but they were still under a social caste system just like the United States also disenfranchised and there vagrancy laws were used to target ex-slave populations throughout the Americas to harass blacks who were not willing to continue the same exploitative labor practices from their slave past. And while there was no law prohibiting blacks from voting, most people of African ancestry were not eligible to vote because the 1891 constitution made literacy a requirement to vote.
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@John
Literacy was a requirement to vote since names had to be written on paper. And before the coup it was even harder, as voters had a minimum income requirement
https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol%C3%ADtica_do_Imp%C3%A9rio_do_Brasil
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@ Alberto Monteiro
I agree. Yeah the white elites knew what they were doing. They knew a lot of ex-slaves couldn’t read or write and had little income after their emancipation which is similar to the required literacy test that the US former slaves had to take before they could vote. The difference was that the US was open with it while the Brazilian government did it a indirect way by saying sure you all can vote but there is a catch
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@Alberto Monteiro and John
Thanks for the information you both have provided to this thread.
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Apropos our shameful past: https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/brazils-black-history-uncovered
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Rio de Janeiro most voted candidate for state representative in our parliament: https://diariodorio.com/deputado-federal-mais-votado-do-rio-foi-um-negro-helio-negao/
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Councilmen who self identify as black raised to 25% in the Parliament
http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/politica/noticia/2018-10/numero-de-negros-na-camara-cresce-mas-nao-chega-um-quarto-do-total
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@ Alberto Monteiro
One trillion poor brazilians raised to the middle class…
One trillion, eh. There are currently seven billion plus humans on the earth. Where did Brazil hide a trillion citizens?
Since you fabricated that wild statement, then perhaps your trashing of the Brazilian Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) is also suspect.
According to Global North media sources, the PT is horrible. According the the poorest and darkest Brazilians, the PT improved their lives a great deal.
Hmm.
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https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article206652379.html
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@ Herneith
Your two links lead to interesting reading.
Reading the Foreign Policy article was like taking a walk through a dog park with no scoop laws posted. It was full of little dog cookies
lieshidden among the grasstruth. Like these stinkers:🍪 “Relationships across black-white boundaries have always been rare in the United States.”
Oh please!
🍪 “…the recent implementation of verification panels across several schools has raised troubling questions about who gets to define race in a country where people don’t fall neatly into black and white categories.”
Funny, the Brazilian police have no problem defining race. The know exactly who to shoot every 23 minutes.
🍪 The student featured in the article (Fernando) was never pictured. We have no idea how pale or European he appears.
That is part of the Foreign Policy bias: American Exceptionalism, feigning ignorance and omissions of relevant information.
Thanks, Herneith.
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Black Press: brazilian newspapers and magazines from the first half of XX century:
http://www.saopaulo.sp.gov.br/spnoticias/ultimas-noticias/imprensa-negra-e-destaque-no-site-do-arquivo-publico/
The site was offline until yesterday (BR electoral law)
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@abagond
If you ever visit São Paulo you can’t miss this:
http://www.museuafrobrasil.org.br
I went there yesterday with my family and two hours weren’t enough to see everything
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@abagond
Another interesting story:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2347265085318048&id=592907057420535
“Carolina Maria de Jesus nasceu em Sacramento-MG, em 14 de março de 1914, filha de negros que migraram para a cidade no início das atividades pecuárias na região. Oriunda de família muito humilde, a autora estudou pouco. No início de 1923, foi matriculada no colégio Allan Kardec – primeira escola espírita do Brasil –, na qual crianças pobres eram mantidas por pessoas influentes da sociedade. Lá estudou por dois anos, sustentada pela Sra. Maria Leite Monteiro de Barros, para quem a mãe de Carolina trabalhava como lavadeira.
Mudou-se para São Paulo em 1947, quando a cidade iniciava seu processo de modernização e assistia ao surgimento das primeiras favelas. Carolina e seus três filhos – João José de Jesus, José Carlos de Jesus e Vera Eunice de Jesus Lima – residiram por um bom tempo na favela do Canindé. Sozinha, vivia de catar papéis, ferros e outros materiais recicláveis nas ruas da cidade, vindo desse ofício a sua única fonte de renda. Leitora voraz de livros e de tudo o que lhe caía nas mãos, logo tomou o hábito de escrever. E assim iniciou sua trajetória de memorialista passando a registrar o cotidiano do “quarto de despejo” da capital nos cadernos que recolhia do lixo e que se transformariam mais tarde nos “diários de uma favelada”.
A escritora foi revelada pelo jornalista Audálio Dantas, na década de 1950. Carolina estava em uma praça vizinha à comunidade, quando percebeu que alguns adultos estavam destruindo os brinquedos ali instalados para as crianças. Sem pensar, ameaçou denunciar os infratores, fazendo deles personagens do seu livro de memórias. Ao presenciar a cena, o jovem jornalista iniciou um diálogo com a mulher negra e favelada que possuía inúmeros cadernos nos quais narrava o drama de sua indigência e o dia-a-dia do Canindé. Dantas de imediato se interessou pela fantástica obra que tinha em mãos e se comprometeu em reunir e divulgar o material. A publicação de Quarto de despejo deu-se em 1960, tendo o livro uma vendagem recorde de trinta mil exemplares, na primeira edição, chegando ao total de cem mil exemplares vendidos, na segunda e terceira edições. Além disso, foi traduzido para treze idiomas e distribuído em mais de quarenta países. A publicação e a tiragem dos exemplares demonstram o interesse do público e da mídia pela narrativa de denúncia, tão em voga nos anos 50 e 60.
Carolina publicou ainda mais três livros: Casa de Alvenaria (1961), Pedaços de Fome (1963), Provérbios (1963). O volume Diário de Bitita (1982), publicação póstuma também oriunda de manuscritos em poder da autora, foi editado primeiramente em Paris, com o título Journal de Bitita, que teria recebido, a princípio, o título de Um Brasil para brasileiros. Em 1997, o pesquisador José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy, autor do volume crítico Cinderela negra, em que discute a vida e a obra da autora, reuniu e trouxe a público um conjunto de poemas inéditos com o título de Antologia pessoal. Todavia, nenhuma destas obras conseguiu repetir o sucesso de público que Quarto de despejo obteve. De acordo com Carlos Vogt (1983), Carolina Maria de Jesus teria ainda deixado inéditos dois romances: Felizarda e Os escravos.
Em 13 de fevereiro de 1977, a autora faleceu em um pequeno sítio, na periferia de São Paulo, quase esquecida pelo público e pela imprensa. Mais recentemente, seus escritos vêm sendo objeto de artigos, dissertações e teses, em função da abertura propiciada pelos novos rumos tomados pelos estudos literários no país e no exterior, que passam a ver com outros olhos a chamada “escrita do eu”. Em paralelo, sua trajetória de mulher negra, marginalizada e oriunda dos estratos mais carentes da população brasileira foi objeto de duas biografias, ambas assinadas por historiadores de peso: a primeira, escrita por Eliana de Moura Castro em parceria com Marília Novais da Mata Machado; e a segunda, assinada por Joel Rufino dos Santos.
Na década de 2000, foi inaugurado no Parque do Ibirapuera, em São Paulo, o Museu Afro-Brasil, cuja biblioteca leva o nome de Carolina Maria de Jesus. A biblioteca possui cerca de 6.800 publicações com especial destaque para uma coleção de obras raras sobre o tema do Tráfico Atlântico e Abolição da Escravatura no Brasil, América Latina, Caribe e Estados Unidos. A presença afro-brasileira e africana nas artes, na história, na vida cotidiana, na religiosidade e nas instituições sociais são temas presentes na biblioteca.”
Fonte: Faculdade de Letras da UFMG – literafro: o portal da literatura afro-brasileira – 8 de outubro de 2018
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The oldest soldier of Brazil: he was still serving when he was 113 years old
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Universal!;
https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/may-i-speak-to-the-lady-of-the-house-video-satirizes-brazils-belief-that-a-black-woman-in-a-middle-class-home-must-be-a-maid-or-cleaning-lady/
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Black muslims in Brazil in the XIX century (in Portuguese):
https://historiaislamica.com.br/escravos-males-muculmanos/
Spolier: when there ceased all restrictions to islam, in the early XX century, all muslims converted to other religions
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Probably the first black officer in brazilian army:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10212423338937166&id=1791934388
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Captain Marcolino Dias dos Santos. He earned two medals for bravery during the Paraguay Era (1864 – 1870)
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Paraguay Era 》Paraguay War
Corrector is set to Portuguese, all my posts have spelling missões
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One of the richest men during the time we had Emperors. He was half black:
https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-44792271
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Nice contribution Alberto Monteiro, how about one on Machado de Assis, the Pushkin of Brazil? It would have been nice of you to translate the info in English before posting on an English speaking forum.
Abagond, are you familiar with the writings of a fellow black Brit named Ralph Leonard who posts as buffsoldier_96? If you are, what’s your opinion of his writing? Here’s a sample of his writing, I’ll wager that you’ll disagree with him. (https://unherd.com/2020/07/cultural-appropriation-is-progressive-and-anti-racist/)
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@ Alberto Monteiro
Gro jo is right.
There are numerous sites on the web where you can paste text in any language and get a serviceable translation in another language.
Then you can post your Portuguese gems on this predominantly English-speaking forum in a way that is easily accessible to most readers.
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Machado de Assis was a genius, but he was infected by the horrible eugenic ideas of his time. He justified not having had any children because he didn’t want to pass to them the curse of his skincolour (!!!)
BTW, it’s a rule that rich black brazilians marrry poor white people (BR or foreigners). One awful example is this picture of Gilberto Gil and his descendents. He was black, the children are mulatos, the grandchildren “morenos” (lightbrown) and the ggchildren are white. His racism was so strong that none of his descendents married non-whites.
Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/104152332963030/posts/3778409955537231/
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Al, as a proud black man, how come you failed to notice the same trait in “Francisco Paulo de Almeida, o Barão de Guaraciaba”? Aren’t all his “ggchildren white”?
Isn’t it the desire of all successful blacks to “whiten the horizon” as a mark of their success? The first recorded black millionaire in NYC, Jeremiah G. Hamilton, did the same thing. His heirs disappeared in the midst of the white population with the $2 million he amassed.
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@ Alberto Monteiro
In the US too, a depressing number of successful Black people are in relationships with Whites. Black women more so than men, it seems, but maybe I just notice that more.
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Let’s not compare what rich people did in the XIX century – when racism was legal in the USA and normalized in Brazil – with what rich people do now.
And, BTW, unless the one-drop-rule applies, I’m not black, I might be about 1/16 to 1/32 black – from the side of my family that were slave owners. 😦
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“And, BTW, unless the one-drop-rule applies, I’m not black, I might be about 1/16 to 1/32 black – from the side of my family that were slave owners.”
My black brother, does that mean you’re one of the “ggchildren” of “Francisco Paulo de Almeida, o Barão de Guaraciaba”? you’re the one who clings to that 1/16 to 1/32 black side by coming here to regale us with your tales. It’s good enough for me to welcome you back to the fold. 🙂
If you don’t care to be associated with that side of your family, do what the heirs of J.G Hamilton did, don’t mention it.
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“Let’s not compare what rich people did in the XIX century – when racism was legal in the USA and normalized in Brazil – with what rich people do now.”
Why not, what has changed?
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@ Alberto Monteiro
How do you rate President Bolsonaro’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil?
a) Very good, b) Good, c) Normal, e) Bad, f) Very bad ?
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Today two young black girls, cousins, were shot dead in a “favela” in Rio. The relatives blame the police, the police blame the narcoterrorists. Most of the media ignores, and only pay attention to Doria (governor of São Paulo) and his attempt to force everybody to take the chinese vaccine before it’s approved by the scientists.
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Newspaper ads in the XIX century:
https://saopauloantiga.com.br/anuncios-de-escravos/
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@ Alberto Monteiro
A pity that most the readers of this blog will not look at the newspaper ads you posted, isn’t it?
Maybe you could add a more detailed comment about them to help other readers of the blog understand the main ideas on those ads.
By the way, I notice that you have been consistently deaf to all attempts by other commentators to change your habit of using the Portuguese language as a vehicle of ideas here. Why not to show more respect for other readers of the blog? You are not a robot, or are you?
And before I finish: what about my question in a comment above, excelentíssimo senhor Monteiro*,
*Respectful way in Portuguese language to say , “Your Excellency Mister…”
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If you are interested in PT-EN translation, just say so.
If you are interested in my opinion about Bolsonaro, ask in his thread.
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Many of the XIX ads were about fugitive slaves, but some were like selling, buying or renting slaves. One of most awful begins with “AMA DE LEITE” (lit. milk maid)
“Selling a black, very young, with pups [prole: the term currently used for the children of animals, never for humans; maybe the term was not so biased 130+ years ago]; she knows perfectly how to wash [clothes] and is very able in domestic labor and very healthy. The reason for selling is that she doesn’t want to serve with her currents lords. (…)”
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This is one of the most powerful poems in brazilian literature. It begins like a joyous description of a Parnasian-like paradisiac trip, and suddenly there’s a plot twist that turns it into a Lovecraftian nightmare (well… maybe not, HPL was r* as hell). It should be read in Portuguese, but here I found an English translation.
NB: the poem is in public domain, but the translation isn’t, so don’t copypaste the translation.
https://allpoetry.com/Antonio-de-Castro-Alves
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