In Brazil It Is Dangerous To Be Anti-Racist
AFRICANGLOBE – Whiteness has transformed anti-racism into yet another stigma and this is yet another consequence of its ideological, still colonialist, dominance of Brazilian society. It is not news to anyone, not even whites, that racism is structural. Thus, in most social interactions, racist ideologies integrate the discursive and non-discursive practices of individuals.
However, many Black people have been reacting to these practices, counter-arguing and pointing out the folly of the racist act. Accustomed to seeing its actions tolerated and its violence naturalized or legitimized, the white bubble of social privileges began to use other strategies to make it impossible for it to be pointed out and its colonialist nudity to be publicly exposed. The anti-racist discourse, when uttered by Black people, constantly,
A priori, I do not make a grammatical deviation for nothing, discursive distortions are present in all spaces where there are power relations. As a good miner, I will tell a case. I once attended an event at a university, in a room where white researchers were presenting their perspectives on the Maranhão writer Maria Firmina dos Reis, a Black novelist.
After listening carefully to the presentations, I asked a question and talked about the importance of having spaces with more diversity. A white professor, who said he was Afro-descendant, in the sense synonymous with Black, first-rate white bull*hit, reacted to my speech as if I had slapped him in the face and then accused me of calling the great writer a racist. I, a Black woman, requesting attention to the diversity of perspective at the event, being accused of calling a Black writer a racist? Whiteness is full of daring and haunting situations like this happen very often at academic events.
Another situation happened recently here in the city where I live. A Black man went to a telephone company to change the cell phone account holder. The attendant refused to serve him, because the account was in the mother’s name, who, due to the rotation of CPFs for service in the commerce, a measure of local quarantine, could not attend the store because it was not the day referring to the number of your CPF.
So far calm! No problem! However, the company employee insisted on serving a white man outside of her day of service, so when they questioned this, confusion was established and racism manifested itself. The manager was called, and yet, aware of racial privilege, she incoherently justified the situation. Therefore, the Black man called the PM to carry out an OR, but they were not treated with the same value as the manager, since the police wrote the bulletin in a way that the situation favored them, in addition to all the time directing expressions such as ” There is no need for violence,” despite the fact that the Black man was not even animated.
In fact, the racist interpretation of Black bodies and also the distortions about their emotional condition in the face of it was clear. If they cried in the face of the situation, they would be read as aggressive, if they laughed, they would be read as crazy, etc. The body being read through the lens of racism transforms every movement of our body into a threat.
In addition, in this situation, the racial affinity between the police and the manager made it possible for the whole situation to be in defense of this employee, despite the fact that she was contradictory in everything she said. Unfortunately, in a situation of racism like this, white people tend to read, without listening, interpreting our bodies still as pieces, previously sold and violated, now criminalized and inferior. Certainly, the white woman’s position as a telephone company manager, her status, made her racist arrogance possible.
Despite judicial resources and the language to resist these situations, the stigma surrounding the reaction of Black people, both for anti-racist positions and for the reaction to racism in certain contexts, makes our bodies susceptible to a racist semantics that trivializes our resistance. and decrees our silence.
Concomitantly, we are faced with a deconstructed self-declared whiteness, never self-perceived as white, in the worst sense of the word, talking about anti-racist or anti-colonial being respected and recognized as legitimate voices. Still, the pale distortion of the notion of a place of speech – by the way, I prefer to say places of speech, we don’t just have a place of enunciation – which is labeled by whiteness, especially academic whiteness, as “identitarianism” (impressive how every racist loves a – ism), which refers to the demand for diversity and the refusal of white centrism, and of so many other colonial centrisms, as an exaggeration or ignorance. The white fear in relation to our reactions in space, where for a long time whites were not challenged, transforms us, old white sheep of equality, into white wolves hungry to be in social and discursive control of everything that is related to Blackness.
Anyway, I write in order to crush white imaginaries! And to tell Black activists that it’s dangerous to be anti-racist, but regardless of whether we are or not, society violates us. Let’s raise our voices, it scares them…
In Brazil It Is Dangerous To Be Anti-Racist
AfricanGlobe.Net