Talking about race: Um, you first

On day two here in Brazil, we attended a seminar at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO). There, Professor John Stanfield of Indiana University led a conversation about race, racism, and racialism. He described the following three terms:

1) Race - A false, perfect correllation between real or imagined physical qualities and social & cultural attributes (i.e. intellectual abilities, moral fiber, reading ability, dancing ability). The imagined part is important because it is contructed in our heads too. Race is also how we feel and how climates and environments are constructed (i.e. race related to heart problems and diabetes).

2) Racism - How to use false correllation for distributing power.

3) Racialism - Rarely do we have policies dealing with racialism. One does not have to be a racist to be a racialist. (vague description by Prof. Stanfield)

Prof. Stanfied went on to say that we can’t predict anything based on what someone looks like. A Brazilian woman, who studied in the U.S., followed with some very interesting comments about how race is constructed in Brazil. She talked about how Brazil’s different societal history makes its conversation on race different from that in the U.S. She explained that Brazilian officials determine and assign an individual’s race, which differs from the U.S.’s one-drop rule and box checking system.

Later, in Salvador, Bahia, we met with CEAFRO, an Afro-Brazilian community-based educataional initiative associated with the Federal University of Bahia. There, a young lady discussed standing up for Afro-Brazilians while being the only one in her class. She demanded that the white students would not participate in racist talk when she was around. She instantly gained the respect of her entire class, and students would ask her permission to talk about race.

I find it interesting that groups in Brazil and the U.S. are calling for discussions on race at the same time and that both requests are being denied or ignored by elites in power whose interests are promoted by the status quo. Senator Barack Obama’s recent speech encouraged the U.S. to break its ‘racial stalemate’. The speech will likely be looked to as a milestone in measuring racial progress for future generations in the U.S. I think it is important to constantly compare racial progress in both countries and share information among social movements. This is why I really appreciate being a part of the Global Affirmative Action Praxis Project.

What are your impressions of Senator Obama's speech?