The Black-Latin Experience

[QueEx]

A New Color in Brazil TV

Blacks make up nearly half the population, but they were a rarity on
screen. Now there's a channel for them -- one critics decry as racist

ANCHOR: Claudia Alexandre is prepped for her news program on TV da Gente,
Brazil’s first black-owned station directed primarily at black viewers.
Executives say the station better reflects reality for the 47% of Brazilians
who claim some African heritage. (Alexandre Meneghini / AP)

Los Angeles Times
By Henry Chu, Times Staff Writer
January 12, 2006

SAO PAULO, Brazil — The phone call from the budding station that launched Adyel Silva's television career seemed like a joke.

Sure, as a singer, Silva was used to the spotlight. But who would offer her a shot at fronting her own daytime show?

"I laughed when I received the invitation because I never dreamed of hosting a television program. You never see a black woman hosting a TV show" in Brazil, Silva said. "We were never thought capable. Maybe I'm the first."

It turned out that the channel extending the offer, TV da Gente, wasn't just taking a chance on Silva. The channel itself, which debuted in late November, is something of a gamble — Brazil's first black-owned TV station featuring programming directed primarily at black viewers.

That it has the potential to be a lucrative venture seems obvious in a country with the largest black population outside Africa — nearly half of Brazil's 180 million people. But the fact that it took so long to emerge, 25 years after African Americans first established their own cable TV network in the U.S., attests to attitudes about race that are pervasive in Brazilian society.

Surf the channels on Brazilian TV and a clutch of beautiful people quickly crowds the screen: bikinied models, stubble-cheeked soap opera leads, natty news anchors. All are svelte and good-looking. Virtually all are white.

When darker-skinned characters crop up in TV dramas, almost invariably they appear as maids and other domestic workers, or worse. "The soap operas here, the black people are always miserable, and they have an important role only when you're talking about crime," said Silva, 50.

"You grow up with the idea that if you're not blond and you don't have blue eyes, you're not beautiful," she said. "You switch on the television and you see Xuxa," the kittenish, blond former soft-porn actress who is now one of the most popular stars of children's TV in Brazil.

The mission of TV da Gente, or Our TV, is to try to bring a little balance to the scene. Executives at the station speak passionately of the need for the small screen to better reflect the reality lived by the 47% of Brazilians who claim some African heritage.

Yet what might seem a laudable or at least unobjectionable goal, at least by U.S. standards, has whipped up hostility in some quarters here. Critics and commentators swiftly came out of the woodwork to lambaste the new channel as racist in its own way.

By singling out blacks as its target audience and insisting on putting nonwhite faces before the camera as presenters and protagonists, TV da Gente contributes to racial division in Brazil, detractors contend.

"If I put a 'TV for whites' on air, I'd have a thousand lawsuits on my back," read a typical posting on one of several blogs and cyber-forums debating the merits of TV da Gente, which airs on a UHF channel. "I'm white; I'm not racist in any way. But I will not watch a single program on this channel because it's practicing explicit racism."

The channel's founder and principal backer, Jose de Paula Neto, is disturbed by such reactions.

"I never thought that organizing and joining together so many blacks would cause such indignation," said Neto, who hosts a variety show on mainstream TV and is one of the few black men to break into the business. "People say that I'm a Hitler, that I'm segregating the country. This has caused me a lot of pain."

The backlash exposed the extent to which race remains a raw nerve in this country. The debate takes direct aim at one of the most cherished notions of Brazilians' sense of themselves: the idea of Brazil as a "racial democracy" where skin color doesn't matter.

The concept was articulated more than 70 years ago by anthropologist Gilberto Freyre, who postulated that relatively peaceful coexistence and widespread miscegenation among white masters and their black slaves gave rise to Brazil's more relaxed attitude toward race.

Freyre's theory is an article of faith among many here. And undeniably, visitors are often struck by the variety of faces on the streets and beaches, where complexions range from milk to mocha to coal. In one famous survey in Brazil in 1976, respondents gave 134 different terms to describe their skin color, including "cashew-like," "burnt yellow" and "dark tan." (There was also "roseate" and "bluish.") Mixed-race couples are so common they go unnoticed.

But below the placid surface lie uncomfortable truths.

Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to ban slavery, in 1888. The enduring legacy of that is evident in the fact that blacks lag behind whites according to almost every social measure, including literacy and education.

Brazil's vast slums are populated mostly by people of color. Young black males are far more likely than any other segment of the population to die violently. Discrimination, though usually not overt, works subtly and powerfully to help keep blacks in lower-paying jobs.

"In whatever indicator you use, whether it's the job market or access to public services such as water or public sewage or the murder and homicide rate, the inequality is there," said Marcelo Paixao, an economist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Only in the last two decades, after a 20-year dictatorship that ended in 1985, has black consciousness and activism bubbled up and become a greater social force, Paixao said. But the movement is still far from the powerful civic and political player it is in the U.S., he said.

TV da Gente is a product of this relatively new vein of activism.

Neto, who grew up in a poor neighborhood of Sao Paulo, South America's largest city, made his name as a singer before making the jump to television as host of a Sunday variety show. The program's signature segment is "Princess Day," which plucks a deserving woman from the slums and awards her a makeover, shopping spree and other prizes.

Neto remained bothered, however, by the singular lack of nonwhite faces on TV. "It wasn't open discrimination. It was tacit," he said, perpetuated by white producers and executives who had no experience or contact with the poor, mostly black residents on society's margins.

To start up TV da Gente, Neto dug into his own pockets for most of the $5.2 million needed to keep the station going for the first six months. The remaining 30% came from investors in Angola, another former Portuguese colony.

Because Brazil doesn't have a formalized Nielsen-type ratings system, the channel's popularity isn't yet known. At the moment, it's available only in Sao Paulo and the northeastern city of Fortaleza, but deals with cable and satellite providers in major cities throughout Brazil are under discussion, executives said.

When the channel debuted in November, it offered six hours of programming a day — news, Silva's daytime show geared to women, sports segments, musical outtakes. By Christmas, the number of hours had doubled. In three to four months, Neto hopes, TV da Gente will broadcast round-the-clock.

To meet the demand for content, translators are working feverishly to dub European and U.S. shows, including programming from the Black Family Channel, the Atlanta-based network co-founded by boxer Evander Holyfield, baseball player Cecil Fielder and singer Marlon Jackson, among others.

"There were definitely parallels between their group and ours, and we started talking. And it just worked out," said Samara Cummins, a vice president with the Black Family Channel. "We're in a global environment now, and what's good for one is good for another."

But Neto, 35, has been disappointed by the fitful response from other networks and potential U.S. investors. He hasn't been able to seal a deal with Black Entertainment Television, the oldest black network in the U.S., which began broadcasting in 1980. TV da Gente doesn't have the resources to buy rights to hit programs, and some U.S. studios and black networks are interested only in the bottom line, not in showing solidarity with TV da Gente's vision and making their programming more affordable, he said.

"It makes me feel like I'm asking for a handout," Neto said. "They're looking at Brazil as a [market] of 90 million blacks to grab hold of. My dream is that they look at us as a place of 90 million brothers."

If there's an echo of Martin Luther King Jr. in some of Neto's pronouncements, it's because the slain civil rights leader is a source of inspiration for him and also for Silva.

In Brazil, no one is expecting to replicate the huge marches or protests that won greater equality for blacks in America, but Silva sees TV da Gente as a major advance in the fight for increased rights and visibility.

"I know that in the '60s in the USA, black people stood up. We're standing up almost 50 years later," she said. "Our revolution is to tell people in a peaceful way, 'We can live together — we can melt.' But please don't pretend we're not here. Don't pretend we're not talented. Because we are."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-blacktv12jan12,0,7553096.story?page=1&track=tottext,0,6035993.story?track=tothtml

 

[nolease]

Re: A New Color on Brazil TV - BLACK

Good information thanks.

 

[QueEx]

Afro-Latin Americans: A rising voice​

Black populations in Latin America are undergoing
a cultural and civil-rights awakening​

Dancers Scharllette Allen, 15, and Jennifer Fredericks, 15, will
perform iin a local Afro cultural festival in the town of Pearl
Lagoon (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)

By Audra D.S. Burch
aburch@miamiherald.com

PEARL LAGOON, Nicaragua -- In hidden fishing villages straddling the wide, muddy Kukra River along the Atlantic Coast, a quiet cultural and civil-rights movement flickers:

Almost six feet and dark-skinned, a 17-year-old whirls in her kitchen, enchanted by the intricate African beading on the gown she will wear in the village's first black beauty pageant.

A 47-year-old reggae artist who chronicles the pain and hope of his people in song makes history as the first black to win his country's highest cultural award.

A 30-year-old activist finally liberates her hair, lets it grow naturally, an act that screams race more than complexion ever could.

These stories are part of a slow but dramatic shift in consciousness among blacks here and throughout Latin America. In something akin to the civil-rights movement in the United States -- without the lynchings, bombings and mass arrests -- blacks are pushing for more rights and reclaiming their cultural identity.

"For years, it was just so much easier to not 'be' black, to call yourself something else," says Michael Campbell, who grew up 18 miles downriver in Bluefields. "But the key to our future is to strengthen our identity, to say we are black, and we are proud."

Carmen Joseph, a caterer and mother of eight children in
Bluefields, Nicaragua, prepares potato salad as her grand-
daughter Britney Cash, 5, stands by. 'Some folks don't
say they are what they are,' she said. 'You see, I am
black, and I raised my family up knowing they were black.'
(Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)


BELATED ATTENTION

Latin American governments are listening and have finally begun to address racial inequities that have simmered since slavery.

Just four years ago, Brazil created a Cabinet-level position to deal with race. In Colombia, activists have won legislation legally recognizing blacks and their history. In Cuba, increasing numbers of non-political groups are forming to tackle race issues, including the Martin Luther King Movement for Civil Rights. And in the nearby Dominican Republic, some blacks are fighting state authorities for the right to be categorized as "black'' on their passports.

Statistics show that blacks in the region are more likely to be born into poverty, to die young, to read poorly and to live in substandard housing.

Authorities are only now starting to count the black population, but the World Bank estimates that it numbers anywhere from 80 million to 150 million, compared with 40.2 million in the United States.

The new push for change is fueled by support from African-American politicians and civil rights groups through globalization -- the technological ability to share common human experiences. Indeed, once isolated Latin American countries now have access to pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which broadcast social messages worldwide.

Just last week, U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., led members of the Congressional Black Caucus in a nationally televised townhall discussion in Colombia with President Alvaro Uribe about the living conditions of Afro-Colombians.

"[Afro-descendants] can see what the outside world is doing. That's caused a consciousness where they say, ‘We can do it, too,' '' says Meeks, who is also working with blacks in Peru and Bolivia. "They can see what the civil-rights movement did in the United States and know that they have the ability to benefit also."

The movement challenges a widely held belief that Latin America comfortably witnessed the civil-rights movement in the United States from afar because the region was not racist, and blacks were already integrated.

"The black movements have been able to get people to question that notion, and to acknowledge that racial democracy is a great idea and kind of wonderful dream, but it really doesn't exist on the ground yet," says George Reid Andrews, author of Afro-Latin Americans and a professor of comparative race at the University of Pittsburgh. "That, I think, is a real achievement."

Students share a bench -- and some candy -- during a break in
classes at Moravian High School in Bluefields. A black-history
curriculum for public schools is on the agenda of black leaders
and activists. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)


DISADVANTAGED GROUP

Nicaragua's black population is the largest in Central America, but there is only one black member in its National Assembly, Raquel Dixon Brautigam, who was elected last year.

Only about one in five residents in Nicaragua's predominantly black neighborhoods have access to clean water, versus the national average of three in five. Between 4 percent and 17 percent have electricity, compared with the national average of 49 percent.

Twenty years ago, the country recognized blacks and indigenous people through autonomy laws, making it possible for them to claim natural resources, demarcate communal lands, govern themselves and reclaim their ancestral identity.

For years, the struggle has been framed largely in regional terms -- the Atlantic Coast, led by towns such as Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas, versus the Pacific Coast -- English versus Spanish, Creole versus Spanish-indigenous mestizo. Creoles, descendents of English masters and their Caribbean slaves, often identify themselves as black.

"Race and region are inextricably linked," says Juliet Hooker, a native of Bluefields and assistant professor of government at the University of Texas. "We have never really been acknowledged in the national narrative about identity. Much of the discrimination has been through the lens of the coast we live on."

Now, for blacks -- about 477,000, or 9 percent of the 5.3 million Nicaraguans -- the movement is largely about visibility.

Black leaders and activists say they are collectively defining, and redefining, what it means to be black here. They are working on an ambitious agenda that includes redistricting for better political representation, bilingual education and a black-history curriculum for public schools. And in March, the National Assembly passed a reform measure to include race issues in the new penal code.

Before now, there were no anti-discrimination or affirmative-action laws. Still, a bill that would outlaw institutional racism has languished in the assembly for more than two years, with not enough backers to push it through.

This isn't the first time blacks have mobilized.

A black-power movement started along the coast as early as the 1920s through the nationalist message of Marcus Garvey.

In the 1960s, as the civil-rights movement was unfolding in the United States, blacks formed a coalition to negotiate better living conditions. That effort fell apart with the start of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. After the war, the Sandinistas promised to end racial discrimination and to promote regional cultures. At the same time, they were accused of precisely the opposite -- oppressing groups already disenfranchised.

It would be almost three decades before meaningful steps were taken under the Sandinista regimes. Now, there is cautious hope with the return of that government.

Elizabeth Forbes, 85, known as ‘Ms. Lizzie' -- on the porch
with grandchildren Sean, on her lap, and Brandy, and with
Jayson MacField, 8, peering from the window -- is helping
to revive the ties of Bluefield's blacks to their heritage. Nine
percent of Nicaragua's population is black. (Charles Trainor
Jr./Miami Herald)


RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

Although the Atlantic Coast has been settled since the 17th century, the first road connecting the coast to the rest of the country opened only 50 years ago. It is still impassable during the rainy season and still doesn't go all the way.

The last leg to Bluefields from Managua is by boat, along the Escondido River. Despite the remoteness, it has not been closed entirely to the outside world. Some residents talk on the telephone, listen to the radio, watch foreign programs on television and a few have access to the Internet. Much of the contemporary movement along the coast came from men who died long ago -- Martin Luther King Jr. and Bob Marley. King's unyielding message of equality and Marley's social lyrics were delivered here starting in the 1970s by kids who got jobs on cruise ships and brought back books and music.

Pearl Lagoon's unofficial leader, William Wesley, a warm guy with an easy smile, lives on the main road with a view of the village. Just inside his living room, a picture of King hangs near the phone.

"The kids came home, and they kept talking about these people," says Wesley, a retired teacher. "I knew a little bit already. But I wanted to know more. I found myself in the teachings of King and Malcolm X. I discovered my Afro heritage. We have to take what they said to help us create a direction that we can all follow."

In Bluefields, Carmen Joseph, more comfortably ‘‘Miss Carmen," a caterer who is said to make the best potato salad in town, quickly steps outside a neighbor's house. She sits on the front porch, this racial business too touchy for inside talk.

"Yes," she whispers, never making eye contact. "Some folks don't say they are what they are. You see, I am black, and I raised my family up knowing they were black."

With eight children, Joseph has spent a lifetime trudging up and down the hills of Bluefields, establishing her place as one of the town's matriarchs. "I am not ashamed. I never turned on my color, but some people do."

To appreciate the story of race here, is to understand the kaleidoscopic legacy of slavery, the historic demonization and denial of blackness and the practice of racial mixing.

This portrait is complicated by the lack of reliable census data because of traditional undercounting and because some blacks decline to identify themselves as such.

The dynamic along the coast is a layered quilt of Miskitos, mestizos and blacks. The ancestors of other Afro-Nicaraguans were free blacks who immigrated from Jamaica and other Caribbbean countries, lured by the good, steady jobs available for English speakers.

Stories abound about people who have hidden behind ambiguously brown complexions, "passing'' for Miskito Indians, or mestizo.

"It's hard to mobilize when you are still recouping the identity and just starting to openly use the term black," says Hooker, the University of Texas professor whose father was a regional councilman.

A year ago, Shirlene Green Newball, who grew up in Puerto Cabezas, allowed her perm to grow out. "I really wanted to show and know who I am," says Newball, who works for a women's organization.

Newball had thought for a while about what it meant to be black here. She considered all the terms morena, coolie, afro, chocolate, la negra. Then she decided that natural hair -- an enduring barometer of ethnicity was the purest expression of blackness.

"You are seeing an authentic black movement along the coast, but things are moving slowly," says Kwame Dixon, an assistant professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University.

A Garífuna boy, kicking a soccer ball, is part of a dwindling
group descended from shipwrecked Africans exiled to
Honduras in 1797. (Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald)



SYMBOL OF CULTURE

In Pearl Lagoon, population 3,000, the dogs sleep on the dock, the main drag is more dusty path than street, the country-western music drifts from open windows and doors, and Koreth Reid McCoy rushes home from school.

She floats the whole way, more than a mile, to behold the lovely lavender gown with beads she is to wear at the beauty pageant. In the last decade, the coast has held annual black beauty pageants, but this is the first one -- along with an African cultural festival -- in Pearl Lagoon.

"I love the way it falls. I love the colors. I love the style," Koreth says, her voice falling into a lullaby. "It reminds me of Africa. I'm so proud of my heritage and my ancestry."

Leaving her house, Koreth steps into the road, and, carried by the giggles of barefoot little girls, makes her way toward the river and back, as poised and glamorous as she would be on anybody's runway. All of a sudden, and maybe not so suddenly, she is more than a pretty girl in a pretty dress. Koreth is a symbol of cultural possibilities.

"I want people to know where we are from."

A horse is ferried across the Kukra River, where black
awareness is rising in villages. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)


MESSAGE IN MUSIC

For as long as he can remember, and certainly when times were bad, Philip Montalban Ellis -- beautiful dreadlocks to his waist and a guitar that rarely leaves his side -- has been singing about the black experience.

. . . We gotta fight or we will die. . . . Lord knows we need liberation, Lord knows it's the only solution. . . .

Today, Montalban sits on an old, rusted chair under a lime tree in his backyard, strumming away.

"I been trying to sing songs that say something and that uplift my people. We have struggled so long," he says. "I have been charged with carrying the message of my people."

Earlier this year, the Nicaraguan government recognized Montalban's art, awarding him its highest cultural honor. Before now, the idea of an unapologetically black man even being considered was unthinkable.

"I feel like I am accepting the award for a whole race of people," Montalban says. "I hope this means something."

U.S. sports are popular in Pearl Lagoon,
on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. (Charles
Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)

Koreth Reid McCoy, 17, gets her hair combed by
'Ms. Vilma' in preparation for a black beauty pageant
in Pearl Lagoon. 'I'm so proud of my heritage and my
ancestry,' she said.(Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)

Philip Montalban Ellis sings about his hometown,
Bluefields. 'I been trying to sing songs that say
something and that uplift my people,' he said.
(Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald)



Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet and special correspondent Tim Rogers contributed to this report.

 

[LennyNero1972]

This is great news, I didn't even know there are so many blacks in Nicaragua. We are close (if not) to 200 million strong in this hemisphere and didn't even know it. Let the awakening continue!!!!!!!

 

[Give Me 3ft.]

definately appreciate the article!!!

 

[Bastard Chile]

Good info. I wasn't aware of the size of the Black population in Latin America either.

 

[QueEx]

This is great news, I didn't even know there are so many blacks in Nicaragua. We are close (if not) to 200 million strong in this hemisphere and didn't even know it. Let the awakening continue!!!!!!!

And, there's more to come. The article above covers Nicaragua and Honduras. Watch for other countries, i.e., Cuba, Brazil, etc.

QueEx

 

[QueEx]

Dominican Republic

Black denial​

Nearly all Dominican women straighten their hair,
which experts say is a direct result of a historical
learned rejection of all things black​

Yara Matos holds her hair extensions as a
stylist in the Herrera neighborhood prepares
to give her the look of long, straight hair.
(Candace Barbot/Miami Herald)


By Frances Robles
frobles@miamiherald.com


SANTO DOMINGO -- Yara Matos sat still while long, shiny locks from China were fastened, bit by bit, to her coarse hair.

Not that Matos has anything against her natural curls, even though Dominicans call that pelo malo -- bad hair.

But a professional Dominican woman just should not have bad hair, she said. "If you're working in a bank, you don't want some barrio-looking hair. Straight hair looks elegant," the bank teller said. "It's not that as a person of color I want to look white. I want to look pretty."

And to many in the Dominican Republic, to look pretty is to look less black.

Dominican hairdressers are internationally known for the best hair-straightening techniques. Store shelves are lined with rows of skin whiteners, hair relaxers and extensions.

Racial identification here is thorny and complex, defined not so much by skin color but by the texture of your hair, the width of your nose and even the depth of your pocket. The richer, the "whiter." And, experts say, it is fueled by a rejection of anything black.

"I always associated black with ugly. I was too dark and didn't have nice hair," said Catherine de la Rosa, a dark-skinned Dominican-American college student spending a semester here. "With time passing, I see I'm not black. I'm Latina.

"At home in New York everyone speaks of color of skin. Here, it's not about skin color. It's culture."

The only country in the Americas to be freed from black colonial rule -- neighboring Haiti -- the Dominican Republic still shows signs of racial wounds more than 200 years later. Presidents historically encouraged Dominicans to embrace Spanish Catholic roots rather than African ancestry.

Here, as in much of Latin America -- the "one drop rule'' works in reverse: One drop of white blood allows even very dark-skinned people to be considered white.

Capellan Dominquez, center, and Anthony Rosario, right, join
others as they warm up for Carnival in February in the Cristo
Rey area of Santo Domingo. (Candace Barbot/Miami Herald)



LACK OF INTEREST

As black intellectuals here try to muster a movement to embrace the nation's African roots, they acknowledge that it has been a mostly fruitless cause. Black pride organizations such as Black Woman's Identity fizzled for lack of widespread interest. There was outcry in the media when the Brotherhood of the Congos of the Holy Spirit -- a community with roots in Africa -- was declared an oral patrimony of humanity by UNESCO. "There are many times that I think of just leaving this country because it's too hard," said Juan Rodríguez Acosta, curator of the Museum of the Dominican Man. Acosta, who is black, has pushed for the museum to include controversial exhibits that reflect many Dominicans' African background. "But then I think: Well if I don't stay here to change things, how will things ever change?"

A walk down city streets shows a country where blacks and dark-skinned people vastly outnumber whites, and most estimates say that 90 percent of Dominicans are black or of mixed race. Yet census figures say only 11 percent of the country's nine million people are black.

To many Dominicans, to be black is to be Haitian. So dark-skinned Dominicans tend to describe themselves as any of the dozen or so racial categories that date back hundreds of years -- Indian, burned Indian, dirty Indian, washed Indian, dark Indian, cinnamon, moreno or mulatto, but rarely negro.

The Dominican Republic is not the only nation with so many words to describe skin color. Asked in a 1976 census survey to describe their own complexions, Brazilians came up with 136 different terms, including café au lait, sunburned, morena, Malaysian woman, singed and "toasted."

"The Cuban black was told he was black. The Dominican black was told he was Indian," said Dominican historian Celsa Albert, who is black. "I am not Indian. That color does not exist. People used to tell me, ‘You are not black.' If I am not black, then I guess there are no blacks anywhere, because I have curly hair and dark skin."

Manuel Núñez, a Dominican author, writes about the
issues of 'black' and 'Dominican' as they relate to the
history in his country. (Candace Barbot/Miami Herald)


THE HISTORY

Using the word Indian to describe dark-skinned people is an attempt to distance Dominicans from any African roots, Albert and other experts said. She noted that it's not even historically accurate: The country's Taino Indians were virtually annihilated in the 1500s, shortly after Spanish colonizers arrived.

Researchers say the de-emphasizing of race in the Dominican Republic dates to the 1700s, when the sugar plantation economy collapsed and many slaves were freed and rose up in society.

Later came the rocky history with Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Haiti's slaves revolted against the French and in 1804 established their own nation. In 1822, Haitians took over the entire island, ruling the predominantly Hispanic Dominican Republic for 22 years.

To this day, the Dominican Republic celebrates its independence not from centuries-long colonizer Spain, but from Haiti.

"The problem is Haitians developed a policy of black-centrism and . . . Dominicans don't respond to that," said scholar Manuel Núñez, who is black. "Dominican is not a color of skin, like the Haitian."

Dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled from 1930 to 1961, strongly promoted anti-Haitian sentiments, and is blamed for creating the many racial categories that avoided the use of the word "black."

The practice continued under President Joaquín Balaguer, who often complained that Haitians were "darkening'' the country. In the 1990s, he was blamed for thwarting the presidential aspirations of leading black candidate José Francisco Peña Gómez by spreading rumors that he was actually Haitian.

"Under Trujillo, being black was the worst thing you could be," said Afro-Dominican poet Blas Jiménez. "Now we are Dominican, because we are not Haitian. We are something, because we are not that."

Jiménez remembers when he got his first passport, the clerk labeled him "Indian." He protested to the director of the agency.

"I remember the man saying, ‘If he wants to be black, let him be black!' '' Jiménez said.

Resentment toward anything Haitian continues, as an estimated one million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, most working in the sugar and construction industries. Mass deportations often mistakenly include black Dominicans, and Haitians have been periodically lynched in mob violence. The government has been trying to deny citizenship and public education to the Dominican-born children of illegal Haitian migrants.

When migrant-rights activist Sonia Pierre won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2006, the government responded by trying to revoke her citizenship, saying she is actually Haitian.

"There's tremendous resistance to blackness -- black is something bad," said black feminist Sergia Galván. ‘‘Black is associated with dark, illegal, ugly, clandestine things. There is a prototype of beauty here and a lot of social pressure. There are schools where braids and natural hair are prohibited."

Galván and a loosely knit group of women have protested European canons of beauty, once going so far as to rally outside a beauty pageant. She and other experts say it is now more common to see darker-skinned women in the contests -- but they never win.

Mariana Ramirez smiles as she sits in Daisy
Gran Salon in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic. (Candace Barbot/Miami Herald)

Product promoter Margarita Munoz, right, tidies up the
shelf displaying her company's hair-straightening products
in a Santo Domingo market. (Candace Barbot/Miami Herald)


CULTURE PULL

Several women said the cultural rejection of African looking hair is so strong that people often shout insults at women with natural curls.

"I cannot take the bus because people pull my hair and stick combs in it," said wavy haired performance artist Xiomara Fortuna. "They ask me if I just got out of prison. People just don't want that image to be seen."

The hours spent on hair extensions and painful chemical straightening treatments are actually an expression of nationalism, said Ginetta Candelario, who studies the complexities of Dominican race and beauty at Smith College in Massachusetts. And to some of the women who relax their hair, it's simply a way to have soft manageable hair in the Dominican Republic's stifling humidity.

"It's not self-hate," Candelario said. "Going through that is to love yourself a lot. That's someone saying, ‘I am going to take care of me.' It's nationalist, it's affirmative and celebrating self."

Money, education, class -- and of course straight hair -- can make dark-skinned Dominicans be perceived as more "white," she said. Many black Dominicans here say they never knew they were black -- until they visited the United States.

"During the Trujillo regime, people who were dark skinned were rejected, so they created their own mechanism to fight it," said Ramona Hernández, Director of the Dominican Studies Institute at City College in New York. "When you ask, ‘What are you?' they don't give you the answer you want . . . saying we don't want to deal with our blackness is simply what you want to hear."

Hernández, who has olive-toned skin and a long mane of hair she blows out straight, acknowledges she would "never, never, never'' go to a university meeting with her natural curls.

"That's a woman trying to look cute; I'm a sociologist," she said.

Asked if a black Dominican woman can be considered beautiful in her country, Hernández leapt to her feet.

"You should see how they come in here with their big asses!'' she said, shuffling across her office with her arms extended behind her back, simulating an enormous rear-end. "They come in here thinking they are all that, and I think, 'doesn't she know she's not really pretty?' "

Maria Elena Polanca is a black woman with the striking good looks. She said most Dominicans look at her with curiosity, as if a black woman being beautiful were something strange.

She spends her days promoting a hair straightener at La Sirena, a Santo Domingo department store that features an astonishing array of hair straightening products.

"Look, we have bad hair, bad. Nobody says 'curly.' It's bad," she said. "You can't go out like that. People will say, 'Look at that nest! Someone light a match!' ''

Angela Martinez, 12, left, entertains friend Estefany Diaz, 10,
as Estefany's sister Ariela does her hair in the Paraiso de Dios
neighborhood west of Santo Domingo, a scene that plays out
on the streets throughout much of the Dominican Republic.
(Candace Barbot/Miami Herald)


'IT WAS HURTFUL'

Purdue University professor Dawn Stinchcomb, who is African American, said that when she came here in 1999 to study African influences in literature, people insulted her in the street.

Waiters refused to serve her. People wouldn't help Stinchcomb with her research, saying if she wanted to study Africans, she'd have to go to Haiti.

"I had people on the streets . . . yell at me to get out of the sun because I was already black enough," she said. "It was hurtful. . . . I was raised in the South and thought I could handle any racial comment. I never before experienced anything like I did in the Dominican Republic.

"I don't have a problem when people who don't look like me say hurtful things. But when it's people who look just like me?"


`

 

[QueEx]

`
`

<font size="3">"There's tremendous resistance to blackness -- black is something bad," said black feminist Sergia Galván. ‘‘Black is associated with dark, illegal, ugly, clandestine things. There is a prototype of beauty here and a lot of social pressure. There are schools where braids and natural hair are prohibited."</font size>

<font size="3">Asked if a black Dominican woman can be considered beautiful in her country, Hernández leapt to her feet.

"You should see how they come in here with their big asses!'' she said, shuffling across her office with her arms extended behind her back, simulating an enormous rear-end. "They come in here thinking they are all that, and I think, 'doesn't she know she's not really pretty?' "
</font size>

`
`

 

[Agallah005]

OK, so what's your point, man, I've known about the population of Blacks in all types of countries, alot of mothafuckas are so ignorant that they think blacks only reside in America, when they've been all over the place.

 

[histick]

OK, so what's your point, man, I've known about the population of Blacks in all types of countries, alot of mothafuckas are so ignorant that they think blacks only reside in America, when they've been all over the place.

You know how blacks got to Latin America right? Europeans slaver traders and colonists, Portuguese to be specific, brought slaves to South America. Modern day Brazil is where most slaves ended up for use in agricultural work.

I have already mentioned this before on BGOL but fools think the U.S. was the only country to use slaves. Slaves were being used in Brazil as early as the 1500's and there were many more in Brazil than they were in the U.S.

It's good to there is change in South America. Racism is still a big problem in Latin America.

 

[QueEx]

OK, so what's your point, man, . . . alot of [people] think blacks only reside in America, when they've been all over the place.

Did you answer you own question ??? But its not just about
WHERE we are, its also about HOW we're treated ... all over
the place.

QueEx

 

[QueEx]

Slaves were being used in Brazil as early as the 1500's and there were many more in Brazil than they were in the U.S.

You're so right; and, Brazil is the next expose.

QueEx

 

[QueEx]

Brazil


<font size="6"><center>A great divide</font size><font size="4">
Brazil's public self-image of a 'racial democracy'
is being challenged as black Brazilians struggle
to overturn centuries of racism</font size></center>

In Brazil's northeastern coastal city of Slavador, where
more than three-quarters of the population is black,
condominium residents sunbathe and swim behind high
walls, with a backdrop of slums. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald)


By Jack Chang
jchang@mcclatchydc.com
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Aleixo Joaquim da Silva was working in this city's famed seaside Copacabana neighborhood, far from the slum where he lives, when he was reminded that racism is alive and well.

While refurbishing the service elevator of a high-rise apartment building, da Silva had to ride the elevator reserved for residents to fetch supplies. A white woman entered and, taken aback, ordered him out.

" 'I'm not riding with a black!' she told me. 'The place of blacks is in the service elevator!'" da Silva recalled.

Although black Brazilians have long endured such insults, many are deciding that they have had enough. The 50-year-old reported the woman to state authorities and had her convicted for breaking laws prohibiting discrimination.

It was a small victory for da Silva, but he's part of a growing movement in this country of 190 million people -- it has the world's second-largest black population, behind Nigeria's -- to turn back centuries of pervasive and largely unchallenged racism.

From university classrooms to television airwaves, black Brazilians are fighting for what they say is long-denied space in a society that has kept them on the margins.

They are pushing for two affirmative-action bills in Brazil's Congress that would open up college enrollment and government payrolls to more Brazilians of African descent. Already, many state universities have implemented their own affirmative-action programs.

In 2005, black entertainer José de Paula Neto launched the country's first television station aimed at black audiences, TV da Gente. Meanwhile, hundreds of communities founded more than a century ago by escaped slaves and known as quilombos are winning recognition and federal protections.

And Brazilians are finally discussing race after decades of telling themselves and the rest of the world that the country was free from racism, said Sen. Paulo Paim, author of one of the pending affirmative-action bills.

"The Brazilian elite says this is not a racist country, but if you look at whatever social indicator, you'll see exclusion is endemic," he said. "We want to open up to more Brazilians the legitimate spaces they deserve."

Da Silva said outrage over his treatment in the elevator pushed him to fight back.

"I couldn't let it go, especially since it was done in such a flagrant manner," he said. "It just hurt too much. It hurt my soul. We can't go backward. We can't stay quiet anymore."

A multiracial crowd of commuters leaves the subway in Rio
de Janeiro on the way to the central train station. Brazil
claims more than 90 million people of African descent out
of a population of 190 million. It has more blacks than any
country except Nigeria. In Rio's slums, blacks make up the
majority of residents. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald)


TURNING POINT

The changes mark a dramatic shift in a country that claims more than 90 million people of African descent but looks almost completely white on its TV screens and in its halls of power.

Starting in the 16th century, Portuguese slave traders sent about 5.5 million Africans to Brazil, with more than 3.3 million surviving the journey, according to historians. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so.

That African legacy is clear in census numbers. About half of Brazilians identified themselves in a 2005 survey as black or pardo, meaning a mix of races but predominantly white and black. Another half identified themselves as white, and less than 1 percent were Asian or indigenous.

A game of dominoes provides a diversion for men in a
'favela,' or slum, in Salvador, a northeastern Brazilian
city where African-based culture and religion are the
mainstream. Despite racial disparities in the country,
debate about race is rare. But now, black Brazilians
have become more assertive about their rights. (Carl
Juste/Miami Herald)


DISPARITY ENTRENCHED

Despite their numbers, black Brazilians have long been poorer, less educated, less healthy and less powerful than white Brazilians.

And although Brazilians regularly eat foods and use words that originated in Africa, their history books talk almost exclusively about the deeds of white heroes, said Emanoel Araujo, a renowned black sculptor and the curator of the Afro Brasil Museum in Sao Paulo.

"We need to redo the history of this country," Araujo said, "and work around the premise and the perspective of the African not only as a slave but as the one who changed Brazilian society, the one who constructed Brazilian society, who constructed the wealth of Brazil."

That day of acknowledgment is still far off, and Brazil, a country with one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the world, is sharply divided between its whites and non-whites.

Census figures show that pardos and blacks earned about half of what white Brazilians made last year, with the gap actually widening among more educated Brazilians. In comparison, African-Americans (U.S. blacks) earned 62 percent of white American wages in 2004., and more schooling helped blacks approach white incomes.

The U.N. Human Development Index, which measures countries based on health, income and other factors, paints an even worse picture. If measured separately, Brazilian whites would be ranked 44th in the world, on par with oil-rich Kuwait, while its blacks and pardos would be ranked 105th, about the same level as El Salvador.

"I have never seen any evidence that suggests anything other than there's widespread racism in Brazil," said UCLA sociology professor Edward Telles, who studies race in Brazil. "Racial and social inequality are strongly linked."

Jailson de Souza e Silva, who runs a Rio de Janeiro anti-violence advocacy group, said the split is stark in his city's violence-torn slums, where blacks make up the majority of residents. Two-thirds of the country's homicide victims in 2004 were black.

"The objective here is not to preserve life, and hundreds of black men are dying every year," de Souza e Silva said. "Meanwhile, in the rich, white parts of the city, every single death is big news. Our lives clearly don't have equal value."

Da Silva's slum has been paralyzed in recent years by gang-related violence, and its middle-class neighbors have erected gated checkpoints around the slum to stop the killing from spilling into their streets.

"It's another sign of the inequality here," da Silva said while gesturing to the rutted dirt road running by his house. "The government doesn't bother to pave the streets here. We're just totally forgotten."

Offenders occupy a jail cell in Salvador. Crime among the poor
has jammed the penal system. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald)

A man begs for change outside the Salvador church Nossa
Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos.(Carl Juste/Miami Herald)


GAP IN NORTHEAST

The divisions are felt even in the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador, where more than three-quarters of the population is black and where African-based culture and religion are the mainstream.

Ivete Sacramento, who became the country's first black president of a major university in 1998, said she is saddened every day when she looks out the balcony of her upper-middle-class apartment at the sprawling slum that sits just a few dozen yards away.

Except for her family and two other households, every resident in her 64-unit apartment tower is white. In the nearby slum, the racial equation is inverted, and white faces are rare. ‘‘No one has any idea that blacks can be anything more than maids," said Sacramento, 54.

‘‘The place of blacks in Brazil is still the place of slaves."

Alberto Borges, a 31-yearold aspiring boxer from the slum, said that just being from his neighborhood is a strike against him.

"If you live in one of these houses, the people outside will call you preto," Borges said, using a word for black Brazilians that many consider derogatory. "If you try to find a job and tell them where you come from, they won't call back."

Despite the disparities, debate about race is rare in Brazil., and problems are more felt than spoken about.

Black Brazilians have never launched a civil-rights movement like that in the United States nor developed national black leaders in the mold of Martin Luther King Jr. or South Africa's Nelson Mandela.

Also non-existent are black civic groups with the power of U.S. institutions such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or financial networks that could spur black entrepreneurship.

A squatter named Beatriz, hanging laundry
under the glare of a bare bulb, is one of many
who occupy abandoned buildings in Salvador.
(Carl Juste/Miami Herald)


A BACKLASH

Those who do speak out about racial disparities, such as TV da Gente, are accused -- even by some prominent blacks -- of fomenting racial divisions or of outright racism.

‘‘Every time we try to put together a project like this, we're criticized by the government and everyone else who says there is no racism in Brazil," said Hasani Damazio, TV da Gente's director of international programs. "It's clear that race is treated very differently here than in the U.S."

A key difference is that Brazil never imposed legal racial segregation like the United States and South Africa, which meant that black Brazilians didn't have an institutional injustice to rally around.

Black leaders also blame what they describe as decades of self-censorship about race spurred by the "racial democracy'' vision of their country, which long defined Brazilian self-identity.

Preached in the early 20th century by sociologist Gilberto Freyre, the vision depicted a Brazil that was freeing itself of racism and even of the concept of race through pervasive mixing of the races.

Opponents of the pending affirmative-action bills have echoed key points of Freyre's argument, especially those about miscegenation. Census statistics show that about 30 percent of Brazilian households in 2000 were headed by couples from different racial backgrounds -- six times the U.S. ratio.

Ali Kamel, executive director of news for the country's biggest television network, Globo, said Brazilians don't think in terms of white and black, and argued that poverty affects all Brazilians. He blamed a collapse in public education and not racism for social disparities.

"Our big problem in Brazil is poverty, not racial discrimination," Kamel said. "The racism here is at a degree infinitesimally less than in other countries."

Opposition to the affirmative-action bills also has come from some black leaders such as José Carlos Miranda, coordinator of Brazil's Black Socialist Movement, who fear that racebased policies could aggravate racism.

"The worst thing we could do is pass laws that deepen divisions that already exist," Miranda said. "What wounds us the most is class, and the only way to fight racism is to promote more equality."

Other black activists, however, argue that race is the dividing factor and that racial mixing didn't eliminate discrimination against nonwhites.

A couple embrace in a Salvador doorway, in a neighborhood
popular with squatters. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald)


'PREJUDICE ISSUE'

"The problem of Brazil always was this issue of thinking the mulatto and the pardo are outside of the prejudice issue," Araujo said. ‘‘Yet, when you want to hit the soul of someone, you call him black."

More Brazilians are coming around to Araujo's view, polls show, and the timeworn idea of a multi-hued racial democracy is losing its sway, even as the race debate heats up.

In its place has risen the begrudging admittance of a racially segregated country. A 2003 poll showed that more than 90 percent of Brazilians said racism existed here.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former leftist activist and union leader, is credited with helping to spur the changes in attitudes.

Soon after taking office in 2003, he made race a key issue and appointed Brazil's first black Supreme Court justice, Joaquim Barbosa. Lula da Silva also created a special secretariat for racial equality and launched initiatives such as requiring that Afro-Brazilian history be taught in all primary schools.

Many black leaders are skeptical that the latest changes will have any lasting impact. They point out that although the country's 1988 constitution criminalized racism, few people have served jail time for breaking the law. The woman who insulted da Silva in the elevator was sentenced to community service but has appealed the ruling.

"Things have gotten worse," said Antônio Carlos dos Santos, president of Ilê Aiyê, a community group in Salvador known for both its African-influenced Carnaval parades and its consciousness-raising social projects.

"Sure, we have people who are more conscious about the situation, but this is a land that's stepping backward," he said. "We are almost 80 percent of this state, but we're still controlled by the white minority."

It's a cynicism shared by ordinary Brazilians such as da Silva, who live every day with the country's crushing inequalities. But in his case, and for many black Brazilians, cynicism is giving way to action.

Roberte Santana, 14, works out in a boxing gym, where
Salvador slum youths find an outlet. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald)

A man in a wheelchair gets a ride from a caregiver in the
Ipanema section of Rio de Janeiro. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald)


`

 

[nittie]

The world slave trade was abolished in the 10th century. It lasted about 100 years until some Portugese pirates captured African fishmen and sold them into slavery, fast forward to today and there are more people in slavery than during the African slave trade. It's good Blacks are standing up but it will not eliminate the natural virus that plagues human beings basically the strong will always oppress the weak regardless of race, creed or color.

 

[QueEx]

CUBA


<font size="5"><center>A barrier for Cuba's blacks</font size><font size="4">
New attitudes on once-taboo race questions
emerge with a fledgling black movement</font size></center>

A group of Rastafarians gathers at a park in Old Havana. The
movement has gained a foothold, especially among younger
Afro-Cubans. (Miami Herald staff)


Miami Herald Staff Report
June 20, 2007

HAVANA -- Six-foot-two, brown skinned and with semi-curly hair, Denny walked confidently into a government warehouse for a recent job interview. Sitting across from the white manager, he rattled off his qualifications: high school diploma, courses in tourism, hard worker.

They weren't good enough: He needed his white brother-in-law to vouch for him, Denny recalled.

"Black people tend to do everything bad here," the manager said.

After Fidel Castro's revolution triumphed in 1959, he declared that Cuba would be a raceless society, banned separate facilities for blacks and whites and launched a string of free education and health programs for the poor -- most of them blacks.

Many blacks people still support Castro, saying that without him they would still be peons in the sugar cane fields. One black Cuban diplomat said he had no hope of an education, and his grandmother no medical care for her glaucoma, until the revolution came along.

But listen to some blacks, particularly those born after 1959, and the failures of the revolution also become clear.

"Everyone is not equal here," said Ernesto, 37, as he dodged traffic on a Havana street. Tall and athletically built, he once hoped to be a star soccer player. He now gets by selling used clothing, and said he's continually hassled by police just because he's black.

In recent years, a new attitude has been emerging quietly, almost secretly, among Afro-Cubans on what it means to be black in a communist system that maintains ‘‘No hay racismo aquí'' -- there's no racism here -- and tends to brand those who raise the issue of race as enemies of the revolution.

"The absence of the debate on the racial problem already threatens . . . the revolution's social project," wrote Esteban Morales Domínguez, a University of Havana professor who is black, in one of his several little-known papers on race since 2005.

In another paper, he noted that "much of the research that has been done on the subject in general has been put away in drawers, endlessly waiting to be published." Black filmmaker Rigoberto López also broached the sensitive topic in a TV appearance in December, saying that while the revolution had brought about structural changes toward racial equality, "its results do not allow us to affirm that its goals have been achieved in all their dimensions."

A young girl peeks as Cuban schoolchildren practice marching
in the Prado, a historic plaza in Old Havana. (Miami Herald staff)


'A NEW MOMENTUM'

Afro-Cubans familiar with the situation say black and white Cubans also have been establishing a small but growing number of civil rights-type groups. The government has not cracked down on such usually illegal activities, but neither has it officially recognized them.

"There is a new momentum, which the government is surely frightened by," said Carlos Moore, a Cuban-born expert on race issues now living in Brazil.

In recent years, the Castro government has been on the defensive on the race question. In last year's book 100 Hours With Fidel by French-Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, Castro admitted that while the revolution had brought progress for women and blacks, discrimination endures.

"Blacks do not live in the best homes; they're still . . . performing hard jobs, sometimes less-remunerated jobs, and fewer blacks receive family remittances in foreign currency than their white compatriots," he said.

Still, Castro added: "I am satisfied by what we're doing to discover causes that, if we don't fight them vigorously, tend to prolong alienation in successive generations."

But Castro's own Communist Party and government fall short on the race front. Only four recognizably black faces sit on the party's 21- member Political Bureau, and only two sit on the government's top body, the 39- member Council of Minis- ters.

The highest-ranking black in Cuba is Esteban Lazo, a former party chief in the provinces of Havana and Santiago de Cuba. Lazo was tapped by Castro when he took ill last summer, along with brother Raúl Castro and four others, to help rule Cuba in his absence.

And yet, black faces populate Cuba's political prisons. Some of the nation's best known dissidents are black. They include independent librarian Omar Pernét Hernández, mason Orlando Zapata Tamayo and physician Oscar Elias Biscét. The latter was sentenced to 27 years for, among other things, organizing a seminar on Martin Luther King's non--violent forms of protest.

"Race is the biggest social issue facing Cuba," said Enrique Patterson, a Cuban-born Miami author who writes extensively about race, and calls this nation's race problem a "social bomb."

"If this problem isn't addressed, Cuba will not be governable in the future."

A mural declares 'Somos Uno' -- We Are One.
(Miami Herald staff)


RACE STILL DIVIDES

Patterson said he believes that while Castro has kept the lid on the race issue by squashing past attempts by blacks to organize or speak out, a post-Castro Cuba won't be able to contain the frustrations.

"If the Cuban government were to permit black Cubans to organize and raise their problems before [authorities] . . . totalitarianism would fall," he said.

Look beyond the white, brown and black faces in government propaganda murals plastered throughout this island under the slogan Somos Uno -- We Are One -- and race still divides. Today's Cuba is more racially and socially integrated than the United States, but it is far from color-blind.

Whites are clearly preferred in the government controlled and highly profitable tourism industry, from taxi drivers to waitresses and hotel maids. Meanwhile, blacks in Old Havana are continually stopped by police for I.D. checks on suspicion of black market activities.

Television programs overwhelmingly show most blacks in menial jobs, and Cubans, like other Latin Americans, still use a cutting expression for a black they admire: El es negro, pero . . . '' -- He is black, but . . .

"Just look at the cab drivers lined up in Old Havana," Cito, 52, an Afro-Cuban doctor whispered so his neighbors would not overhear his complaint. "You rarely see someone who looks like me."

Nearly three years ago, Cito, fed up with his paltry government salary and what he described as the racist attitude of his white supervisor, left his post. He now makes his living on the black market, buying meat from farmers in the countryside and selling it in Havana.

"This country has taken away all of my will to live in it," said Cito, 52, whose tiny and sparsely furnished apartment seems like a luxury compared with the rest of his crumbling building. Cito, 52, who is dark-skinned and has the body of a linebacker, recalled his early days in medical school when he dated his now ex-wife, who is white.

He recalled a running conversation his future mother-in-law would have with her daughter: "He's not a bad guy. I know his family. But there are a lot of other young men in the school you can date. Why him?"

He knew exactly what she meant; she did not want a black son-in-law.

The work of a German graffiti artist in the
Muralendo area depicts two Afro-Cubans
dancing. (Miami Herald staff)


DISPARITY IN NUMBERS

Cuba's official statistics offer little help on the race issue. The 2002 census, which asked Cubans whether they were white, black or mestizo/mulatto, showed 11 percent of the island's 11.2 million people described themselves as black. The real figure is more like 62 percent, according to the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

And the published Census figures provide no way at all to compare blacks and whites in categories like salary or educational levels. Ramón Colás, who left Cuba in 2001 and now runs an Afro-Cuba race-relations project in Mississippi, said he once carried out his own telling survey: Five out of every 100 private vehicles he counted in Havana were driven by a Cuban of color.

The disparity between the census' 11 percent and UM's 62 percent also reflects the complicated racial categories in a country where if you look white you are considered white, no matter the genes.

"You know, there are seven different types of blacks in Cuba," said Denny, who now works as a waiter but dreams of a hip-hop career. From darkest to lightest, they are: negro azul, prieto, moreno, mulato, trigueño, jabao and blanconaso.

For Denny, one of six children, the color quagmire astonishes even him sometimes. One sister is married to a light-skinned Cuban who considers himself white, and another is married to a Spaniard. And even though his complexion would allow him to claim something other than black, he says, adamantly and without any reservation, "Me, I am black. I choose to be black."

This identification, he says, was reinforced by his experiences in schools where teachers often favored his lighter-skinned classmates.

"Even though he knew they didn't have the answer," he recalled of one teacher, ‘‘he would rather call on them than ask me."

And while Cubans of his mother's and grandmother's generations readily accept endearing uses of negro or negrito, his peers are treating it as their "N'' word.

"It's unacceptable," said Denny, whose access to the outside world via illegal Internet and satellite TV hook-ups have given him a perspective on race that Cubans in general lack.

He pays for those with U.S. dollars he earns, a relative rarity for blacks. Since whites make up the overwhelming majority of the Cuban exile (population), whites get the bulk of the cash remittances sent to relatives on the island. A study in 2000 by UM's Cuba studies institute found that the average white Cuban received $81 a year in remittances, compared to $31 for non-white Cubans.

Denny, the would-be hip hop performer, said he also sees racial changes coming through his kind of music, which sometimes defies the government and peppers its rhymes with references to racism.

He remembers one man in particular who landed in jail. ‘‘He was rapping, ‘If you are black, and feel that you are treated equal,' raise your hand. . . . He was arrested by the police."

A tourist poses with a woman dressed in a costume in Havana.
Whites are preferred for jobs in the government-controlled tourism
industry. (Miami Herald staff)


MOVEMENT

On a recent Sunday at a Havana park, a group of mostly black Cubans in their 20s and 30s, including some dreadlocked Rastafarians, carried on an intense discussion on reggae icon Bob Marley, whose songs depicted the black struggle.

"He understands what we are going through," said Omar, 31, proudly showing off a life-size portrait of Marley tattooed on his back.

Such talk can be scary to Cubans who know their history. While blacks made up a good portion of the mambises who fought against Spanish colonial rule, they remained poor and ill-treated after Cuba won its independence. A black revolt in 1912 was brutally crushed, leaving behind hundreds of dead and a deeply ingrained fear.

"Their rights and protection from potential genocide and violence depended on them never trying to organize politically as blacks," said Mark Sawyer, a UCLA professor who spent 11 months in Cuba researching his recently published book, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba.

That kind of talk also likely scares the Castro government.

"There is an unstated threat," Moore said. "Blacks in Cuba know that whenever you raise race in Cuba, you go to jail. Therefore the struggle in Cuba is different. There cannot be a civil rights movement. You will have instantly 10,000 black people dead."

Yet something of a black movement is indeed growing, he added.

"It's subterranean, and taking place among intellectuals and people in general," said Moore. "The government is frightened to the extent to which it does not understand black Cubans today. You have a new generation of black Cubans who are looking at politics in another way."

But the government still has a hold over black Cubans -- the fear that the collapse of the communist system would make their lives even worse.

"Black Cubans are afraid of a return of the people in Miami," Moore said. "They are afraid of a restoration of the U.S. influence. The last link Castro has to the black population is based on those two fears. The third is: They are afraid that the social advantages the revolution brought in terms of health, education and even political participation will be abolished if American influence and white influence are reestablished."

Denny says he shares those concerns, but is willing to take the risk.

"We are never going to be slaves again," he said. "We are not stupid. We know the development of the world . . . We intend to have a better life."

A woman sways to the sounds of DJ 'El Fruta' as others enjoy
the reggae music at a small park in Old Havana. (Miami Herald staff)

Rapper Mario Delgado Sotomayor, aka Soto, idolizes American
rappers such as Tupac and 50 Cent. Cuban hip-hop sometimes
defies the government and peppers its rhymes with references
to racism. (Miami Herald staff)

A man reads the newspaper as two boys practice drumming in
Havana. Racial categories can be complicated in a country
where if you look white you are considered white, no matter
the genes.(Miami Herald staff)

A young couple watches a play about Cuban unity
by children at a Havana artists colony. (Miami Herald staff)


`

The Miami Herald withheld the name of the correspondent who wrote this dispatch, and the last name of most of the people interviewed, because the reporter lacked the Cuban journalist's visa required to work on the island. Miami Herald Translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

`

 

[QueEx]

More information about Afro-Cuba:

AfroCubaWeb
http://afrocubaweb.com/

Quarterly Journal of Afro-Cuban Issues
http://www.angelfire.com/planet/islas/

The Real Cuba
http://therealcuba.com/

Center for the Understanding of Cubans of African Descent
http://cucad.org/
​

`

 

[LennyNero1972]

DAmn that article on Cuba is right on time! a lady friend and I were talking about race issues in Cuba earlier tonight( she is half Cuban). Keep posting that good shit homie!!!

 

[face_kicker]

Yo son. Great work on all these articles brother. I know and I've experienced alot of this stuff first hand, but it's nice to see that there are people out there writting articles about it to try to create some sort of debate or conversation about it. Thanks for the outstanding post!

 

[JD Walker]

Colin...

 

[LennyNero1972]

Colin...

Sorry I have to say fuck Colin on this one. This is a must read!!!!

 

[FlatbushNicca]

That is the reason on any application i check both Latin and Black.........Panamanian background !!!!!!
Good read!!!

 

[nukdollars]

good info...BLACK POWER!!!!

 

[AristotlesOwn]

Panama next! I was amazed by what I saw when I went down there.

 

[Panameno718]

OK, so what's your point, man, I've known about the population of Blacks in all types of countries, alot of mothafuckas are so ignorant that they think blacks only reside in America, when they've been all over the place.

I have to agree with this post , I posted this article in a another thread a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?p=2488935#post2488935
Blacks around the world will never unite because we will use nationalitites, languages, and cultures to seperate of us from each other even though we are the same in skin color .

 

[GET YOU HOT]

Good work Que, i hope some will agree, that it is perserverance &culture, that bonds these people. Learn it, live it, respect it.

For blacks in the United States, it is rapture via matierialism, exploitation, vices that has "African Americans", caught up, its a state of mind over matter. Be content with who you are, your life is not a video, you are not a rap star, NBA baller, driving big cars, make a name for yourself and be happy...1

 

[Izayoi]

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I was appalled by Dr. Hernandez's comments. I hope they were taken out of context or misquoted else she was doing a tremendous disservice by insulting the folks and students at CCNY that she was not subtly referring to.

I've sent her an e-mail. If she responds I hope she will say she was misquoted. I don't usually get hype about stuff I read online, but as a woman and professor, I was disgusted at the thought that she would rep herself, the Dominican Center at CCNY, and the community of CCNY so negatively.

Again, hope it was taken out of context.

I'll post the reply if she bothers to respond.

* Edited to remove profanity (that had my pressure up) AND to add Dr. Hernandaz's response to the article. The original article was published in the Miami Herald. Dr. Hernandez was kind enough to direct me to her response via e-mail. Couldn't locate the other reply link, but here is a site link for the letters from Dr. Hernandez and the grad student quoted.

http://clutchmagonline.com/newsgossipinfo/black-denial-response-did-the-miami-herald-have-an-agenda/
*

A Response to the Miami Herald


I had welcomed the opportunity to participate in an interview with a Miami Herald journalist on November 16th of 2006 relating to a series of articles about Afro-Latin Americans. Unfortunately, my opinions have been badly misquoted and misrepresented by the author of the article entitled “Black Denial,” which was published on June 13, 2007. I take enormous umbrage with the extreme mischaracterization of my unwavering commitment to the recognition of the African heritage shared by the Dominican people. Moreover, the quotes attributed to me negate my own work as a published author whose writings have not shied away from topics of race and blackness.


The Dominican Studies Institute has a proven track record of organizing activities discussing the issue of prejudice against blackness in the Dominican Republic as well as in the United States. In fact, the interview on November 16 2006 for this article occurred directly after a lecture by Professor Ginetta Candelario entitled “Black Behind the Ears: Blackness in Dominican Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops,” which inaugurated The Dominican Lecture Series. It was not accident that we had chosen to discuss a forthcoming academic publication dealing with racial identity formation among Dominicans. I was surprised that the article included no reference to that lecture; nor to the fact that it was organized in collaboration with the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC); nor that IRADAC’s conference room was filled to capacity with a largely Dominican audience and that many people were forced to listen standing outside the conference room.


As an academic I have a track record of calling attention to the plight of Dominicans as a black group. I have written about how Dominicans’ dark skin color negatively impacts their standard of living in the United States. Similarly, I have worked closely with many of the persons cited in the article “Black Denial” who are celebrated advocates of Dominican blackness, such as Blas Jimenes with whom I recently co-edited a book Desde la orilla: hacia una nacionalidad sin desalojos (From the Margins: Towards a Nationality without Exclusion/Evictions), which discusses issues relating to marginalized identities in the Dominican Republic.


I tried to show the complexity of the issue of Dominican blackness to the reporter, but she clearly misinterpreted my effort to do so. In the interview, I compared notions of beauty in the two countries and called attention to how race relations in the United States have a negative impact on the ways in which persons of color view themselves.


There is no justification for the quotes attributed to me in this article. The comments are simply racist and negrophobic. The allegation that I made such deeply offensive and nasty remarks reinforces a portrayal of the Dominican people as a racially alienated group who deny themselves by denying their blackness. The author of this article has assumed a paradigm that has been commonly accepted by some persons in the United States and Europe, which is that the Dominican Republic is a backwardly negrophobic society. I think that the overly simplistic notion of Dominican negrophobia is condescending and counterproductive, particularly when one takes into account that the Dominican Republic has for centuries been a site of black struggle and resistance. It is imprudent to simplify the mentalities and the views of a people who possess such a rich history of systematic struggle against human injustice.


My comments were absolutely misquoted and taken out of context by this reporter. The way the reporter has quoted me has hurt not only the Dominican people, particularly black Dominican women, I included, but also every black person who takes pride in his/her blackness, and every person who objects to racism and the devaluing of humanity.

 

[thoughtone]

Brazil in Black and White

Interesting documnetary on how Brazil is dealing with their recent civil rights (race) challeges.

Brazil in Black and White Site

Interesting Quiz About Brazil's History


The Preview Video


The Full Program

 

[QueEx]

b
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[MCP]

OK, so what's your point, man, I've known about the population of Blacks in all types of countries, alot of mothafuckas are so ignorant that they think blacks only reside in America, when they've been all over the place.

Couldn't agree with you more on this one...

I have had the unfortunately experience of meeting some black folks from the USA who really surprised that there were so many black people living in Britain.......*sighs*

 

[QueEx]

. . . I have had the unfortunately experience of meeting some black folks from the USA who [were] really surprised that there were so many black people living in Britain.......*sighs*

Man, everybody knows that . . .

[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/v/ukONzCkxLkk&rel=1[/FLASH]

 

[APOPHIS]

Kaya, posted this on the main board some time ago.
Very enlightening article.

 

[hawk919]

The Original Hebrew Israelites/The tribe of Judah, was spread unto the four corners of the Earth..............

We everywhere, and are treated bad everywhere

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Brazilians possessed by spirits
as Umbanda religion grows</font size></center>

A practitioner of the Afro-Brazilian religion
Umbanda raises her hands while cleaning
the spirit of another worshipper.


By Jack Chang | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Before the drums and chanting began, retired seamstress Rosa Silva Cardoso seemed to be the gentle octogenarian as she sat in a folding chair and greeted a steady stream of well-wishers in the back of the worship space she runs.

That changed when this temple of the Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda exploded into frenetic activity. With the drums pounding out an ever more hypnotic beat, Cardoso entered a trance and, after a quick costume change, began twirling over the wood floor in a ruffled black and red dress. Onlookers said she'd been possessed by the spirit of a gypsy.

Since Umbanda began a century ago, millions of Brazilians have undergone similar possessions while practicing Brazil's most popular folk religion in neighborhood temples.

People have embodied African gods, Brazilian folk heroes and even underworld figures as the drums and incense drove them on. They've also come to such temples to receive the treasured counsel that those entities are known to give.

At Cardoso's temple, worshippers groaned and writhed as they were possessed by the devilish spirit of Exu. A tall, lanky man instantly became the malandro, or the rogue, which meant prancing around in a straw hat while puffing on a cigarette.

"When the entity comes, I feel out of breath, and it's like I'm fainting," Cardoso said after the ceremony. "All I need to do is open the door and let it in."

Umbanda has been a natural fit for a country where many believe in the everyday presence of spirits and omens. What's drawn the interest of international scholars is the religion's unmistakably Brazilian bent, which has won it fame as the country's only home-grown faith.

Umbanda's Brazilian focus is most obvious in its pantheon of spirits, which includes popular folk figures such as the rogue, who's a fixture of street culture here; the freed slave known as the preto velho; and an indigenous warrior known as the caboclo, who can appear adorned with feathered headdresses and bows and arrows.

Worshippers also can be possessed by someone from the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, a cowboy from southern Brazil or a poor ranch hand. In its use of Brazilian folk mythology, it'd be as if worshippers in the United States were possessed by cowboys, astronauts and blues singers.

"It developed as Brazilian cultural nationalism was growing, and people were interested in what it meant to be Brazilian," said Diana Brown, an associate professor in anthropology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., who's studied Umbanda. "There was an effort to make this a Brazilian religion."

According to the religion's folklore, Umbanda took off after a teenager near Rio de Janeiro was possessed by an indigenous spirit known as the Caboclo das Sete Encruzilhadas, or the Indian of Seven Crossroads, in 1908.

That event launched what would become a potent mix of African religions, Roman Catholicism and the teachings of 19th-century French spiritualist Allan Kardec. The religion now claims as many as 8 million devotees and more than 100,000 temples around Brazil.

Many temples are holding special ceremonies this year to celebrate the religion's centennial, which is as much about survival as it is about spirituality.

Throughout the early 20th century, Brazilian governments, alarmed at the religion's intense ceremonies, outlawed its practice, forcing many worshippers underground. Although the religion is legal now, Brazil's mushrooming Pentecostal churches still regularly condemn Umbanda and other Afro-Brazilian religions as the work of the devil.

Armando Fernandes, the president of a temple in a poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, said that such persecution shows a lack of understanding of the religion and its ceremonies. He spoke while embodying an indigenous spirit known as the Seven-Arrows Indian.

"We've suffered a lot of discrimination, but people just need to understand us," Fernandes said in the heavy lisp that's characteristic of the indigenous spirit. "We're helping communities in need of spiritual healing."

According to Zumira dos Santos Magalhaes, a manicurist who visited Cardoso's temple, many attend Umbanda ceremonies to ask counsel from spirits on everyday problems.

At Friday's ceremony, dozens of people paid $4 each to ask worshippers embodying the spirits about everything from how to get a pay raise to what to do about an unfaithful spouse. The questions commonly sparked long discussions reminiscent of therapy sessions.

"Each entity speaks in a different way with different words, so you have to figure out what they mean," Magalhaes said. "But their advice helps a lot of people."

Cardoso said she joined the religion at age 17 after a possessed worshipper held her hands and cured her of a mysterious illness. She said she hasn't been sick in the nearly seven decades since then, a miracle she credits to the spirit world.

"Everyone has their faith, and Umbanda has been the faith of many Brazilians for many years," she said. "And it's worked for many of us."

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/34369.html

 

[J-BOOGIE]

Damn, Que, thanks for bumping this. It was obviously posted during my departure, of sorts...

All of these I have known about due my interaction with various people FROM these very places, and some of the neighborhoods I have lived in in DC and San Francisco. Very rich information...

It's funny that Latin America and The Caribbean have always taken pride in their self proclaimed expert method of handling the race issue. But obviously this expert technique is subject to interpretation, depending upon WHO it is that claims it as such...

Know what I mean?

Excellent thread!!!