Experiencing a Small Part the Black Movement in Brazil - EducAfro

Today I ate some magical toast and drank some magical tea that will supposedly make me fall in love with EducAfro, and pay for one of their students to come to the United States.  If only David Santos, the head of EducAfro, knew that the poor grad student's bank account leaves them barely enough to feed themselves month to month...

As I mentioned in my last post, EducAfro is a non-government organization that is focusing on the black movement in Brazil.  They very strongly feel that universities in Brazil should have quotas in place, and are not happy with a point system compromise.  After meeting with many universities in Brazil, they realized (according to them) that the universities of Brazil were not going to do anything about the racial inequalities, so they were going to have to interfere.  In many cases they use protesting as a way to get the universities to listen to their cause.  They are sick of the university administrators who only do research, but do not do anything about the results that are found.

In an example of one of the more extreme protests (that we heard about at least), when the organization first started they would send some of their younger students to the university each week and they'd stand in front of the school entrance with a cross (as if they were being crucifed) and protest until the school would budge.  

We were taught their protest chant as well - sing along if you'd like:

"Che, Zumbi, Antonio Consehero
Na luta por juctiça somos todo companheiros"

As soon as we walked in, you could see the huge difference in their organization compared to the university we had visited the day before.  For one, Wendi, our T.A. had to translate for him the entire time, as opposed to the fluent English we had experienced at UNICAMP.  Their power point was also not as polished, they do not have as many resources, and you can see how their battle will not be easy to win. 

One of the more moving and emotional parts of our visit was the story David told us when asked about how he identifies (his skin is of a lighter shade, his mother is white, father black).  I am going to keep the story a lot shorter than what he told us:

Basically growing up, he always thought he was white, but just had a nice tan since he grew up near the beach and that his hair was  nappy (as he called it) becuase of the salty air.  His father married a white woman and moved three states away to be closer to whites. (sidenote: of every 100 black people in Brazil, 83 will be ashamed to say they are black.) Much later on, David and his siblings went to Bahia to find their black relatives.  They couldn't find any and assumed they also married whites and moved away. (At this point, David stops, and begins to cry...it is a few moments before he starts again.  Wendi starts to cry too, and it catches on throughout the room.  Even typing this I am getting teary eyed...)  Next what he had said was, "then I looked around, and realized that all of these other black people were his relatives too."

As I mentioned, there is a large chunk of this story I am leaving out, but you get the picture...

One of the aspects of the organization that disappoints me a bit is where they focus their attention.  They strictly work with people who have already finished high school, and many times they work with adults (in their 30's, 40's, 50's, and even beyond) to help them prepare for the vestibular and get into university.  In fact they put age as a priority - a 50 year old man would take priority over a 17 year old.  I think this is great, but there does not seem to be any organization that works with black students who are in high school, to get them into university at the proper age (most students in Brazil who come from private schools attend university right after high school, between the ages of 18-24.)  I know there is a much bigger issue of primary and secondary education in Brazil (I will talk about that more in my next post) that is too difficult for EducAfro to take on, but I do not understand how helping older people get into university will build a stronger middle class.  People who are in their 50's are no longer having children that they can bring up to go to college as well.  I feel like it would be better to build a pipeline into the middle class.

I was also surprised, but understood, David's feelings about Zumbi, Brazil's version of the HBCUs we have in the United States. (For those of you who are not familiar with this acronym, it stands for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, for example, Howard University.)  EducAfro feels that if you want to create a school that is only for blacks, that is great, but they will not support them.  Their goal is to integrate blacks into every aspect of Brazilian life.  I totally understand this point of view, and see how a black university is segregating the students from the rest of society, but at the same time, having an all black university will give blacks an opportunity to get a college degree that is otherwise very difficult to obtain, as well as give them the tools they need to move up in socio-economic status.