This is what came into my mind when I tried to make a link among the first and the second part of what we have discussed today:
I’m on my phd already, and it means that I have been for a long time on the educational system.
I’m also a white Brazilian (in Brazil the majority of the population is black [53%]).
In all those studying years, until now, I could count on my fingers how many black classmates I had. One hand would be enough.
At the same time that, in Brazilian prisons, 67% of the prisoners are black and 53% haven’t finished elementary school.
And also about how guilty I feel to be in a privileged situation.
I keep thinking about the problems of Brazil - racism, gender, corruption, etc. - there is no doubt that minimising these situations is urgent but in what way? Discuss whiteness/racism? Talk about gender? Sometimes I get the feeling that these discussions (in Brazil) are kept in universities or in activist groups and the people are not listening - we can see that looking for the last elections- . So then I ask myself: What if, during the time when we create a perfect society, Brazil undergoes irreparable degradation? I don't know, just thinking ...
ReplyDeleteThis from Denise Ferreira da Silva, speaking across her experience in and beyond Brazil:
ReplyDeleteFor those of us who are Black, the racial signifier blackness never floats beyond the reach of the logic of obliteration ... Not long ago, about two or three months ago I was chastised at a meeting of US black scholars because I sounded like I valued black male's life over women's - black and Muslim's - right to walk the streets unharmed whether they wear or do not wear the veil. I was never given a real chance to say that I do not, that my writings about racial violence do not disavowal violence against women. I could not say that, at that moment, in that room, I assumed a certain common view of the range and the particularities of racial subjugation. I had given myself permission to speak about blackness and to highlight racial violence and its patriarchal charge on black males. This is the thing about patriarchy, it has a plan and structures of violence for males and females. I was not given the chance of saying any of that ... but I don't apologise for not qualifying what I said then.
I am still refusing to apologise now. I am writing as the friend and cousin of black and brown young men; I am writing as a daughter, sister, aunt, and (at times) sweetheart of young and older black men ... I am writing as a black woman who has been threatened by cops when a teenager ... who has spent my whole life - because of the times they arrested my father and when they killed my male relatives - with racial violence ... as a black woman who lives with the threat of just-ified killing over my male and female, old and young relatives, neighbours and friends ... who live lives fully determined by violence, specially, police violence, that is, racial violence.
This is the thing about existing, living as a Black or Brown person. We live ... the thing about blackness, because of its being a construct of racial power, it mandates our obliteration. But blackness does not exhaust black people's lives, though it t does resolve how our deaths (and how we live) will be accounted for ...
Viva black people's lives and may the fires revive Black people, my the fires burn and revive blackness. May the fires burn everything that only survives by betting on our end ...
I am tired, pissed off, and giving a damn to contrived political speeches which stop short of the call.
May the fires this time burn in our minds any illusions of justice from within the liberal text ... what is to come awaits our willingness to let it become.
https://deniseferreiradasilva.squarespace.com/blog/
Also, for those who speak Portuguese and want to read about afroperspectivism, I have uploaded UBUNTU COMO MODO DE EXISTIR: Elementos gerais para uma ética afroperspectivista by
ReplyDeleteRenato Noguera under "books" on the dropbox.
Tks :)
Deletecomment above from Erin
ReplyDeleteinteresting film about brazil - Bus 174 if anyone is interested
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340468/
For those who speak Portuguese, here is a compelling video that talks about the racial inequalities at an institutional level, more specifically in Brazilian universities. There’s also a link to a PhD thesis that addresses the concept of epistemicide, or how black and afrobrazilian contributions are kept out of the academic space. For me, it resonates deeply with Angela Davis last week’s conference and her commentary about a potential abolition of the academic apparatus, which paradoxically benefited from the tribune of this very institution to convey meaning. As a white person who has been in the educational system for the last 18 years and who’s only starting to measure the extent of his privilege, how can I (we) learn to navigate the institutional space with a greater awareness, when its mechanisms seem so deeply ingrained inside me (us)?
ReplyDeleteYoutube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRy-lVhmVjk
Link to the thesis:
https://negrasoulblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/a-construc3a7c3a3o-do-outro-como-nc3a3o-ser-como-fundamento-do-ser-sueli-carneiro-tese1.pdf
Thanks Yannick, I didn't know Nátaly Neri and she goes straight to the point :-)
DeleteI don't have a solution, but looks like we have a lot o work to do to change it