Yesterday we met with Claudete Alves, currently one (1) of only five (5) women on the Sao Paolo City Council, and the only female Afro-Brazilian councilwoman in the City of Sao Paolo in the last 450 years (with the exception of another Afro-Brazilian woman who didn’t finish her term). She described her experience in this position as a lonely and challenging fight against racism and sexism, through which she has been accused of promoting reverse discrimination. During our conversation with the councilwoman, she described an experience that she had coming to the United States in 2004. She visited various cities including New York, Washington D.C., Seattle, Atlanta, and New Orleans, and through her experience she said that although racial discrimination was much more explicit and clear, she never felt so much like a citizen. In Brazil, she said that in any state, she can go to a middle class restaurant and if she is just waiting to meet someone, standing alone she will get suspicious glances from the waiters, who assume that she is a prostitute simply because she is an Afro-Brazilian. It is not a new phenomenon that Afro-Brazilian women in Brazil don’t have access to their rights, nor are they guaranteed protection from domestic or state violence.
In fact, during our meeting today with Geledes, the President of the program, Solymar Carneiro, spoke to us about the implementation of the Ministry of Women and the Ministry of Race in the Brazilian government and how both of these positions were created to people from discrimination based on gender and race, but how they fail to protect Afro-Brazilian women. The Ministry of Women and the Ministry of Race both fail to address the needs of Afro-Brazilian women, and instead focus on the needs and issues affecting white women and Afro-Brazilian men.
During this trip, I have come to understand that countries are the same in that racial discrimination is a real occurrence, however in the U.S. minorities are more apt to admit to being discriminated against by virtue of their race than in Brazil. Afro-Brazilian women are fighting this fight in Brazil with the help of organizations like Geledes, however, just as they face discrimination in everyday life, they experience this type of discrimination in securing fundamental protections and rights from the state. This story is not too different from story of African American women in the United States, who often in guise are represented by the Women’s Movement, even though their needs are not fully understood and addressed. Part of my project looks at discrimination and the various forms it takes. The failure to address the issues affecting Afro-Brazilian women’s rights is one of the main facets of discrimination that is predominant in Brazil. The fact that women play a central role in the family in Brazil makes this situation even more important to focus on, because if their potential is shunted systematically, the decisions they make and the reality that they implant in their children is essentially affecting generations of people.
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