After reading this note will you continue to think that racism does not exist?
No white person will be able to talk about racism one day with proper property, after all white people are not the target of racism. Still, many insist that racism is a thing of the past, which has not existed since the abolition of slavery or, even worse, that there is reverse racism that, as Djamila Ribeiro has said, is the same as believing in unicorns.
In his text Djamila explains the obvious that we have so often forgotten: racism is a matter of oppression, and this oppression is exercised through power. Historically, blacks suffer from systems of oppression in a variety of ways, and this occurs - yes, in the present tense - around the world, much more often than it should.
It is common to hear that certain oppressive attitudes - racist, transphobic, homophobic, lesbophobic, gordophobic, misogynistic - “still happen in the 21st century”, but the modernization of humanity is not in itself capable of creating ideal standards. of behavior, respect and enforcement of rights. One of the proofs that being in 2016 does not free us from everyday racism and that racism does exist is the publication of Débora Figueiredo.
"Hello! Mom Deborah ”
In her Facebook profile, Deborah published a photo of a note sent by the school coordinator where her two children study: “How I wish my children would not experience any kind of prejudice, how I would like to protect them from this cruel world, how I would like to drive bad people off as good guys before they had the displeasure of having contact. My children Antonio and Benicio were victims of prejudice because of their hair, I received this message on the agenda written by the school coordinator that until then had my spite, from now on ... I can not protect them from everything, but I always will fight for them (sic) ”.
Possibly, many people will say that the coordinator just asked the mother to "fix" the children's hair, but the point is that Afro hair is essentially made up of curls, waves and volume. What's wrong with that, after all?
Standardizing aesthetic issues, whatever they may be, is already an oppressive and cruel act, since they are generally unreachable standards for most people, but standardizing aesthetic issues so that they eventually suppress the characteristics of a particular type of race is what? Racism.
I, white writer
As I said at the beginning of this opinionated piece, I will never know what racism is, simply because I am white and I don't know what it's like to be followed by security guards in a store or what it's like to see someone pulling their purse closer when I get on a bus . They never asked to touch my hair as if I were some circus attraction. They never compared me to a monkey or sent me back to the slave. It is because I have not experienced this kind of situation that my knowledge of the subject is not entirely practical, hence the initial claim that white people cannot speak of racism with full ownership.
Therefore, what I do is try not only to respect, but to listen to people like the already mentioned Djamila Ribeiro, who has an admirable curriculum and talks about racial issues with personal and academic property. Putting aside consensus such as unreal “reverse racism”, studying further the historical issues of slavery, reading accounts of people who traveled on slave ships, and seeking to understand how abolition began an unequal and separatist system in urban and social terms is a It is a good way to try to change the situation and not just comment on the absurdity of observing this kind of attitude, such as the ticket received by Deborah, “in the middle of 2016”.
How would you feel if you were in Deborah's place, or in her children's place, who are just children and shouldn't have that kind of repression in a school setting?
