Democracyracial is the state of full equality between people regardless of race, color or ethnicity. In today's world, despite the end of enslavement and the condemnation of practices and ideologies racist, yet does not exist racial democracy, since there is a huge abyss that segregates black, indigenous and aboriginal populations from the white population.
Read more: Religious intolerance - an issue that is often related to racism
What is racial democracy?
When we talk about democracy in a broad sense, we are not just talking about the possibility of political participation but also about equal rights, social equality, racial equality and freedom guaranteed to all people.
Thinking about racial democracy therefore requires thinking about a society in which all people, regardless of their ethnic-racial origin and the color of their skin, are free and have equal rights.
Due to the past of slavery, racism and exploitation of African territories by European nations that left an immense
prejudice and discrimination scar in our society, beyond the terrible burnt offering which sentenced millions of Jews to unjust death, the United Nations (UN) promulgated, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration emphasizes the equal rights of all human beings, regardless of race, color, religion, nationality or gender.According to art. 2 ofUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, “every human being has the capacity to enjoy the rights and freedoms established in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, whether of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, wealth, birth, or any other condition"|1|. The recognition of equal rights by the UN it is an important step towards the establishment of racial democracy in the world.
Also access: How was the life of ex-slaves after the Golden Law?
THE Constitution of the Brazilian Federative Republic of 1988 it also emphasizes the establishment of equal rights between people regardless of any distinctive element. Art. 5 of the Constitution says the following: "all are equal before the law, without distinction of any kind, guaranteeing the Brazilians and foreigners residing in the country the inviolability of the right to life, liberty, equality, security and property"|2|. Despite not directly mentioning the ethnic-racial issue, the quoted excerpt of the document attests that there can be no discrimination of any kind, implying that racial discrimination is not allowed.
The documents cited are important tools for building a nation where there is racial democracy, however, the enactment of the law is not enough, it is necessary that it be complied with. In addition to racial discrimination and prejudice, much needs to be done for a country to be, in fact, considered a racial democracy.
Due to the fact that there is a racismstructural that segregates blacks and whites into different social classes, which hinders the black population's access to basic education, health, security and decent employment, it is necessary to take measures of historic reparation so that a nation is, in fact, a democracy racial.
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Is there racial democracy in Brazil?
The immediate answer to the question starting in the thread is “no”. There is no racial democracy in Brazil, as there is no racial democracy anywhere in the world. There is, at best, a myth of a racial democracy in that racism here is not as evident as it is in the United States, Europe or South Africa.
The United States and South Africa maintained legal systems of racial segregation that lasted, in the case of the United States, until the 1960s and, in the case of the United States. South African case, until the 1980s. In these cases, the black population was treated as second-class citizens, having restricted access to public services and restricted or even denied civil rights.
Since abolition of slavery in Brazil, there was never a restrictive law that officially segregated the black population from the white population. However, there is a racist ideology that persists to this day and, above all, there is a racismveiled, structural, which keeps the black population apart from the fullness of their rights in our country.
According to Kabengele Munaga, Congolese naturalized in Brazil and professor emeritus of Anthropology at USP, “democracy will only be a reality when there is, in fact, racial equality in Brazil and black people do not suffer any kind of discrimination, prejudice, stigmatization and segregation, either in terms of class or in terms of of race. Therefore, the class struggle, for blacks, must go hand in hand with the racial struggle itself"|3|. Thus, Brazilian structural racism is a impediment to the social ascension of blacks, and, as long as there is a distinction of social classes also marked by skin color, it is impossible to speak of a racial democracy.
O structural racism is one who is not explicit in a clear and distinct prejudice and discrimination, he is rooted in society. Structural racism is rooted in the foundations of Brazilian society and is only perceptible by a keen eye that sees the discrepancy in income, employability and marginalization of the black population in relation to the white population. Because Brazil has not presented an official project of segregation between blacks and whites, an ideology (or myth) of racial democracy has been disseminated here.
See too: Brazilian culture, product of miscegenation
What is the “myth of racial democracy”?
Myth is something unreal, non-existent, a fantasy narrative. Speaking of a “myth of racial democracy” leads us to interpret that racial democracy does not exist. In fact, currently, especially in Brazil, racial democracy is a legend. much of the common sense he affirms that in Brazil there is no racism, that there is racial democracy in it because of the fact that there is not a division of races as strong as there is in the United States today.
![The book Casa Grande e Senzala, by Gilberto Freyre, exposes a supposedly cordial relationship between blacks and whites. [1]](/f/080df48ac7c9e1a4011b72333e4ed4bb.jpg)
The strongest and most sociologically described origin of the myth of racial democracy here in Brazil comes from the writings of the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Freyre was a student of sociology and anthropology in Brazil, in the 20th century. Despite being situated in the pre-scientific period of Brazilian sociology (when sociologists were intellectuals and scholars with training in other areas, such as law and philosophy, but were dedicated to to study sociology), the Pernambuco thinker graduated and had a doctorate in social sciences in the United States, developing a thesis on the social organization of colonial Brazil.
In big house and slave quarters, the most widespread work of this author, it goes against the theories of the so-called scientific racism of the beginning of the 20th century, which defended racial purity and the “whitening” of the Brazilian people as a starting point to reach a stage of greater evolution Social. For the Brazilian sociologist, it was the miscegenation that generated a stronger people capable of greater development. The problem with Freyre's thesis is that she took for granted the existence of a relationshipfriendlybetween masters and slaves in the Brazilian colonial period.
According to the sociologist, the masters maintained a cordial relationship with their male and female slaves, often having sexual relations with them. The problem with this view is that it does not see that the slave's cordiality towards his master comes from the fear and that sexual relations between slaves and white masters were, most of the time, rape or consented by them because of the fear they had to suffer punishment for refusing to do such an act. The same phenomenon happened to Brazilian Indians and whites.
This cycle of sexual abuse resulted in the first cases of miscegenation in Brazil in the 16th century and intensified until the end of slavery. We cannot say that all the miscegenation of the period was the result of abuse and rape, but most of it was. It turns out that in other countries, such as the United States, which also had a large part of the workforce at the time based on enslavement of African peoples, there was almost no miscegenation. This fact, we venture to say, did not happen because of a lack of cordiality between black peoples and colonists in the United States, but because of the original Protestant morality. anglican (The Anglican Church was the strongest among English settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries), which condemned vehemently and more severely any sexual act that was not for procreation within the wedding.
In fact, given the end of slavery, one can see in Brazil the great miscegenation between blacks of African origin, whites of European origin and native Indians from Brazilian lands, what makes our country different from all other colonized territories in the West. However, racism persisted for a long time in a blatant, public and unpunished manner and, even today, it persists in the private and public spheres in a veiled and structural way.
Authors such as Kabengele Munaga, the late Brazilian sociologist and professor at USP Florestan Fernandes, the artist and politician Abdias do Nascimento, the writer Conceição Evaristo, among other names, are responsible for demystifying the idea of the existence of a racial democracy in Brazil.
Structural racism and the belief that there is no racism in Brazil are great enemies in the struggle for a fairer society. Just like homophobia and misogyny, racism is an obstacle to form a Brazilian society based on the pillars democratic and Equality and Liberty Republicans.
Image credit
[1] Global Publisher [Reproduction]
Grades
|1|UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, UN, 1948.
|2|BRAZIL. Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil: constitutional text promulgated on October 5, 1988. 53. ed. Brasília: Chamber of Deputies, Chamber Editions, 2018, p. 9.
|3|Check out Kabengele Munaga's speech, on the GGN portal, by clicking on here.
by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor
