"Morena, Morena"

On one level, Brazil has been depicted as a democracia racial (racial democracy), a society with out a “racial problem.” (Fiola, p.1).  In a racial democracy there may be discrimination based on class or on other social distinctions, but not on race.  My own empirical evidence and the literature we have read in our course on “Women, Technology and Economic Development in Brazil,” suggests the contrary.

            “Morena, Morena,”  What is a morena?  I posed the question to my Brazilian host mother who informed me that it could be a woman who has brown hair.  If that is the case, then how come my roommate, who is white with brown hair, is not called a “morena?”  I also noticed that my host mother showed me a photo of what struck me as a Black woman although she told me that the photo was of a “mulatta.”  When I asked why she categorized the woman in the photo as a “mulatta,” she responded, “Well, she has the best of both races.  You know, the nice hips that most black women have but, in contrast to the Black woman, the mulatta has nice hair and a nice straight nose.”  The mulatta has a better nose than the not so nice looking black noses – big and broad, you know?”  Of course I know what she means.

            As one of our course readings states, “the widespread and extremely common social mechanisms that sustain the subordination of African-Brazilians in Brazil are rarely contested, as demonstrated by the vigorous defense and promotion of ‘mulattas’ as Brazil’s national product.  (Reichmann, p. 36)  How can people be promoted as a product?  Are Brazilian mulattas being transformed like African-American women in the U.S., into over-sexualized commodities?

            The fact that “mulattas’ are often brought forward as evidence that Brazil is not racist, echoes the second definition that I have been given for a “morena,” that she is “a separate kind of beauty.”  This strikes me as having the same connotations as, “You are pretty for a black girl!”  I wonder why I can’t just be beautiful, without adding the category Black to my ‘special beauty?”  This implies that there are two different qualitative scales; one for whites and one for blacks.  It suggests that there are “good” and “bad” and “ugly” Blacks, as determined by a white scale and Caucasion standard of beauty.

            Brazil is a country that denies there is a racial problem and instead places the blame for discrimination on class.  As one Brazilian has been quoted as saying, “Here we don’t have cruel and rigid racism as in other nations where ‘non-whites’ are segregated, separated, and don’t have equal rights—that is racism.” (Reichman, p. 39)  Is Brazil’s exclusion of Blacks, based on social class alone?  Let me show something that happened to me in Sao Paulo.  In the mall with m y white roommate, I noticed that in each store the sales people rushed to help my roommatge and I was ignored.  It was not until the salespeople overheard me speaking English with my roommate that they decided to assist me.  What does this mean?  My roommate and I were dressed similarly, indicating we were probably of the same social class.  Yet she received help from salespeople and I did not.  Yet, when I spoke English this seems to have established that I was not the “average” African-Brazilian.  They usually do not have access to the same quality of education as white counterparts.  The fact that I speak English seems to have placed me in the category of a “Black American” woman who is therefore worthy of better white treatment.

            How does this explain that the most impoverished people in Brazil are Black?  Or that Blacks are continually locked out of employment opportunities?  What about the offensive images of Brazilians that permeate the media?  The absence of many African-Brazilians in roles of power?  Anyone who denies these realities should read the work of Jan Fiola (p. 39).   She documents that “[blacks] are negatively stereotyped and suffer discrimination in employment and job promotions, incomes, housing, the criminal justice system, and the media.”

            As I attend academic classes in São Paulo, I notice that all the menial jobs—guards or maids, for example—are predominantly held by darker Brazilians.  Higher administrative positions are largely held by white Brazilians.  The custodial crew at our educational site rarely interacted with anyone from our group.  In fact, when they saw us, they attempted to make themselves invisible and remained our of our way, rarely if ever making any contact.  When one of the group member’s inquired as to why social interaction was so minimal, he was informed that the typical student disrespects and insults these workers.  These students jump aside if they are accidentally touched by a member of the cleaning staff, telling the workers “Don’t touch me, you are socially polluted.”  Needless to say, these students are of a higher social class than the cleaner. 

            The idea that Brazil has a racial democracy is a pervasive fallacy and a cruel joke.  As Reichmann states (p. 36), “Informal social mechanisms reinforce Blacks’ exclusion from social opportunities.”  These informal social mechanisms include the racist associations consistently made about Black people and influence the way people interact with African-Brazilians.  As I leave Brazil, I ponder the real similarities between the treatment of people of color in the U.S. and in Brazil.  Often the differences seem less large than this essay proposes.  However, the U.S. has acknowledged that there is prevalent racism in our country and in my eyes that is one step closer than Brazil to rectifying the problem.

Union College Student, 2001

References:

Fiola, Jan – Unpublished MSS, N.D.

Reichmann, Rebecca, “Brazil’s Denial of Race,” NACIA Report on the Americas,  pp.35-41.

Schemo, Diana J., “The Elevator Doesn’t Lie:  Intolerance in Brazil,”  NYTimes, August 30, 1995.