As politics shift, African Diaspora professor looks out for black Brazilians

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, an associate professor in UWM’s African and African Diaspora Studies Department, always expects a full inbox these days. Every day, she is inundated with emails about news from Brazil – a new anti-crime proposal, another report of police violence, or the latest remark by right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro.

It’s part and parcel with her role as the president of the Brazil Studies Association, an international organization of scholars and activists, and as the leader of the Afro- Brazilian committee of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil. As an expert on race and politics in Brazil, Mitchell- Walthour has been supporting the activism of black Brazilians as political tensions heighten in the South American country.

Can you give us an overview of demographics in Brazil? Many people think of it as primarily a Latino country, but it’s much more racially diverse than that.

Officially, today, Brazil is 54 percent Afro-Brazilian. Of course, that is an undercount because of the racial politics in the country. If you go by census numbers, most Afro-Brazilians identify as "pardo," which is designated as racially-mixed people. There’s also the census category "preto" (black). Blackness is very stigmatized in Brazil, so some of those Afro-Brazilians will not identify as "preto" in the census.

The category "pardo" is somewhat different than the category that we have in the United States. In general, when we talk about racially-mixed people, we’re talking about people who might have a black parent and a white parent, or a Latino parent and white parent. But in Brazil, people can identify in this category and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have two parents of different racial backgrounds; it could mean that they have a great-great-grandmother who was white.

African and African Diaspora Studies professor Gladys Mitchell-Walthour briefed members of Congress about the circumstances of Afro-Brazilians in April. Photo courtesy of Gladys-Mitchell Walthour.

Why are people so reluctant to identify themselves as Afro-Brazilian?

“History” is really the answer to this question. At the outset, when the Portuguese came to Brazil, there were indigenous people already there, and then the Portuguese brought enslaved people from Africa. There was a lot of sexual violence by European men against indigenous and African women. That’s the first step to racial mixture in Brazil. This is a violent history, but it’s often not discussed.

Later, there were so many African descendants that they were beginning to outnumber Europeans. (Europeans) were concerned about the national image. They encouraged European immigrants to intermarry with African descendants. They even subsidized Italians and Germans to come to Brazil to work and encouraged this racial mixture. The reason they were encouraging this is because their ideal was that black people would disappear.

Today, blackness is stigmatized, and there’s also stigma against racially-mixed people who may have black characteristics. People consider things like, how is your nose shaped? How big are your lips? What hair type do you have, in order to identify people.

For those of us who haven’t been following international news, what is the current political situation in Brazil?

[President Jair Bolsonaro] began his term at the beginning of this year. Before he was elected, people were already organizing because they knew his reputation. During his entire political career, he has been homophobic, racist, classist, sexist, and misogynist.

Both activists and scholars can talk about all of the horrible things that he has verbalized over time but that’s just part of it. The other part is, what is he doing in practice? And who has he appointed in his administration who can enact and enforce those policies?

The president campaigned as being tough on crime, which is attractive in a country that has problems with drugs and gangs.

I just got an email today about an anti-crime proposal that they are trying to pass in Brazil that would loosen gun control and have stricter criminalization of gang members and drug dealers. But the other thing about Brazil is that many innocent people have been killed by police because they are suspected criminals, and who are those people? They’re Afro-Brazilian.

In 2016, 4,222 people were killed by police in Brazil. In 2017, it was 5,225. And in 2018, it was 6,160. These are huge numbers! When you look at the percentages, most of them are Afro-Brazilian. This is why these universal anti-crime policies that may not seem so bad to the general public make activists call this crime bill “genocide.” They already know who the innocent people are who are dying due to policies like these. Fifty black organizations in Brazil are organizing now to protest this bill.

What are some of the administration’s other policies that concern you and Afro-Brazilian activists?

Another issue is education. The current president cut 30 percent of funding for public, federal universities. The former president, who was impeached, signed into law in 2012 that public federal universities have to implement affirmative action. There are quotas for students that come from public schools, which are attended mainly by Afro-Brazilians, and then there are sub-quotas for indigenous and Afro-Brazilian students. Some of these universities have been very critical and vocal about the government. This is a way to punish them.

"Bolsa Família" is is a conditional cash-transfer program that lifted millions of people out of poverty. Most of those people were Afro-Brazilian. The president has stated in the past that children in Bolsa Familia households have lower intellectual development. When he was elected, he tried to assure people that he was supportive of the program, but that’s a program that’s definitely under threat, just given his past statements.

Also, in Brazil, there were many "quilombo" communities – communities that enslaved people, when they ran away, established throughout Brazil. In the 1988 constitution, legislators ensured land titling for those people. This is extremely progressive, but the problem is, there hasn’t been much funding allocated for land titling. In fact, the funding has decreased. That’s something that’s also under threat.

You’ve been to Washington, D.C. in the past few months to brief members of Congress about the state of Afro-Brazilian politics in Brazil. What was your goal, and what do you hope Congress does with the information you presented?

The goal was to make people aware of the impact of the current administration’s policies on Afro-Brazilian communities and to connect with African American descendant politicians who might also be empathetic to what’s going on in Brazil. Fortunately, Gwen Moore, from Wisconsin, has been very supportive. Every small stride is a success, and our goal is to make people aware and committed to what we are doing. The second is to get general Americans to know what’s going on in Brazil.

We also want to include black activists in the U.S. It’s so easy for Americans to think about the racial issues here as only happening in the U.S., but so many of these issues, like police violence, transcend borders. Making these connections explicitly and strategically is important. We’re not saying, “We’re Americans and we have the answers.” But we can show our ally-ship and we can support people, and for me, that’s really important and fulfilling work to do.

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science