Barack Obama’s rise to power in the United States has exposed cracks in Brazil’s self-image as a racially integrated society, with many seeing the Latin American giant years away from electing a black president.
With only a few black Brazilians in top government posts, deep-rooted, veiled racism in a country that is among the world’s most racially mixed has prevented the emergence of a serious black presidential candidate.
”Low political representation shows how difficult it is for Brazilians, and even Afro-Brazilians, to see blacks as a political alternative for our country,” said Minister for Racial Equality Edson Santos, one of two black government ministers.
With almost half the population considered black, Brazilians often boast that their country is a more harmonious melting pot than the United States. But analysts say that is only because black Brazilians have never posed a threat to the dominance of the white elite in politics and business.
”Everything runs smoothly when everyone is exercising their expected roles in society,” said Marcelo Paixao, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, or UFRJ, who specialises in the economics of race.
Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888 and is home to the largest black population outside of Africa. Black Brazilians have played a major role in shaping its national identity, and the most famous Brazilian of all, soccer legend Pele, is black.
But latent discrimination is rampant, as illustrated in the scant presence of black Brazilians in television and advertising. Black Brazilians also fare among the worst in health and education indicators.
Infant mortality among black Brazilians is 40% higher than among whites, and illiteracy rates among blacks are also much higher.
Brazil has only had seven black ministers since democracy was restored in 1985, according to a UFRJ study.
Five of them have been under the current leftist leader, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but they still tend to be limited to certain policy areas such as culture, sports and racial equality.
Analysts say it will take years before blacks take on powerful positions, and that only then would the ground be laid for an eventual black president.
”For us to have a black president in Brazil, we would need to have [black Brazilians] at the head of companies, universities, town halls,” Paixao said.
Class divide vs racial barrier
Jose Vicente, the dean of a university founded to promote black Brazilians in higher education and job markets, said race relations in Brazil were thawing, pointing to Lula’s racially mixed Cabinet and the adoption of quotas in many universities.
Vicente, the head of University Zumbi dos Palmares, said a black Brazilian president would speed up the process and help lure elites into accepting a new status quo in the same way they warmed to the presidency of former union leader Lula.
”Have you ever seen bankers applaud a worker?” Vicente asked. ”The elite is intelligent. Where the wind blows, they go in that direction.”
Lula, who did not graduate from high school, was elected president in 2002 — a historic victory in a country where power was long been held by a small, wealthy elite. In shattering the class barrier, Lula may have nudged Brazil closer to breaking the race barrier.
While Brazil’s class divide is widely recognised, however, its lingering racism is not.
”It’s part of the vision of Brazilian elites to disguise racial inequalities,” said Santos, the equality minister. ”But it is obvious when you have access to our social pyramid and see that it is white at its top and black at the base.”
For working-class black Brazilians, the prospect of a black president seems distant.
”The same racism continues in the US and in Brazil today,” said a 45-year-old construction worker in the capital Brasilia who gave his name as Ze Luis. – Reuters