Four years ago, I traveled in Igatu to apprentice at a local Cultural Center. In the Center I helped catalogue an inventory of books in the Center’s library. Outside of my apprenticeship I spent free moments in-thought on potential political and cultural issues. Issues inside the community of Igatu. The questions I raised then, as my Portuguese improved, focused on the identification of race. I also grappled with and the social location of me. How did I as a white American, find myself implicated as part of the dominant view?
How can I work to change this implication?
The kinds of questions I wish to consider in my Project interviews percolate from my conversation with the community members in Igatu. These conversations include my host-parents, who in their prompt ask, “How does racial segregation exist in the United States?” stimulates the commonly suppressed discussion on the issue of race as a social category. I find myself having to find points of intersection with the Civil War and Civil Rights movement and practices of Black Power in the United States.
My host-parents made statements on their identification with the societal context of Brazil (and with the President of the United States). These statements and questions remain sincere and they remain to challenge my comfortability in my social location.
For I want to further provide a space where people of the community can talk about these sincere identities of race, and provide documentation of their conversations, I decide to return to Igatu. I want to assist the community as an informed ally. I have taken care to learn about Brazil and to learn about the village before return with reading and connecting with my host-community. Last night Denise contacted me on Facebook, asking if I "perdeu meu português?" (have you lost your portuguese?) and I responded, "claro que não porque quero falar com você!"
My project intends to assist and direct in creating a meaningful experience for the people in Igatu and develop their own self-identities through the practice and ritual of talking about these confusing labels and categories that have been placed on Igatu. Asking questions on race, asking questions on the situation of many Brazilians, who live as the marginal sector (i.e. poor, black) of society it brings together the significance of my Project. How can an academic community, such as UNC, learn from the experiences and the kind of knowledges that exists for Afro-Brazilians? How are Afro-Brazilians treated as a marginal part of society, even then, make-up over 80% of the population? Asking questions on race can help in better-forming a consciousness on the issue of race. For many Brazilians do talk about their racial identity. They talk about the color of their skin as an indication of their self-identity, but also as their “savagery” (Caldwell, 81-93; Alberto, cite). The common rebuttal is one of Gilberto Freyre’s “Racial Democracy” who states, [list what he says from Vernon’s book] (Freyre, cite; Caldwell, 93- 101) . Here to ask questions on race to create an important dialogue with those who I learned to know and care about in the community.
Some of the interview questions include:
Name? Age? Number of Years living in Igatu? Self-identification of racial category?
What is your strongest memory from growing up in Igatu?
How does this memory relate to any fears or experiences growing up as a Black person?
How do you find race experienced in Igatu?
Do you know the concept Racial Democracy? Tell me about your experience with this concept.
What does the experience of Blackness exist as a kind of in Brazil? Are there bad associations to your race? What kind of stereotypes does your race face in the larger society of Bahia and Brazil
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