> Brazilians tell SAfrica mixing does not end racism
> 09:32 p.m Mar 15, 1998 Eastern
>
> By Richard Meares
>
> CAPE TOWN, March 16 (Reuters) - Brazil, where racial mixing has blurred
> divisions and official discrimination has never existed, is sometimes
> held up as a model for South Africa as it drags itself away from a
> prejudice-ridden past.
>
> But a three-nation anti-racism conference held in Cape Town this month
> warned President Nelson Mandela's new democracy not to be taken in by
> the happy melting-pot image.
>
> ``Brazil is seen as a country devoid of race problems but Brazilians
> tell us this is a myth,'' speaker Wilmot James of the Institute for a
> Democratic South Africa told Reuters.
>
> Brazilian activists, swapping experiences with South African and U.S.
> colleagues, said that even with a long history of equality before the
> law, blacks still suffered racism, although it was more sophisticated
> than white South Africa's crude version.
>
> Both Brazil and South Africa are developing countries with just about
> the worst income gaps in the world, dividing a rich, mainly white elite
> and a mainly black poor.
>
> IN BRAZIL, ``EVERYONE IS TRYING TO BE WHITE''
>
> ``Racism in Brazil is masked, subtle, cynical and is supported by many
> blacks as well as whites,'' Sueli Carneiro of the Geledes anti-racism
> institute in Brazil told Reuters.
>
> ``The problem is that blacks in Brazil lack identity. Many even say they
> are not black but mixed. And everyone in Brazil is trying to be white.''
>
>
> She estimated that 70 percent of the country's 165 million people were
> black descendants of African slaves, but that many preferred to class
> themselves as mixed-race because of the social stigma still attached to
> being black.
>
> ``Brazilian blacks want to escape from total blackness because it is
> seen as better to be mixed-race -- mix once and you have started the
> whitening process,'' Carneiro said.
>
> ``Here, blacks were all treated as one group whether lighter or darker
> skinned, thus strengthening their racial identity.''
>
> Brazilians form a spectrum from pure white to pure black or indigenous
> Indian -- of whom very few survive -- through all degrees of mixing. The
> national language, Portuguese, is said to have 35 different terms for
> people of various mixed races.
>
> Under British colonial rule, South Africa's races were kept largely
> apart and under post-war apartheid, Whites, Blacks, Asians and Coloureds
> (mixed-race) were legally separated.
>
> Coloureds are mainly the descendants of white settlers and the original
> light brown-skinned Khoisan population, but mixed marriages have been
> very rare and, under apartheid, illegal.
>
> APARTHEID GAVE BLACKS STRONG SENSE OF COMMON IDENTITY
>
> But Carneiro says the silver lining to apartheid's cloud is that South
> Africa's rigid divisions and oppression produced a black intelligentsia
> and political movement, and a black majority that now has a strong sense
> of identity.
>
> ``South Africa has grown from the symbol of nightmare to the symbol of
> hope,'' U.S. feminist Gloria Steinem, one of the speakers, said in a
> newspaper interview.
>
> But South Africa's James said the price was high and the country still
> had a far greater potential for racial conflict.
>
> ``Even though Brazil has inequality between black and white it is not a
> straight line, and territorial segregation is nothing like here. If this
> country was to break apart it could be much easier on racial lines.
>
> ``But we are now in a similar position to Brazil, having adopted this
> concept of non-racialism,'' he said.
>
> ``We can learn to watch out for insipid forms of racism in a society
> that is formally non-racial. The Brazilian experience does inject a
> certain kind of realism.''
>
> Carneiro echoed African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki in
> saying racial equality was economic, not just legal.
>
> ``It would be a tragedy after South Africa's heroic fight to make the
> mistake of trying to hide racial problems behind non-racialism,'' she
> said.
>
> ``Until you elevate the black population here or in Brazil to a
> lifestyle equalling that of whites, there is no equality.'' REUTERS
>
> Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.