African Descendants in Brazil - Sociological and Cultural Aspects

Brazilian Official History destined to African descendants a space that starts and finishes in the slavery and above the African civilization it spread a cloud of forgetfulness and exotism that the common sense reproduces in its narratives that still point out the African and aboriginal cultures as primitive. Abolished the slavery, the African image simply blanks from History books and fixes itself at a perverse form in the social imaginary.

However, clear understanding of Brazilian History, in these 500 years, is not possible if we do not consider in a deeper form the African social presence in its constitution. The way of living, thinking and working of Brazilian people is impregnated of African matrix. Since language, passing through gestuality and religiosity, it is very difficult to do not identify the African hand and soul in what we call Brazilian culture.

When we think about typical food, we remember in African culture.

The forms of music that us Brazilian identify as ours, either singing or moving the body, we remember of African culture.

Brazilian popular parties that paint of some colors our regions are made marshy from diverse African cultures. However, how we could explain, 507 years later, the situation of exclusion of African descendant population in a country where they represent 45.8% of national people?

We cannot forget that, as well as our pupils, we ourselves were formed under a directed optic of valuate what is not inside us but, what comes from far; even because this was the cultural form that European colonizers could be always present among us.

It is common to hear from the militant people of the African descendants rights movements in Brazil that "princess Isabel signed the Golden law, but she forgot to sign the work document". This princess, daughter of the last Brazilian Emperor, signed the law, in 1888, which declared extinct slavery in our country.

And in Brazil, we also have a document that shows all real job relations, and all workers have one, that must be signed by all employers. This affirmation is ironic, but represents a cruel reality.

If we remember the unbelievable amount of works that African and their descendants slaves exerted, we have basis to asking why then the hand of African descendants workmanship was and is neglected in function of the work of immigrants from Europe and Asia who arrived /arrive in the country, at a moment when a enslaved mass has became free, but not integrated in the new economic reality. This measure clinks the clear intention of whitening the country and thus to run away from the stigmata formulated by the science of that time, whose theories pointed the African people as inferiors.

There are notices that, in the decade of 1920, a group of agriculturists African descendants from United States bought a land piece in Brazilian Amazon, but when Brazilian government knew which was their color, hindered them to enter in the country and returned the money of the purchase. For European immigrants, the lands were given and their entrance in the country was until stimulated. The happened freedom from abolition, beyond excluding, now made possible to the brand new Republic to become reality its Eurocentric dream, pushing for the peripheries of the great urban centers the dismissed African descendant mass.

Clear examples of the whitening process of Brazilian people, we see in the whitening of national personalities, with evident African descent, whitening photos and illustrations of crossbred personages and mulatos (mulattos) that, with the time and publishing effort, had started to be white, as it was the case of Machado de Assis, a very famous writer of that epoch.

When any of those ways were possible, the alternative was to become illustrious African descendants invisible, dynamic that until today characterizes the academic medias, spaces and some professional activities.

AFRICAN DESCENDANT CULTURE, THOUGHT AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION

Cultural and religious expressions of the African matrix bring educative processes that are related to the proper exercise of presentations at the moment of party and religious rituals. These processes are disclosed in music, dance, musical instruments and gestures. They are printed elements in Brazilian people’s body and are expressed through practical and verbal tradition.

Another knowledge source is found in the formed African descendant organizations in the XX century, especially those that still are in operation nowadays, the example of African social movements and movements of African descendant women. Also it is necessary to consider the formation, inside many Brazilian universities, of Afro-Brazilians Nuclei and similars, composed by a large extent for academic Afro-descendants. The creation deserves prominence, in 2000, of the Brazilian Association of African Researchers (Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores e Pesquisadoras Negros) that works through biennial meeting.

SANCHES, Neuza. "Cores do Brasil". Monografia Veja, São Paulo, 26 de março de 1997, pp. 130-132.

CEAP. Violência e Racismo, 1996, Internet.

SOARES, Rosângela. "Tá na cara que o Brasil é racista", in Jornal TCC - MNU, Salvador, setembro, 1997.

ALBERTO, LUIZ. "Caminhando com coerência." Monografia Informativa do Gabinete. Brasília, fevereiro de 1998.

ARRUDA, Roldão. "Deus é negro." Monografias do Estado de São Paulo. São Paulo, 23 de março de 1998.

Luiz Gustavo , a Brazilian teacher, from Monografia de Cunho Social e Antropologia , never could understand how people in Brazil can say that there is not discrimination against afro-descendants. He gives classes of academical and organizational writing. Monografias de conteúdo organizacional