When I think of Brazil, the first three things that come to mind are passionate, scantily-clad, soccer fans, that Chiquita banana lady, and of course Charo. As far as I'm concerned that's clever brand management on Brazil's part, because upon further reflection the next three things that come to mind are institutionalized corruption, favelas and that depressing movie City of God. So on balance, Brazil appears to be just another BRIC nation taking the good with the bad while trying to navigate their way to a successful future.
But maybe all is not what meets the eye:
Brazilian Secret 93 Million Don't Want to Talk About Is Racism(snip) The whole article is worth a read.
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.
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.
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.
So often here in the United States we're told by the social justice crowd that our nation remains mired in an antebellum mindset, but I do not believe that to be true for a second. While racism surely exists in the hearts of a percentage of Americans--Americans of all colors by the way--as a nation we're light years ahead of places like Brazil where the legacy of slavery and current race relations have simply been ignored. If the social justice crowd acknowledged that they'd be out of a job; for their livelihood depends on the perpetuation of the myth. Second of all, it would seem that they should be in a lather over this. They usually get worked up over far less. Maybe they're not because Lula De Silva is a leftist himself, though admittedly he seems to be doing a better job at governing than most of his peers.
Upon further reflection, this is the Brazil of my mind's eye: Brigitte Bardot in the Girl From Ipanema
