Note from BW of Brazil: The term “apartheid” is usually associated with the legalized policy of racial segregation in South Africa for more than 40 years between the late 1940s and early 1990s. But the term has been increasingly used to describe social/racial differences in Brazil (for example in Carnaval, music, television, politics, beaches, sports stadiums and education). Over a week ago on the blog, there was a post about a group of young people who marched into a mall in single file by police as if they were common criminals. In reality, today’s feature actually happened about a week before that incident.
In this post, a young man filmed the experience of being a black youth in a shopping mall. What one would normally think of as a leisure time activity was anything but in this mall and this young man clearly connects the harassment to his physical/racial appearance. Although this type of situation is by no means new, it simply provides more evidence that young, black youth are treated with the same disrespect and suspicion all over the world. The full video can viewed at the bottom of the article along with a song that is definitely appropriate for the situation.
Black youth are harassed and humiliated at the Parangaba mall in Fortaleza
by Mariafro
“Hey, mister, why can I not go by? Don’t I have the right to come and go?” asks a youth while filming the naked and crude racism of Brazilian consumer society.
One of the mechanisms for maintaining slavery at the expense of great vigilance, was to restrict and control the right to come and go of the enslaved. For it was forbidden for captives to wear shoes. Walking barefoot was a mark of slavery, a way of a slave master’s society to discriminate against them in relation to the free.
Print from a video scene. The flip flops are a humiliated youth and shoes belong to one of the security guards.
On November 26th, in the northeastern state of Ceará, the first province to set the captives free, right in the center of the temple of consumption of the XXI century, black youths were humiliated, being prevented from moving through the mall, a place of amusement for teenagers in big cities.
What’s striking is the barbarism of the shamelessness of the owners of the capital city in orienting their managers to orient their ill prepared security guards to act as overseers not allowing black kids to circulate in new estates of the colonized metropolises.
The video shows us the suspicious color of blacks being didactically rubbed in the face of young people who learned that at the time of socialization in the temples of consumption they are not welcome.
Haiti is in Fortaleza (capital of Ceará), Apartheid era South Africa still exists in Parangaba.
The report accompanying the video below, posted on November 26, 2013, and sent by Ceará journalist Alberto Perdigão.
So we arrive at the Parangaba mall in Fortaleza to see a new area of leisure and come across a sad scene: (… several middle class youth being kicked out of the mall, with no reason or motive.
I questioned the security guards and they said they were just following orders … Now I wonder: is it really that they have this right to choose who can or cannot enter the mall??
Why were they only going after the black youth??!…
I wonder how this can happen even in today’s times!???
I went and started filming and asked by what right they could do that!??
You know what he told me?
“Get away and go to the exit over there!”
Me: But mister, why are you kicking me out of the mall?
Security: I’m obeying orders.
Me: So then, tell this person that is giving the “orders” to come talk to me, because I’m not leaving!
Then to make the situation worse still, here comes a security guard trying to take my phone like he had that right to take my phone…Then he went over to another young man who was next to me!
The Case of the Parangaba Mall
by Preto Zezé via Facebook
Friends of mine questioned me and said that it was neither racism nor discrimination because the security guards of the mall are residents of the periferia (periphery or poor neighborhoods) and some are black too!
Well, this just confirms how sophisticated Brazilian apartheid is, where young guards reproduce discriminatory behavior against their equals.
This only makes what happened even more serious!
And even if young people were generating confusion, as some claim, the procedure was to inhibit and control behavior, after all this is the role of the security guard!
I repeat what I said, confirming this case of discrimination, (it is a) process and a training course for security guards.
Those who believe that the mall is entitled to select their frequenters, ok!
Just put the signs in their establishments defining aesthetic and economic standards of who can frequent it. Thus, the defined veiled apartheid will show its face!
Note from BW of Brazil: Keep in mind that, although this is an amateur video shot with a cell phone, it still provides a glimpse into a typical scene of interaction between black Brazilians and mall security and/or police. At the beginning of the video (and throughout) you will hear the voice of the young man filming the scene repeating the words “racismo” meaning racism and “preconceito”, meaning prejudice. At the 4:55 mark of the video the action picks up a bit and one can note when security attempts to impede the young man from recording the scene.
Young people suffer harassment inside of a mall in northeast Brazil
also here:
Mos Def – Mr. Nigga
Source: Mariafro
That is what it means to be Black. Educate yourself and don’t worry about being part of the crass vulgar consumer culture. Hangout in libraries, and schools, and in nature and fuck the white devil.
AHhh please, they were doing trawled inside the mall… it didn’t happen because they’re black