Brazilian Secret 93 Million Don’t Want to Talk About Is Racism
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Telma Marotto, Bloomberg, June 27, 2008
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Inflation, Crime, Deforestation
Behind the gloss, there’s another side of Brazil. Increased consumer demand and higher food prices are boosting inflation, crime is rampant, deforestation is accelerating and something many people don’t like to talk about—racism—is pervasive.
Brazilians pride themselves on their multicultural society, home to the largest black population outside of Africa. Their food, music and dance—their feijoada, the national dish of black beans stewed with pork and beef, and their rhythmic samba and bossa nova—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.
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‘Anything But Race’
So pervasive is the perception that Brazil is a paragon of racial harmony and equality that it makes the discussion of discrimination all but impossible, says Carlos Santana, a Workers’ Party legislator who represents Rio de Janeiro and heads the National Congress’s Parliamentary Group to Promote Racial Equality.
“In Brazil, we can talk about anything but race,” Santana says. “The myth of racial democracy created a taboo.”
Some people outside of government use harsher terms.
“We have the strongest apartheid ever because people deny racism exists,” says Humberto Adami, head of the nonprofit Institute for Racial and Environmental Laws in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s very hard to combat what is taken as nonexistent.”
Statistics paint a picture of a nation tainted by the legacy of unequal opportunities. One hundred twenty years after becoming the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, Brazil remains divided by color. People of African descent are “a large, impoverished and discriminated-against population,” the Brazilian embassy in Washington said in a press release posted on its Web site in April.
‘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.
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‘Linked to Education’
“No,” says Roberto Setubal, chief executive officer of Sao Paulo-based Banco Itau Holding Financeira SA, Brazil’s second- largest nongovernment bank. “I think this situation is closely linked to education,” he says. “It’s a problem that can only be solved in the long term as the level of education in Brazil improves.”
The country is moving in that direction, Lula said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg News.
“It’s a cultural problem,” Lula said. “Instead of complaining that business people don’t hire blacks, we need to improve education, the background of everyone, so that people can take all the possible positions. We are advancing in this direction.”
A Petrobras official says the company hires only through an exam that’s open to everyone.
“There’s no discrimination by race, age or religion,” the official says in an e-mailed response to questions. Respect for people of different races “is explicit in the company’s ethics code,” says the official, who refused to be identified by name.
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‘Spending Power’
“If you consider the spending power of the black community in the U.S., you can have an idea of the consumers we are leaving behind because they are at the margin of social inclusion,” says Luana Moraes, 35, director at Differential, a Sao Paulo-based consulting firm specializing in corporate diversity. “It’s an economic issue as well as a social one.”
Jose Vicente, rector of Universidade da Cidadania Zumbi dos Palmares, known as Unipalmares, estimates that gross domestic product growth might be 2 percentage points greater if blacks were fully integrated into the economy.
“We are simply giving our back to half of the population,” he says.
Vicente, who is black and has degrees in sociology and law, says he faces discrimination daily. Visiting Brasilia, the country’s capital and political hub, in March 2007 to attend his friend Miguel Jorge’s swearing in as trade minister, Vicente, 48, says he was asked to fetch a chair for another invitee.
‘Spirit of the Senzala’
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Some students of Brazilian society say the pervasive denial that racial bias is behind the gap between blacks and whites is itself proof that discrimination exists.
“Racial prejudice in Brazil lies in the insistence that there is no racial prejudice,” Joseph A. Page, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, wrote in “The Brazilians,” a 1995 book based on research conducted during 16 visits to Brazil over three decades.
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‘Perpetuates Itself’
“People tend to hire other people who are like themselves,” he says. “It perpetuates itself.”
For blacks who do achieve corporate success, the experience can be disorienting.
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Mother’s Advice
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Expatriate executives working in Brazil are also victims of racism. Douglas Taylor, a 46-year-old black U.S. citizen, says that when he first came to Brazil in 1990 to work for Citigroup Inc. in Rio de Janeiro, he was expecting a country where people were treated the same regardless of their skin color, he says.
“If it’s a racial democracy, why can’t blacks feel more comfortable anywhere they go?” asks Taylor, who is now an analyst for Daniel Advogados, a Rio de Janeiro-based intellectual property law firm. “I don’t call it a racial democracy.”
‘Dollar Denominated’
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Brazil’s blacks might hold better jobs if they had better access to quality education.
“One hundred years after the abolition of slavery, the former slaves haven’t yet received the appropriate attention from the central government,” says Fernando Haddad, Lula’s education minister since 2005. “The education issue is one of the elements that explain this phenomenon,” Haddad, 45, says. “But I have no doubt that there is racial discrimination as well.”
‘Stop This Silliness’
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“It’s necessary that we stop this silliness of being scared to confront racism,” Lula said in a speech in November 2006, a month after his re-election for a second four-year term. “We have to confront it with claws out and teeth bared,” he said.
Blacks repeatedly stress the importance of schooling.
“Education is the only way to exit poverty,” Walkiria Moreira Marinho says. Marinho, 59, who retired as a general manager at Telefonica SA in Sao Paulo in 2001, says she was one of five blacks at the college she attended and one of two women among 70 students in her class. “But the truth is that you can never get rid of racism.”
When her son was 6 years old, he was rejected by a school in one of Sao Paulo’s most-exclusive neighborhoods, Marinho says. As she looked in vain for his name on a posting of those accepted, she remembers being interrupted by another mother who asked, “Do you see any other black child here?” Marinho says she ultimately succeeded in registering her son at another school, and today, at age 27, he is a diplomat.
‘Gave My Best’
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The universities from which companies recruit trainees don’t reflect the composition of the population, says Gustavo Marin, president of Banco Citibank SA, the Brazilian unit of New York- based Citigroup. At the Universidade de Sao Paulo, for example, 13.4 percent of the students registered in 2007 were black, up from 12.5 percent in 2006.
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No Shield
Still, education goes only so far. Luiz Claudio Polycarpo, 47, has degrees in engineering, marketing and education. He also has an important job: supervisor of customer training and electronic tools distribution at Guarulhos-based Cummins Brasil Ltda., the Brazilian subsidiary of U.S. engine maker Cummins Inc. Neither his education nor his job shield him from racist affronts.
A few years ago, when he and his white boss visited a client company, a security guard mistook Polycarpo for a chauffeur and refused to talk to him, he says. Instead, the guard went straight to Polycarpo’s foreign boss, who was sitting in the passenger seat and didn’t speak Portuguese. Discrimination like that isn’t about education or social status, he says; it’s about color.
Brazil’s confusion and denial over race are manifest in the way the lines sometimes blur in defining who is black and who is white. Take the case of the Teixeira da Cunha brothers.
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Limited Prosecutions
While the constitution of 1988, adopted three years after the end of 21 years of military rule, made racism a crime, prosecutions have been limited, says Sinvaldo Firmo, a lawyer at the Father Batista Institute for Blacks, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Sao Paulo. When there are convictions, penalties are usually fines or orders to perform community service, he says.
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A so-called Racial Equality Statute, which was approved by the Senate in 2005, hasn’t been voted on in the lower house. The measure would, among other things, give tax incentives to companies hiring black workers and impose a quota system in universities.
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‘Light Years’
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There’s wide agreement among those who acknowledge Brazil’s racism that it’s the product of centuries of prejudice.
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“Racism is clearly an issue in Brazil,” Ferreira says. “As a black person, you notice it all the time.”
(Posted on June 27, 2008)
Comments
I have no doubt Brazilians think little of blacks, be it for racial reasons or for the simple fact that blacks are at the bottom of an economic system that can’t mask black desitution as well as America’s. But the whole thrust of this article is to suggest that Brazilian blacks’ failure is a result of the same kind of nefarious “institutional racism” that is said to be keeping American blacks down. Naturally, Brazilian blacks are hoping to cash in on some racial spoils that an assortment of commies and guilty white-Brazilian dummies are keen to provide them with. Forget about those failing to learn from history being doomed to repeat it; Brazilians, it seems, can’t even learn observing the bloody present.
Frustrating beyond belief.
Posted by Michael T at 7:56 PM on June 27
“Jose Vicente, rector of Universidade da Cidadania Zumbi dos Palmares, known as Unipalmares, estimates that gross domestic product growth might be 2 percentage points greater if blacks were fully integrated into the economy.”
I love this fanciful “economic analyses” of the effects of implimenting liberal ideas. How would someone possibly be able to produce this kind of number with accuracy?
Posted by at 8:04 PM on June 27
When whites were a minority in Africa (as well as other non-white countries) and in white lands, they are better off than the blacks. Why? Can people give a reason other than blacks are victims of racism?
Posted by at 9:10 PM on June 27
My view of Brazil could not be any more pessimistic. Though I’ve never been, from what I hear, I imagine Brazil a Devil’s stew of infinite gradations of racially mixed peoples barely tolerating one another as they mindlessly degrade themselves with their Carnival celebrations. I know almost nothing of the state, but unfortunately I have plenty of contact with her diaspora.
Massachusetts has been importing these racial amalgams in bunches, and they instantly set to work creating alien landscapes of quaint New England town centers. They grotesquely adorn our downtowns with that God-awful flag and gaudy signs in Portugese. They then strut these streets with an arrogance they don’t deserve, and fill with relish the vacuum of pride whites left behind long ago.
Of course, talk to me tomorrow and I will tell you of another group in Metro Boston that troubles me more. My home town cannot decide, it appears, if it wants to displace us with Brazilians or Indians.
Posted by Unbelievable at 9:31 PM on June 27
Trying to get some information, I asked a Columbian about race relations in South America. I asked him what the deal was with the blacks. He said the blacks (he did not use this word) knew their place and knew they would be killed if they stepped out of their place. He said this with no malice and like it was no big deal, kind of like it was funny.
Posted by Drew at 9:32 PM on June 27
Yeah and maybe the Brazilian GDP growth rate would be 2 percent higher if the coloreds didn’t form gangs armed with military equipment and have daily shootouts with the ARMY in the city streets.
Posted by AJ at 9:39 PM on June 27
Elsewhere in Taxachussets, we’ve got Africans, Jamaicans (somehow a more shiftless strain of their ancestors), Chinese, Cambodians, Puerto Ricans, and other Hispanic varieties; they all dislike each other, to boot. (Who are those curious women who must always cover their heads with something? Iranians?) And they are currently transforming Boston satellite cites such as Lowell, Lynn and Brockton into post-apocalyptic nightmares. Think the streets of Idiocracy without the humor.
Boston’s North End curiously retains much of its old charm, buffered from the encroaching brown flood to her north by the moat of the Charles, a thriving tourism industry and the uncomfortable reality that whites still drive the financial district. If you can somehow ignore the cab drivers, restaurant help, garbage men — or the entire blue collar workforce for that matter — for several miles around the USS Constitution you can actually imagine yourself in America. Roxbury acts as a bulwark to the south by stubbornly retaining its traditional black ghetto charm, in all its dilapidated, unlivable glory. (It would be almost comforting if one didn’t have to devote so much energy to not making eye contact with anything.) And Southie does her part in keeping alive Irish stereotypes.
It is under siege from multiple fronts, however. Boston University to the west acts as a portal for the multicultural invasion of Boston, with an ever growing Asian community claiming anything not of touristic value into a Greater Chinatown. Hispanics garrison any low-value housing to the southwest.
It is intolerable to be a white man in the eastern part of this state. How can you see what is happening around you, my fellow WASP-m, and not instantly run to the pages of Amren for intellectual refuge? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re currently being browbeaten by your hyphenated wife sporting an Obama pin. Useless lot, we are.
Posted by Unbelievable at 9:40 PM on June 27
home to the largest black population outside of Africa. Their food, music and dance—their feijoada, the national dish of black beans stewed with pork and beef, and their rhythmic samba and bossa nova—are a mishmash
It sounds just delightful…
Statistics paint a picture of a nation tainted by the legacy of unequal opportunities. One hundred twenty years after becoming the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, Brazil remains divided by color. People of African descent are “a large, impoverished and discriminated-against population,”
Can they name any country on Earth in which people of African descent are not “impoverished” as compared to the rest of the population? This “racism” seems to be about as universal as the law of gravity.
Posted by Tim in Indiana at 10:38 PM on June 27
“It is intolerable to be a white man in the eastern part of this state. How can you see what is happening around you, my fellow WASP-m, and not instantly run to the pages of Amren for intellectual refuge? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re currently being browbeaten by your hyphenated wife sporting an Obama pin. Useless lot, we are.”
You should come to NYC and ride the subways. Then you’d know the true meaning of what is happening right now in this country. All the while the rootless cosmopolitan Whites, both young and old, mindlessly go about their business, the lemming women reading their novels on the train and the effeminated men doing the same and/or listening to some rap diddy on their MP3 player. It is sickening and depressing. One can look at these people and almost say they deserve whatever they get when they become a minority. It is so unfortunate to say that they’re White like me.
Posted by Believe It at 11:35 PM on June 27
Not surprising at all. But American blacks still believe that Brazil is a multicultural paradise, where blacks are adored and worshipped. They have deluded themselves into believing it is some fantasyland for blacks, where their every hedonistic wish will be fullfilled.
Posted by at 12:19 AM on June 28
And they are currently transforming Boston satellite cites such as Lowell, Lynn and Brockton into post-apocalyptic nightmares. Think the streets of Idiocracy without the humor.
I remember some of these towns and others nearby. I was in various Army SF/AI schools at Ft. Devens and got away sometimes (escape and evasion WAS one of the courses) and total white. The USO dances in Ayer! total white. Only on Washington St in Boston itself (also known as ‘Combat Zone’ then)was multi racial and we were advised by the military not to go there.
Posted by Skip at 7:01 AM on June 28
The Portuguese (and Spanish) have the term ‘Limpeza de sangue’ which translates to ‘cleanliness of the blood’ which is still used in Brazil today.
In fact you will find a lot of Spanish and Portuguese society is based around the lightness of a persons skin colour. There is a story in Spanish lore that speaks of a noble man who held up his untanned wrist and showed his superficial veins to the people, exclaiming that he had “blue blood” because of his nobility. The fact he didn’t need to spend time in the sun due to his vast wealth allowed his arms to stay white so his veins would be visible. And that, it is said, how the term blue blood came to be.
Posted by A. White at 7:57 AM on June 28
Brazil’s constitution makes “racism” a crime. Is it any wonder then why people there refuse to talk about race openly? Maybe they don’t want to risk getting tossed in a Brazilian prison.
Posted by Soprano Fan at 1:49 PM on June 28
You should come to NYC and ride the subways. Then you’d know the true meaning of what is happening right now in this country.
No thank you. If I want to be depression in a tube, I only need drive a few miles to hop on the “T” into Boston.
The “T”, or Boston’s public transportation infrastructure, is a troop transport to scurry the multiracial shock troops to the front lines for the Invasion of Boston. If only Washington had such a thing back in 1776! Unfortunately, Dorchester Heights is already occupied by foreign entities.
Descending the stairwell to the T at Sullivan Square is like entering a new, cold world — or rather, our world in twenty years time. Once subterranean, there is absolutely no friendly make-talk to be had with anyone. Atomized clans of various races and ethnicities may whisper to one another within their group, but nary a hello is to be exchanged with a stranger. Eye contact is forbidden.
Not that one would know what to say, even if he wanted to. What in common does the American male have with these people?
There is no exaggeration in my little account. For literally TWENTY MILES surrounding Boston’s North End in any direction (save eastward) there is a sea of brown and yellow. Just outside of this is the closest I can live to the city. But there is no reason to set roots here, because as I mentioned before, it will be a colony of Brazil or India in 10 years time…
Of course this all pales in comparison to NYC. How does one live there? I can’t even imagine it. Just thinking of that place makes my skin crawl.
Posted by Unbelievable at 2:27 PM on June 28
“Brazilian blacks say they face discrimination daily.”
Yet another country where blacks are the least intelligent of all the inhabitants, and yet again they blame their failures on racism.
If racism against blacks is so endemic worldwide, isn’t it more proof of their lack of intelligence that they stick around and take the abuse instead of going back to their old country where the population is all black?
And, if all these black countries in Africa are failing also, who will they blame for their lack of ability to succeed there?
The fact of the matter is that blacks can’t compete with the other races of the world and they would be better off admitting it, rather than agonizing in constant turmoil about the phantom of racism that keeps them in constant agitation.
Besides after four centuries that excuse gets pretty old. It’s just possible that after another four the liberals themselves might even come to realize that they just might be banging their heads against a door that won’t open. But don’t hold your breath.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 4:47 PM on June 28
“And, if all these black countries in Africa are failing also, who will they blame for their lack of ability to succeed there?”
Easy. They blame european colonization and the economic policies of white nations, {ie.the europeans stole everything and left us nothing, US corporations monopolize and keep us from developing an economy, yada yada yada.} It’s never the fact that their governments are corrupt and fail to build/mismanage their economies or the fact that they don’t breed responsibly.
Posted by at 8:17 PM on June 28
This article does not make sense. First of all, the “black” and “white” demographic figures given (92.7 million black, 93.1 million white) add up to 185.8. The article states the total population as “over 187 million”, which probably means just a little over 187 and that the author rounded the figure down.
So let’s say there are 187.5 million total. That leaves only 1.7 Asian, Indians and other.
One of the basic premises of the article is that although Brazil is historically and traditionally known as a thoroughly racially-mixed population of humanity, it is still RACIST.
Now, how can these diametrically opposed “truths” exist:
a. The population is almost completely racially mixed
AND
b. The population is almost exactly half “white” and half “black” with just a small percentage of other.
They are overlaying an historic American racial demographic model (black, white, other) on top of the Brazilian racial reality.
(Newsflash to author and black Brazilians — women tend to clutch their purses in crime-ridden cities regardless of the race of nearby persons, ok?)
However, I’m not thick. I do get the point of the author’s agendicle: white people everywhere are racist. Even the 93 million “white” people in Brazil, (many of whom are just like light-skinned “White” Alex).
So I suppose Obama is merely another white man to these folks, (just like light-skinned White Alex — black father/white mother). Or maybe they would classify him as black, like Black Alan. Oh, well - whatever best suits the agenda!
Posted by at 9:03 PM on June 28
Funny thing about Brazil. Their national basketball team is mostly white, even though they are about 50% black.
I’ve heard different stories abot race in Brazil. The black-power movement has not really caught on there and I have heard that a white man can walk into the worst of the favelas and not be accosted because of his race.
Posted by LIVERLIPS at 9:57 PM on June 28
“Yeah and maybe the Brazilian GDP growth rate would be 2 percent higher if the coloreds didn’t form gangs armed with military equipment and have daily shootouts with the ARMY in the city streets.”Posted by AJ at 9:39 PM on June 27
Good points, AJ.
I just might add that maybe their growth rate would climb through the roof if they sent all the blacks back to Africa.
Posted by at 10:59 PM on June 28
“If racism against blacks is so endemic worldwide, isn’t it more proof of their lack of intelligence that they stick around and take the abuse instead of going back to their old country where the population is all black?”
Yes, yes. This is the question I long to ask, on the rare occasion that race is actually being discussed. If we’re so very very mean to blacks, why don’t they insist on returning to the motherland? Why hang out with all those nasty, unappreciative white folks, when Africa is just a plane trip away? If I disliked the US as much as black folks seem to, I would have emigrated to Europe long ago.
Posted by JustPlainMean at 11:38 PM on June 28
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There is NO black enclave or nation—nor has there ever been—that has truly prospered of its own merit. Almost without exception quite the opposite has, and is, occuring.
Posted by ActionPotential at 2:16 AM on June 29
Southern Brazil, which is almost exclusively European, financially supports the rest of the country. I once traveled to Sao Paulo, and was amazed at how many whites of German and Italian descent lived there. It was literally a land of Giselle Bundchens.
Posted by JJ Bjornsson at 11:39 AM on June 29
I asked a Columbian about race relations in South America. He said the blacks (he did not use this word) knew their place and knew they would be killed if they stepped out of their place. He said this with no malice and like it was no big deal…
Posted by Drew
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How interesting. I was told EXACTLY the same thing by a Mexican acquaintance, who also considered it no big deal.
Posted by at 8:35 PM on June 29
“Jose Vicente, rector of Universidade da Cidadania…estimates that gross domestic product growth might be 2 percentage points greater if blacks were fully integrated into the economy. Vicente, who is black and has degrees in sociology “……
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Or maybe if blacks were “fully integrated into the economy”, they would drag it down 2%. Or maybe even 20%!
Of course, this is all just the opinion of Mr. Vicente — who, incidentally, is black and has a degree in sociology. (Who would have guessed?)
Posted by at 8:58 PM on June 29
If you think about it, with its huge size, location and natural resources, Brazil should be an economic powerhouse. Undoubtedly the huge African community is a big drag on it.
Posted by at 1:25 AM on June 30
“If racism against blacks is so endemic worldwide, isn’t it more proof of their lack of intelligence that they stick around and take the abuse instead of going back to their old country where the population is all black?”,,,,
Very interesting point. Let’s consider. Imagine Whites are 13% of America’s population, some forty million. Also assume there are about 200,000,000 blacks (about 66%) in the USA. Now assume there are 47 ALL-WHITE countries in Europe, like there are 47 ALL-BLACK ones in Africa. If I was being so ‘oppressed’ here, why wouldn’t I just grab a plane and go live in any of these White countries? Either I am really, really, stupid or all those White countries must be an absolute shambles (which also wouldn’t say much for White intelligence either). Note how blacks in Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, etc, go to the USA, Canada or Britain, never back to ‘mother Africa’. They are just smart enough to know a good thing when they see it, but not smart enough to build good countries for themselves. Black failure is universal.
Posted by at 1:44 AM on June 30
I always look to Brazil as an example of how multiculturalism doesnt work.
Arguably the most multicultural society on earth, yet in Brazil they have high illiteracy, high crime, and unbelievable poverty.
I think those who claim multiculturalism as a great thing should ask themselves one question. That if Brazil is considered such a great country to live, why do we have so many Brazilian immigrants coming over here?
Posted by jayfresh at 12:00 PM on June 30
I read this article on Bloomberg. IT IS A TOTAL LIE! The part that is the biggest lie is the population demographics. Brasil has 188 million people. 56% of the population is White! 38% of the population is Mixed (black-white,white-black,indian-white etc) but mostly Indian-White mixed. and ONLY 6% of the population is black mainly living in the Bahia region of Brasil and city of Salvador.
Brasil is not 90+ million black that is a ridiculous statement and not true. In Brasil it is the exact opposite of the USA. Everybody wants to be white and shows it. Black women predominately want to be with White Men. Evidence in all the Europeans coming to Brasil to pick up the black and mixed women. Brasil is segregated just like the US. In the South, places like Porto Alegre, the state of Santa Catarina, Florianapolis etc are majority white by a large margin.
Rio De Janeiro is very mixed but still predominantely white. I see very few fully black people overall in he city. Brasil does not have the one drop rule like America has. If you are mixed in anyway and have a little skin tone those people will say they are Mulatta etc not black. In the US it is the opposite. Sao Paolo is the largest city in South America, some 18 million+ people and has horrible gang violence as well as Rio. Their ghettos are called Favela’s and Rio has the largest Favela in South America, one that has 800,000 people in it. Contrary to what many may believe There are plenty of Whites that live in the favela’s and usually run the gangs. But they are really mixed together and do not always segregate by race.
It truly is a wonderful country I would have to say and the women are gorgeous. I have been there 4 times and enjoyed myself each and every time. Although a trip to Brasil is not for the faint of heart, many tourists are robbed on the bus in Rio from the airport to the city haha.
Posted by Andy at 5:12 PM on June 30
I also forgot to say, Sao Paolo does have a large Italian population and Japanese population. In fact Brasil has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan mostly living in Sao Paolo where they have their own part of the city called Liberdade. They also have a large German, Lebanese and Jewish population. One thing the Africans did bring to Brasil is the religion of macomba, or black magic. Many people practice this there mixed with the Catholic religion.
Posted by at 5:21 PM on June 30
I would bet that the much smaller Japanese community contributes more to Brazil’s overall welfare then does the vastly larger African group. I wonder if there are any statistics about this?
Posted by at 8:43 AM on July 1