BrazilRacial Inequalities

“The country that embraces all people, all races''

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”

“Anything But Race”“Anything But Race”

``In Brazil, what's important is the

person.''

Widespread outrage after racist fan throws banana at Brazilian football player

A storm over racism in Spanish football erupted on Monday after a fan threw a banana at Barcelona full-back Dani Alves, with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and FIFA president Sepp Blatter joining widespread outrage.A spectator — who has since been identified — threw the banana onto the pitch near the 30-year-old Brazilian international as Barcelona played at Villareal on Sunday night.Alves won praise for his reaction, picking up the banana to take a bite before getting on with the game and setting up a goal in Barcelona’s dramatic come-from-behind 3-2 victory.

He responded to the incident by saying:"We have suffered this in Spain for some time. You have to take it with a dose of humor. We aren't going to change things easily. If you don't give it importance, they don't achieve their objective."

What citizens have to say about racism:

• “Walking to and from work was humiliating.”• It's something you can never get used to.'' • “In Brazil, we can talk about anything but race, the myth of racial

democracy created a taboo.'' • ``We have the strongest apartheid ever because people deny racism

exist. It's very hard to combat what is taken as nonexistent.'' • ``There's no discrimination by race, age or religion,'' the official (who

would not release his name) says in an e-mailed response to questions.

• “The pervasive denial that racial bias is behind the gap between blacks and whites is itself proof that discrimination exists.”

• ``My mother always told me I needed to be better in order to be equal…I realized that not even being better would make me equal.''

The most diverse or the most prejudice?

Brazilians pride themselves on their multicultural society, home to the largest black population outside of Africa. Their food, music and dance are a mishmash, the legacy of more than 200 indigenous peoples, Portuguese colonists and about 4.5 million Africans who were brought to the country during more than 350 years of slavery. Interracial marriages are common.

It is this pride that is the source for the racism in Brazil. People refuse to acknowledge that there is discrimination between the black citizens of Brazil and the rest of the citizens. This denial allows for the discrimination to grow.

Preta and Parda• Blacks -- defined by the government and nongovernmental organizations as people who describe themselves as either

``preta'' (black) or mixed-race ``parda'' (brown) -- make up almost half of the population. Of the nation's more than 187 million people, 92.7 million are black and 93.1 million are white; Asians, Indians and those who haven't declared a race make up the rest. On average, they earn little more than half as much as whites, 578.2 reais ($361) a month compared with 1,087.1 reais, according to a report based on 2006 data by IPEA Institute for Applied Economic Research, a government group in Brasilia.

• Black women are particularly disadvantaged. According to a study by IPEA and the United Nations Development Fund for Women using 2003 data, black women earned 70 percent less than white men, 35 percent less than black men and almost 18 percent less, on average, than white women.

• Few blacks make it into management. They account for an estimated 3.5 percent of the executives, 17 percent of the managers and 17.4 percent of the supervisors at 500 major companies, according to the Ethos Institute, a Sao Paulo-based business group that seeks to promote social responsibility. In the U.S., blacks make up about 13.5 percent of the population and hold about 6.3 percent of the management jobs, according to U.S. government data.

• Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company known as Petrobras, estimates that last year about 6 percent of its workers -- 3,004 out of 50,207 -- were black, the company said in an e-mailed response to questions. Just over 5 percent of 30-year-old blacks graduated from college compared with 18 percent of whites, according to IPEA.

• It's a similar story in government. Of the 513 senators and deputies in Brazil's National Congress, 43 men and 3 women are of African descent, according to Marcelo Paixao, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's 23-member cabinet includes two blacks.

The Slave TradeIN APRIL 2010, as part of a scheme to beautify the rundown port near the center of Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic games, workers were replacing the drainage system in a shabby square when they found some old cans. The city called in archaeologists, whose excavations unearthed the ruins of Valongo, once Brazil's main landing stage for African slaves.

From 1811 to 1843 around 500,000 slaves arrived there, according to Tânia Andrade Lima, the head archaeologist. Valongo was a complex, including warehouses where slaves were sold and a cemetery. Hundreds of plastic bags, stored in shipping containers parked on a corner of the site, hold personal objects lost or hidden by the slaves, or taken from them. They include delicate bracelets and rings woven from vegetable fiber; lumps of amethyst and stones used in African worship; and cowrie shells, a common currency in Africa.

It is a poignant reminder of the scale and duration of the slave trade to Brazil. Of the 10.7m African slaves shipped across the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries, 4.9m landed there. Fewer than 400,000 went to the United States. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888.

Brazil has long seemed to want to forget this history. In 1843 Valongo was paved over by a grander dock to welcome a Bourbon princess who came to marry Pedro II, the country's 19th-century emperor. The stone column rising from the square commemorates the empress, not the slaves. Now the city plans to make Valongo an open-air museum of slavery and the African diaspora. “Our work is to give greater visibility to the black community and its ancestors,” says Ms Andrade Lima.

This project is a small example of a much broader re-evaluation of race in Brazil. The pervasiveness of slavery, the lateness of its abolition, and the fact that nothing was done to turn former slaves into citizens all combined to have a profound impact on Brazilian society. They are reasons for the extreme socioeconomic inequality that still scars the country today