To celebrate Black Awareness Month, on November 30th Fiotec promoted a conversation on structural racism. The lecture was attended by social worker and black movement activist Isabela Chaves, and had the goal of raising awareness among professionals regarding the naturalization of prejudice.

Executive director Hayne Felipe opened the lecture quoting Angela Davis, American philosopher and militant: “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist”. Felipe states that racism should not be naturalized amongst employees and that it should be a focal point not only on special dates, but all year round.

Isabela Chaves began her speech with a brief context of Black Awareness Day in Brazil and the history of leader Zumbi dos Palmares, a symbol of the fight and resistance of black enslaved people in Brazil. According to Chaves, talking about structural racism means outlining a space of inequality that we experience in the country.

When talking about the definition of racism, the activity explained that it means any distinction and exclusion based on race, color, ancestry or ethnicity, with the goal of canceling or restricting the exercise of one’s human rights and fundamental freedoms. She states that “most people don’t consider themselves racist, and yet they’re not willing to be treated the way black people are treated”, and that this configures structural racism.

Racism may take many shapes. But it is explained by three distinct categories: individual racism, which is about someone’s individual behavior or attitude; institutional racism, the result of the poor functioning of institutions and businesses; and structural racism, an ensemble of discriminatory practices present in all relationships, whether consciously or not.

Racism has a historical and legislative facet in Brazil.

Historically speaking, Brazilian society was structured to leave blacks and indigenous people out. This was because the time between the 16th and the 19th centuries was marked by the slavery regime, which was in force for more than 380 years. “Even today we still feel what that period was like. Overall, we’ve had more years of slavery in Brazil than we’ve had of a democracy”, Chaves said.

Back then, not even the Legislative system of the Empire was fair towards its citizens. In 1837, the first law of the Empire forbid enslaved people and African blacks from attending school. According to Chaves’s analysis, this first regulation already dictated that the country was not made for black people.

Several other laws followed suit: Law of the Lands, according to which black people were not allowed to own property; Freedom of Wombs, which was not effective at all, according to Chaves; the 60-year-olds Law, which provided enslaved people above 60 years of age with a fake freedom, as at that age they were in very precarious health conditions; and finally, the abolition of slavery, 388 years later. Chaves says that by then the large mass of black people had already rebelled and the royal family was being pressured by England, Brazil’s main business partner.

The current Constitution was drawn up in 1988 and states that the country will reject terrorism and racism. “This doesn’t mean it will fight them. Brazil doesn’t fight the evils left by slavery in an honest fashion. When it comes to racism, they say we’re a mixed-race country and this kind of prejudice doesn’t exist here”, she adds.

Statistics show the face of a racist Brazil

According to Isabela Chaves, statistics don’t lie: “Brazil is still governed by white heterosexual cis people, mainly catholic”. Here are some of the figures showed at the presentation:

• Only 29.9% of management jobs in Brazil are held by black people (IBGE 2018);
• 3 out of 4 black Brazilians are among the 10% poorest slice of the population (IBGE 2018);
• Between 1965 and 2014, only 10% of published Brazilian books had been written by black authors (University of Brasilia);
• Black people account for 72.9% of the unemployed population in the country (IBGE 2020);
• Out of every 100 people murdered in Brazil, 75 are black (Atlas da Violência, 2020).

She wrapped up stating that we should all be anti-racist, especially white people, and left the public with something to think about: “How many black bloggers do you follow in social media? How many children’s books with black characters do your children, nieces and nephews have? How many black authors have you read?”.