Hello, Mari G. ! Today I'll be quick because I need time to hit hard.
Well, as you have probably seen somewhere in your screen, today's topic is Racism: a White People Thing. And it's specially for you, my little white friend or other people that need to hear what we have to say here today. And then, just to get started, it can be that when I say Racism, a White People Thing, you, a white, caucasian person who is watching this video will get a little taken by surprise, have an intestinal discomfort, and will say "wait, how come?
" And in this video I intend to bring some discussions. I'm leaving tons of materials in the description, all the materials that helped me put these discussions together will be listed here as well as the works of art I'll use. "But Mr.
Rita, a white person talking about racism? That's not your place of speech. " Then Djamila Ribeiro turns over in her grave and she's not even dead yet.
Let's start from the beginning. "Place of speech" is not something prohibitive, ok? "Place of speech" is for understanding where a particular speech from an interlocutor comes from.
So: "is this discourse weird? ", "is this discourse funny? ", "is this discourse offensive?
" Where it came from? Who said it? It's a lot different from protagonism, but if you watch this channel you already know about these debates.
And if you're still uncomfortable, you're supposed to be. Because who needs to discuss about LGBTphobia are the straight LGBTphobic people. Who needs to discuss sexism are the f****** men, and who needs to discuss racism are the m*****f****** white people who invented racism.
"No, Mr. Rita, I have nothing to do with racism, I even have friends who are black. " I'll tell you, even if you say that you haven't invented or participated, or that it's something that started many centuries before your cute grandma considered having babies you benefitted from a racist structure.
And this is what I'm going to talk about in today's video. Wow, I even materialized Mari G. 's laptop because mine is about to die.
So, children, I'm going to start by reading a small excerpt from the book "White Fragility" from Dr Robin Diangelo, who's a professor in the University of Washington's Education department and has a decades-long research about whiteness. This thing that we need to discuss. In her book "White Fragility" Dr Diangelo says the following: "White people in North America" North America, ok, nooothing to do with Brazil as you will see as I read.
"White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race. In Brazil we never had an apartheid regime and that's why there are so many black people in Moema and so many white people in Brasilândia. Because there has never been an apartheid regime here.
Anyway, let's keep going. "White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race, and white people are beneficiaries of this separation and inequality. As a result, we're insulated from racial stress, at the same time that we come to feel entitled to and deserving of our advantage, given how seldom we experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate.
Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority, we haven't had to build our racial stamina. Which we are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We consider them a challenge to our racial worldviews and to our very identities as good, moral people.
Thus, we perceive that any attempt to connect us to the system of racism is an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses that include emotions such as fear, anger, guilt, and behaviors such as silence, argumentation, "All lives matter" Go f**** yourself ,and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge.
Return our racial comfort and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as "white fragility", triggered by discomfort and anxiety born of superiority and entitlement. White fragility is not weakness per se.
In fact, is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage. Well, after this slap in the face I'm leaving everything in the description below if you want to read and educate yourselves, which is the first step towards being antiracist. It's about knowing what it is about, this thing that white people invented, called racism Another fundamental point is knowing that our learning process as white people will never be complete while we don't overcome at last this model of racial oppression.
It's not possible to overcome barbarism, to fight barbarism without fighting against racism. The idea, the structure of racial oppression, is a structure that delegitimizes or disregards the humanity of a human being based on a fictional creation called race. And when we talk about this, we're talking about the genocide of the black youth, we're talking about mass incarceration of black men, we are talking about the impoverishment and exploitation of black women.
And we are also talking about the police. So, recently there was this video going on in which this wonderful actress from the series "Pose", I'm leaving two recommendations here, told us on the internet that the police in the U. S was created, and here I'm talking about structural and systematic racial oppression from the system, when, magically, you know, a crazy coincidence just like how all of Bolsonaro's sons are involved in fake news schemes and corruption, you know, those crazy coincidences that no one knows why.
The North American police is created when slavery was abolished in the U. S, so you have a population of people who used to be enslaved and is now freed, which, in a way that is very similar to Brazil, doesn't receive any support after the abolition. That nasty Princess Isabel after signing the abolition act, just told people "You're free, kisses, bye bye" And then, my children, where people were going to live, what they would eat, how they would work and whether their children were going to study was completely uncared for.
What I need you to understand is that the police in the U. S arises when a class of people, a race of people is freed but doesn't have any social support. In other words, they were doomed to marginalization, and the North American police arises to protect white people's private property since black people were doomed to marginalization.
"But, Mr. Rita, why are you saying all that? " I'm saying all that because I get pissed off when I see white people covering their asses and saying "I won't meddle, it's not a subject that.
. . " When it's exactly the subject in which you should meddle because you are more or less responsible for what's happening right now.
And if you don't meddle, advocate and become a real antiracist who's not just posting things on the internet, the situation changes much more slowly. Your action is needed for this system to change. Something that the 21st century is showing us something that the coronavirus pandemic is turning obvious and explicit is the state violence towards this population, and, above all else, the delegitimation of the human status of this population.
I don't know if you've already connected the facts, for a long time I've been hearing people say, "Ah, because COVID 19 is democratic, it contaminates everyone. " F****** hell! It doesn't contaminate everyone, it doesn't.
Even though anyone can catch it, not everyone can get treatment, not everyone will have access to ventilators, doctors and medicine. And that's why magically and coincidently, the neighborhood with the most COVID cases is Moema. So, I'm telling you again about racial segregation, about apartheid, and the neighborhood in São Paulo with the most deaths is Brasilândia.
This is not random, this is not a coincidence, this is because of the fact that this pandemic, this virus, this stay or not at home, work or not work from home is not democratic at all. And it is directly related to racial oppression. The first case of death by COVID 19 in Rio was of an elderly woman of over 60 years old who was a domestic worker in Leblon and lived in Baixada Fluminense.
In other words, she would travel 120 km to go to work and 120 km to go back home and she would do this everyday to work. She got it from her "mistress" who had traveled to Italy. The domestic worker died and the "mistress" was cured.
There's also another situation, I'm not sure if you know about it, that a slavocrat woman in Bahia kept a domestic worker in conditions analogous to slavery for 35 years. No, you didn't get me wrong, a "mistress" in Bahia kept a black woman working in her house in conditions analogous to slavery since 1982. That is, ever since the military dictatorship.
That's probably why these people say "Ah, it was so good back then! I want it back! " because they're the same people that think it's okay to exploit a person and treat them like they aren't human based on the color of their skin.
Or, finally, according to the platform "Alma Preta Jornalismo" we can talk about the curious fact that the Brazilian government removed from the internet the data showing that the infection, the deaths, are different for white and black populations. It's worth remembering that this data used to be at the same place as the COVID numbers, which have magically disappeared too. "But we're not in a dictatorship, ok, guys?
It's a very cool democracy" And there's more structural racism to be tackled and denounced so that we can fight against it in our country. When we think, for instance, in state violence, and in all the black children that were murdered by the state, we can remember Ágatha Félix, who was shot in the back while coming home from school in a van; or Marcos Vinícius, in the Maré community, who was shot while wearing his school uniform and who before dying told his mom "Didn't they see that I was wearing uniform? " But the state didn't see that.
The state in Rio has got this funny condition in which they often mistake a screwdriver for a pistol, an umbrella for a rifle, a family's car for, I don't know, The Beagle Boys' car, the state in Rio has some sort of racial nearsightedness, so much so that if the target is a black person they don't even know what they see anymore. We can also talk about João Pedro, who was at home quarantined when his house was targeted. He was hit, so the police took him from his house and threw his body in the public coroner's office.
If you still don't understand the dimension of problem or how urgent it is, last week, right after Tuesday, when everyone posted a black image in their photo feed with the hashtag #BlackOutTuesday, after everyone was saying that they would educate themselves, on Thursday, we got to know about Miguel's case. It's worth remembering that this was on the same day Luisa Nunes, that garbage blogger, said that racism is a natural thing, that's it's just natural that white people are scared of black people because black people "naturally" commit more crimes. Yeah, it makes you want to explode your own head, isn't it?
I'll never forget that Thursday. I had woken up, which in Brazil is not easy, and I was getting ready for work. I usually record videos on Thursday.
I was also going to give an interview and record another video for another channel. It was morning, and I received a message with the news. After reading it, I had nothing human inside of me to keep working on that day.
I canceled all my appointments, lied in bed and tried to pretend I didn't exist, that I didn't live in Brazil, and that I wasn't living this reality. Miguel's murder is a case full of racism, structural racism, of this white "elite" that abuses of its power because they know nothing will happen to them. And there's also corruption, right?
So, if you were in another planet or if you didn't pay attention to the case, to understand it we can go step by step. Firstly, this murder takes place in Recife, in a rich part of the city; in Cais de Santa Rita, which is also one of the city's historical heritage sites and magically with the help from someone in the Superior Tribunal of Justice, with the help of a shady lawyer, a magical license and a construction company with a foreign name; I'm leaving the article in the description so you can read and be horrified with all that's happening. Or even better, you can watch "Aquarius", do you remember this movie?
It talks exactly about this, about a sorcery that was going on in Recife in which suddenly areas that couldn't have gigantic buildings and real state companies facing the beach, (sic) were suddenly making millions with financial speculation. "Wow, why is that? " To make this scenario worse, this scenario that is almost a joke; actually, all that involves this Brazilian elite, which is disgusting, racist, and which supports Bolsonaro, sounds like a bad joke.
These two towers are known as "The Twin Towers". And the freak show goes on, you need to know that this guy, Sérgio Hacker Corte Real, who's the mayor of a city he doesn't live in, Oh, it sounds like Bacurau, right? Wow, art really does imitate life.
Well, this corrupt, disgusting, dirty, awful man is married to Sari Corte Real, this beautiful madam who's white, european. . .
Guys, it's just like "Bacurau". This disgusting people who think they're white and make deals with individuals who kill the people of their own country. Well, Sérgio Hacker had an employee who worked in his house, a "domestic worker".
By the way, why are there so many domestic workers in Brazil? Is it maybe evidence that we want we still want and aspire to be a slavagist society? I don't know if you're aware of the bizarre fact: after Brazilian people started moving to Portugal construction companies there started to build apartments with a "maid's room", something that didn't use to exist there, but the disgusting Brazilian elite, who's used to have the slave's quarters annexed to the main house, dreams of having the tiny "maid's room" in their apartments.
So, Sérgio used to embezzle public money from the city hall and used to pay his domestic worker with it. She is registered as a city hall worker but she works in his house. Is it absurd enough?
It gets worse. It gets a lot worse. Mirtes Renata Santana de Souza, Miguel's mother; I'll let you guess, guess what, Did she have her salary guaranteed and could stay at home in order to respect social isolation measures, or was she obligated to expose herself to the virus and go to work in the family's house?
Wow, we'll never know. We'll never know what this elite wants. After not having her health and livelihood guaranteed and being obligated to go to work, Mirtes, who has a small child, takes him to work with her.
A very common reality for domestic workers that live or spend a very long time in their jobs and don't have time to stay with their families. About this topic I'd like to recommend "Que Horas Ela Volta? " if you still haven't watched this movie.
Obligated to work during a pandemic and with no other option than to take her son to work with her, Mirtes, after being there working where and when she shouldn't, receives an order from Sari; to walk her dog. Please hold on to this information because I'm going to compare it with a work of art from the slavery period in Brazil. While Mirtes was attending to the needs of Sari's dog, Sari was incapable of attending to the needs of Mirte's child.
There are leaked videos from the elevator's cameras. The boy, desperate, looking for his mother, and Sari, very busy getting her nails done. By the way, what might be the color of the woman doing Sari's nails?
Well, that's not important at all, slavery is in the past. Then, what happens is: Sari puts a 5 year-old in an elevator and presses the 9th floor button, because she had to intention to kill the boy. She's being charged with culpable homicide, because she had no intention to kill.
We have an adult woman that puts a 5 year-old baby alone inside an elevator and hits the 9th floor button and it's considered that there was no intention to kill at all. She didn't want to kill this child. Miguel's name is added to the list of all the other children I mentioned when he's a victim of a genocidal and racist policy now not implemented by the state, but by who governs the state, by the wife of a mayor.
It can't get any worse, right? No, it does gets worse. After the boy fell from the 9th floor and died, Sari was taken into custody and was released on R$20,000.
And now she's free pending trial. Justice for whom? Is there a reason for our justice system to be known as burgeois justice?
What if it was the opposite? What if the domestic worker had put her "mistress'" child alone in an elevator and pressed the 9th floor button and her "mistress' " child had died. Would she make bail and be free pending trial?
Would she be charged with culpable homicide? There's this curious fact about justice in Brazil, we have 3rd biggest prison population, and it's mostly young, black and male. Also, there's this mystical justice thing that when Eike Batista's son hits a poor black man who was riding a bike with his car and kills him, he doesn't go to jail.
But if a poor black man riding a bike had killed Eike Batista's son, what would have happened? To sum up, before I have an ulcer, or before I give up on doing what I intend to do here, I'd like to analyse two works of art from the 1800s, from the 19th century when Brazil, the last country to abolish slavery, was still in this system of racial exploitation. "A Brazilian Dinner" from 1827 painted by Debret, and "Cam's Redemption" by Brocos painted in 1895.
Rochelle is going to leave the paintings on the screen while while I briefly analyse them. In this painting portraying Brazilian intimate social life, from the 19th century, from the 1800s Debret portrays with a certain scorn and disgust the elite in Brazil. There are three important pieces of information to pay attention to.
The first one is that we have 7 characters in the scene, and one of the enslaved people is not even fully there, he's half-hidden by the door. There's also another enslaved man, an starving man, who is looking down at the table. There's an enslaved woman who's working while they eat.
Then there's the two disgusting members of the white Brazilian elite and two black babies being treated like dogs. And if you can't link this image to Miguel's case, you have a very serious problem. And if you think that I'm exaggerating, I'll read a passage from Debret's book from 1839, "Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Bresil" In which he writes the following: "It's customary that in a tête-à-tête in a couple's dinner, the husband will silently occupy himself with his business while the woman distracts herself with the little negroes, which are a replacement for dogs, and no longer exist in Europe.
" Debret also portrays with disgust the food served, and makes a point of talking about the "Portuguese rancid olives", about the "tasteless chicken; There's also another passage in which he tells us what enslaved people used to eat: "Two handfuls of dry flour and some fruit. This image from 1827 is still Brazil today. Two people satisfy their hunger while five others are starving.
Coincidently, the two people satiating their hunger don't work, and the 5 people desperate for food are the only workers in the picture. The second painting, "Cam's Redemption", is one of the most reactionary and prejudiced paintings in Brazilian history. By the way, João Batista Lacerda, who was a doctor and director to the National Museum, described the picture at the "Universal Races Congress" in London in 1911.
He said: "The negro turned to white, in the third generation, as an effect of racial mixing. " This painting is exactly about what he said. We can see in the left an elderly enslaved woman, who's dark skinned.
Her daughter, in the center, a light skinned black woman, who's very likely a product of rape. And her husband, an European immigrant, who sits like an European, carries cigarettes in his pocket like an European, and has an European nose; with whom she had a baby she holds in a Virgin Mary-like fashion. The child is painted as Baby Jesus, humanity's redeemer, and its grandmother, a dark skinned black woman, has her hands up in divine gratitude.
"Cam's Redemption" is a carefully crafted portrait of a Social Darwinism project, a project to "clean" a race which was not abandoned in 1895. It's about the erasure of black masculinity, and rape and racial whitening of black women through mixing with white men. I really hope that this video is useful for something.
Specially if you're part of a white population that has never stopped to think about their own privileges or their own role in structural racism. If we don't change this structure and use our positions to change what happens around us, to include, to agregate, to alter and foment projects, we'll never see the barbarism in Brazilian society end. Brazil is a country in which the 1800s is not over yet.
That's it. See you next week.
