*Man, this interview is just great. This really sounds like futurity talking. "Yeah, uhm, for economic reasons, I decided to present myself as a pardo guy." Yeah, pal, you betcha, we're all pardo people here in 21st-century globalista-land. Couldn't make it pay, otherwise. Pass the dim-sum pizza.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/17/talking-about-brazil/
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Robert Darnton: Brazil’s emergence as a major world player provokes questions about its national identity, some of them hostile, such as the one you said you encountered on your last trip to the US: How can you live in a country overrun with favelas and violence? How do you answer them?
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz: It is strange how nowadays Brazil has a new image coming from abroad. We used to be seen as “exotics”; a country of Capoeira (a Brazilian form of martial art), Candomblé (a syncretic African religion), Carnaval, and the “Mulatas.”
Now we continue to be viewed as exotic, but the exoticism has a new ingredient: violence, even a new aesthetics of violence, mainly in the way Brazil is portrayed in contemporary films, like City of God.
The fascination with favelas among many people outside Brazil is ambiguous. On the one hand, favelas are seen as violent communities, subject to violent leaders outside the authority of the state. On the other, they are just “different”—scenes of a culture outside the dominant culture, with its own special way of partying, dancing, playing soccer. We do not have favelas everywhere, but foreigners like to think so.
We have developed a new kind of tourism, which features a “favela tour.” (((And are you surprised by this development, even in the least, teeny-tiny way? Me neither.))) Everything is fake, but the tourists enjoy the illusion that they are experiencing another world.
And what about you Bob? Are you afraid of walking in some parts of New York City? Is Harlem a kind of favela?
RD: Yes, like many New Yorkers, I have moments of fear when I get off the subway at the wrong station or wander too far from 125th Street. But when I visit Brazil, I like to think I am in a country that is coping successfully with its history of racism. Could Brazil evolve into a multi-nuanced mestizo society like the one imagined by the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre?
LMS: Let me first ask you Bob, do you think of Obama as a “black President”? I am asking this question, because in Brazil the definition of color depends on the context, the moment and the temperament of the person who asks the question and responds to it.
RD: Ask any American, ask Obama himself, the answer will certainly be that he is black. In the US, despite the many varieties of skin color, we do not have a multi-nuanced notion of race. You are black or you are white or you are something not closely linked to color such as Chinese, Hispanic.
LMS: In Brazil, you are what you describe yourself to be. Officially we have five different colors—black, white, yellow, indigenous, and pardo (meaning “brown,” “brownish,” or “gray-brown”), but in reality, as research has demonstrated, we have more than 130 colors. Brazilians like to describe their spectrum of colors as a rainbow and we also think that color is a flexible way of categorizing people.
For several years, I have been studying a soccer game called “Pretos X Brancos” (Blacks against whites), which takes place in a favela of São Paulo, called Heliópolis. In theory, it pits eleven white players against eleven black players. But, every year they change colors like they change socks or shirts—one year a player will choose to play for one team, the next year for the other, with the explanation that, “I feel more black,” or “I feel more white.”
Also, in Brazil, if a person gets rich, he gets whiter. I recently talked with a dentist in Minas Gerais. As he is becoming old, his hair has turned white, and he is very well recognized in his little town. He started smoking cigars, joined the local Rotary Club, and said to me: “When I was black my life was really difficult.” So one can see how being white even nowadays is a powerful symbol. Here we have two sides of the same picture: on the one hand, identity is flexible; on the other hand, whiteness is ultimately what some people aspire to. But one aspect is common, the idea that you can manipulate your color and race.
RD: Does that mean you are developing a less poisonous kind of racism in Brazil?
LMS: I think all kinds of racism are equally terrible. I am just saying that the Brazilian kind is different. ...
