“When You're Born Black in Brazil” - OPINION April 18, 2025

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“When You're Born Black in Brazil”

When you are born black in Brazil, you carry an extremely perverse and harmful stigma simply because you are a black child. This leads me to rethink the racial issue in Brazil and how much it hurts in childhood, coming from a violent, stigmatizing history, with traces of slavery.

Humanity doesn't see itself to the point of understanding, or doesn't want to see, the cruelty that has been done and continues to be done, with the issue of social inequalities and the perpetuation of racism that still hangs over us.

 This is why being born black in Brazil is difficult, but not impossible, to reverse the social inequality that separates us in this crucial and depressing abyss. This can be achieved by getting together, meditating, articulating, organizing and reversing this stage of alienation and oppression from a slave regime that has always left your soul and your inner self at the mercy of the society that historically perpetuates itself in the forms of domination and reverse education, imposed and practiced, placing our black children still in submission to the “big house”.

We live in a not-so-effective and not-so-equal democracy, which treats unequal people unequally. We still think that the concept of racism is not so present in children's daily lives, thinking that bullying is bullying and racism is something natural. However, it is essential to understand that bullying is a conflict between people, while racism is discrimination or prejudice against a social group.

Our black children urgently need a didactic and culturally specific education, through ethnic-racial literacy, as provided for in Law 10.639/2003, sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

It is necessary and urgent that education transforms its way of thinking and makes reparation for the ancestral history of our people, for affirmative action. It is no longer possible for textbooks and soap operas to persist with the idea that we were slaves in the past, without reverting this concept in the present to an affirmation that we were not slaves but enslaved. Stereotypical European white racism in Brazil still consists of manipulating and being on social media, in advertising, controlling our heads, to oppress us and perpetuate the idea that we are inferior.

To be born a black child in this country, without a sense of identity and ancestry, and to immediately reverse this sad reality and guide readings on rights, respect, equity, with educational attitudes, family and community social inclusion, requires the efforts of all of us and the Brazilian state. When you are born black in Brazil, on the outskirts or in a quilombola territory, you feel the hammer of prejudice in your eyes, at the reception desk of a health unit, on a stroll in the mall, when you are approached by the police, and the rest you already know.

Yes, we were born black in this country, and we need to constantly reverse and fight the affirmation of being black and fight against all forms of prejudice and discrimination.

When we start treating black children with love and empathy, improving and pointing out the mistakes often written in textbooks, and fighting the old pedagogical practices that are fixed within education, we can change this situation.

This can be achieved by raising awareness, engaging in dialogue, proposing alternatives and ways to comply with the law, disseminating and promoting the Statute of Racial Equality, the Federal Constitution, the Statute of the Child and Adolescent, and always and constantly highlighting the quota policy in universities and public services.

Affirmative action and ethnic-racial literacy are discussed in seminars and conferences about African history, the continent that translates beauty, charm, and ancestral wealth. Long live our history, our identity, and our ancestry.

José Ribeiro da Silva - Social worker, human rights activist.

Quilombola Movement, Operational Manager of Affirmative Action Policies.

MNMMR activist, member of CEMAR.