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2013 : Brazil-Has the myth of racial democracy really fallen?

2013 : Brazil-Has the myth of racial democracy really fallen?

Posted by By  at 31 December, at 21 : 31 PMPrint
2013 : Brazil-Has the myth of racial democracy really fallen?
 By Ana Alakija
In Brazil everything ends in samba. In a good way , since samba is serious , as the baiano master of capoeira Cobrinha Verde used to say.   The Minister of the Federal Supreme Court , Joaquim Barbosa, literally obeyed, (it is valid also to the beer) , at Renaissance Club  in Andaraí , Rio de Janeiro, during the traditional and annual Samba Labour party held  last Monday. The minister was received as a celebrity at the place , considered  a bastion of  black culture.
 It sounds like a political pre – campaign to run for the Presidency of the Republic (elections comes next year). Could Minister Joaquim Barbosa be the next head and first black president of the country ? I say that because Brazil , although a mixed country , conserves pluri-racial features from diverse identities ,with a big disadvantage for Africans and indigenous descendants  when the matter is political and economic power .
Although the Brazilian nation is celebrating ‘only’ ten years of affirmative action – entitled during Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva’s administration  - in December of this year,  white Brazil listened to a UN Working Group on African Descent, after a ten-day visit to the Brazilian nation,  what  black Brazil has known since the nation abolished the system of slavery, in 1888:  Brazil is not a racial democracy .
They visited slums and quilombos of five cities with authorities and representatives of civil society and pointed out a stark contrast between the precarious situation of blacks and the high economic growth. ” Afro – Brazilians will not be fully considered full citizens without a fair distribution of economic , political and cultural power,” said Mireille Fanon (from France) and  Maya Sahli (Algerian), members of that group, as preliminary results of their visit whose conclusive report will be presented in 2014 .
In a statement released by Brazil Agency , the UN experts stressed that , between blacks and whites , there are inequalities in access to education,  justice, security, and public services . The group identified racism in ” power structures , in the media and in the private sector.” According to these UN officials , despite being half the population , blacks are ” sub-represented and invisible .”
The finding by the UN , that racism is a structural problem in Brazilian society , shows that  Afro-Brazilians are doing the right thing by confronting this reality in 2013.
Not merely are affirmative actions entitled , such as the approval and referral of bills at the municipal , state and federal levels instituting quotas for African descent in public competitions, but other victories under social pressures as the introduction of  Racial-Ethnic Relations classes into the curriculum of federal universities.  This discipline is essential for teacher education and professional training for the deployment of other disciplines such as History of African and Afro-Brazilian culture in primary and secondary levels of education according to the law passed ten years ago and not in operation.
Furthermore, seizure of public funds for the purchase , distribution and use of Monteiro Lobato books ( they are reference books for private schools at the Federal, District  and State levels; but Afro-descendants consider their contents so offensive as Mark Twain books ) “without first adding a technical note on racism at work or at least that there are concrete actions for the training of teachers in ethnic- racial education “– as explained by the President of the Institute for Environmental and Racial Law  ( Iara ) , Humberto Adami , and Technical Education , Antonio Costa Neto , the proposers of the legal proceedings .
Coming back to the beer and samba enjoyed by  Minister Barbosa , he deserves it.  A  victim of bullying and racial harassment in Brazilian racism style (just as President Obama with  abominable Republican practices ) since he was appointed minister by the former President Lula and later elected President of the Supreme Court  even as  he himself can’t prove the charge ( the Brazilian Law against the racism is obsolete ) , the first real black Minister of STF in the history of a nation that has African descendants comprising more than half of the population, has done well.
After the recent  issuance of warrant of arrest and conviction of 25 people linked to the top of the Workers’ Party , the case referred to as “Mensalão ” – channel for organized funneling of money  to political allies in order to approve matters of government interest – he was the victim of a negative campaign led by “jurists , intellectuals and civil society personalities” who signed and published a manifesto on the Internet and also shared articles and stories in the press against what they called “illegal arrests” .
Afro – Brazilians responded and launched the “positive campaign”.
Let’s embrace Joaquim Barbosa and STF  through social networks with the aim of supporting the actions of the President of the country’s Supreme Court and moralization of the institution.
 Ana Alakija is editor of alaiONline

FONTE: BLOG DO HUMBERTO ADAMI (foto)

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