Grêmio case the latest sign racism no longer accepted in Brazil

For decades Brazilian football stadiums were the venues for mass displays of the racism that permeated Brazilian life. Black players were frequently subjected to terrace abuse with spectators free to call them monkeys without fear of punishment.

But times are changing. In August when fans of Grêmio racially abused Santos's black goalkeeper Aranha, footage of several of those involved went viral, leading to their identification and national shaming on social media. In the ensuing furore, Grêmio were thrown out of the Brazilian Cup as punishment and police have charged five club supporters.

The incident was the latest sign that racism, though still present, no longer goes unpunished in a country that has designated today Black Consciousness Day.

Driving this new attitude, also evidenced by the growing number of complaints against racist behaviour blacks are bringing before the courts, is a growing sense of pride in Brazil’s African roots. It is a sea-change in a country that once encouraged immigration from Europe to try and “whiten” what authorities viewed as its backward black population.

This shift is tracked by the country's census data. In 2000, Brazilians identifying themselves as black or pardo – mixed-race Brazilians of part-African descent – were 44.66 per cent of the total.

Just 10 years later, 50.7 per cent of the country's 191 million inhabitants declared themselves to be black or pardo, the first time since 1872 that the majority of Brazilians claimed African descent.

“There was no great ethnic shift in the population but rather the self-esteem of black Brazilians has increased and more now identify as black. There has been a real advance in the level of consciousness,” says Prof José Vicente, rector of the Zumbi dos Palmares Faculty, Brazil’s first university for black students.

Role of Zumbi

This rising black consciousness can also be tracked in the increasingly important role in Brazilian history played by Zumbi, after whom Prof Vicente’s institution is named.

He was the last leader of the quilombo of Palmares, the largest community of runaway slaves during Portuguese rule which fought off a series of expeditions mounted against it by the colonial authorities before it was finally conquered in 1695.

After centuries of official neglect, the story of Palmares and its last ruler have in recent decades come to stand for resistance to slavery and colonialism and been transformed into symbols of black pride.

As a young radical in the 1960s President Dilma Rousseff joined a guerrilla movement named after Palmares, which in the 1970s became the leading symbol of the black rights movement. In 1997, Zumbi's name was written into the book of patriotic heroes in Brazil's national pantheon and November 20th, the anniversary of his death, became a school holiday in 2003, before being elevated to a national day in 2011.

But despite Brazil having the world's largest African diaspora, Zumbi Day is still not a federally observed holiday with state and local governments free to mark it with a day off. Though several states now do so just over 1,000 of the country's 5,570 municipalities will celebrate it this year with a holiday.

Entrenched legacy

Like recognition of Zumbi Day, equality campaigners say Brazil still has a way to go before the entrenched legacy of three centuries of slavery is undone.

Many of the events that will take place across Brazil today to mark the holiday will be demanding more is done to tackle what a UN panel described as the “structural, institutional and interpersonal racism” that still exists in the country.

Despite economic growth lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty in recent years blacks are 50 per cent more likely to be unemployed than their white neighbours and live an average of six years less. Black men earn 60 per cent less than whites while black women are even further behind. Four out of five Brazilian youths murdered each year are black.

Fairer society "Brazil has made huge advances in terms of new legislation tackling racism but no matter what number you look at blacks are still far worse off than whites. We still face huge obstacles to a fairer society," says Mauricio Pestana, executive director of black-orientated magazine Raça Brasil and a board member of São Paulo's Afro-Brasil Museum.

In an attempt to tackle this entrenched racism the Brazilian Order of Lawyers, the country’s bar association, this month set up a truth commission on black slavery.

Its goal is to examine the historical legacy of slavery, which despite new legislation, means Brazil still has two classes of citizens, divided by race.

Activists have welcomed the move. “It is a project of profound importance,” says Prof Vicente. “It is a means to produce greater justice, not just historic but spiritual, because there is not one black citizen in this country who knows the name of his great-grandparents. The history of black Brazilians was erased. This is a means to reconstruct it.”