Note from BBT: We’ll file today’s story in the full folder of racist incidents against Afro-Brazilian children. And believe me, the file is enormous. I’ve covered stories about racist incidents experienced by black children in Brazil since nearly the beginning of the Black Brazil Today blog, so for people who have followed the blog even casually, these types of stories are nothing new. No, racism doesn’t take a day off or spare black children. But yet you will still have Brazilians say that “we are all equal” or that “racismo não existe no Brasil” meaning, ‘racism doesn’t exist in Brazil’.
Even in the face of clear incidents of racist comments, jokes or incidents, many Brazilians will simply dismiss it when someone is victimized as ‘mimimi’, meaning ‘whining’. It’s like the dirt that Brazil has tried to push and hide under the rug for decades, only that this dirt keeps re-surfacing. When you hear how such incidents regularly occur against black children, and the way that authorities regularly do nothing about about, is there any wonder why so many black Brazilians grow up a lack of self-esteem, confidence or a positive racial identity?
Incidents such as the one I share today once again provide an example of why I believe Brazilian style racism is more effective than that of the United States. You see, in the US, due to the segregation of black and white, black American children, in some ways, had a sort of shield against this sort of treatment at the hands of white chidren.
In the US, black children are taught very early on that there are people out there who don’t like them simply because of their skin color. Not only do millions of black children have some sort of shield against these sorts of aggressions because of lingering results of segregation, but they also have their own way of dealing with such incidents when they do happen.
On the other hand, as black Brazilian children are usually brought up in mixed race environments and taught that there is no difference between them and their colleagues with paler skin, they often times enter such environments totally unprepared for such encounters. In recent years, more and more Afro-Brazilian parents are having what we call “the talk” with their children. And as this and thousands of previous incidents shown, ‘the talk’ is long overdue.
I learned of this story from the Revista Ébano Brasil IG page. Commenting on this story, writers of the IG page reported feeling “a mixture of revolt and sadness”. Writing about the incident on the social network, the profile’s comment read: “Our fight is for our children to strengthen, love each other and not go through situations like these anymore, that we can have better days…”
So then, what exactly happened?
revistaebanobrasil: “Our fight is for our children to strengthen, love each other and not go through situations like these anymore, that we can have better days…” ✊🏾
A MIXTURE OF REVOLT AND SADNESS
‘Mommy, am I going to be white one day?’, asks black child who was called feces
5-year-old boy suffered racism at school in São Paulo and the case was shared by his mother on social networks
By Simon Nascimento
“Mommy, I will become white one day?”. The question was asked by a 5-year-old boy, living in São Paulo, to his mother, the fashion designer Claudete Alphonsus, after being called ‘ish’ by schoolmates. Jut só you know, when I say ‘ish’, I’m using the censored way of saying the word that starts with ‘s’ and refers to fecal matter. The case was shared by Claudete on social networks this Friday.
“Mommy, am I going to turn white one day?”. The question was asked by a boy, 5 years old, a resident of São Paulo, to his mother, the fashion designer Claudete Alphonsus, after being called feces by schoolmates. The case was shared by Claudete on social networks this Friday.
Using Instagram’s stories tool, she posted images of her son crying and questioning her about the black color of his skin, which ended up becoming a target of debauchery at school. “Mommy, I’m not beautiful. I am a piece of sh-t, a chocolate,” the crying little one told his mother. To try to calm her son down, Claudete told her son that he was beautiful and that it was okay to be black.
In the videos, Claudete also mentioned that she would go to her son’s school to talk to the teachers and even told her son that she would “burn the racists” – an expression that became popular after the rapper Djonga’s song in protest against racism. After the comment, the son even got scared and asked his mother not to burn down the school. “I calmed him down, explained what I meant. Of course I’m not going to set anyone on fire, but I’m going to have to take an attitude about this,” she wrote.
Claudene also wrote that she can’t stand feeling this pain anymore, when referring to what happened to her son. “He doesn’t know how to defend himself. The children don’t know it’s wrong. But the parents know, the teachers know. And this can’t become routine,” she added. Finally, Claudene said that the wound they opened on her is hard to heal.
Racism at school in BH
“Take care of your children’s mental health, whether they are white or brown like mine,” the woman posted. O TEMPO tried to contact Claudene, but phone calls were not answered and messages were not returned.
Racism in Belo Horizonte school
A history teacher at a public school in the Coração Eucarístico neighborhood in the northwest region of Belo Horizonte is being investigated for racism after asking an 11-year-old student to tie up her curly hair. The teacher said she looked like “a crazy person who just left the mental hospital.
The case, reported this Friday by O TEMPO, happened inside the classroom of the Odilon Behrens State School last Wednesday (14), and was reported to the police by the girl’s family the next day.
Source: O Tempo
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