---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Jun 25, 2007 12:57 PM
Subject: [TheBlackList] Afro-Latinos: A Rising Voice
To: Africanamericans in HigherEd <[log in to unmask]>

Part V of a Five-Part Miami Herald Series...
(for all the parts and multimedia presentations, go to: www.miamiherald.com)
----------------------------
Racism takes many hues
Visiting Brazil, where race has a way of seeming both hauntingly familiar
and exotically strange, the experience is like looking into a fun-house
mirror.
By Leonard Pitts Jr. <[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask]

RIO DE JANEIRO -- An old adage comes to mind: ''If you're white, you're all
right. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, get back."

It was a folk saying -- property of no one, property of everyone -- that we
African Americans used to encompass defining realities of our lives. Meaning
not just the fact that some white men would think themselves better than you
because they were white, but the fact that some black men would, too,
because they were light. This was a legacy of slavery, when light skin often
meant less brutal treatment.

So to be here in Brazil, to wander through this culture where a man the
color of Bishop T.D. Jakes or Don Cheadle might, with a straight face, deny
the Africa in him and people earnestly debate "who is black," well . . . it
feels like you've stumbled into a fun-house mirror of race in which
everything is exactly the same as it is back home, except where it is
completely different.

As this month's Miami Herald reports on black life in Latin America vividly
attest, that sense of falling through the fun-house mirror fits much of the
black experience in this hemisphere. That black woman in Guatemala who made
history by winning a beauty title could be Vanessa Williams. That Argentine
kid who got called Kunta because he went to a white school could be a kid
bused to school in Boston 30 years ago. That black man in Cuba getting
harassed by police could be my son or, indeed, any young black man in
America.

In much the same way, race in Brazil has a way of seeming both hauntingly
familiar and exotically strange. Some here will tell you that this nation's
triumph is that it never encoded race into its laws as did the United
States. While that sounds like, and in some ways is, a laudable thing, the
punchline is that those same people will also tell you this did not save
Brazil from the sin of racism.

Indeed, they will haul out anecdotes and statistics illustrating the fact
that Brazilians the color of T.D. Jakes or Don Cheadle tend to find it
harder to get work, education or healthcare, but damnably easy to get
followed around the department store by security guards who equate darkness
with dishonesty.

This country is engaged in a debate over how to best address those issues.
They are fighting over an affirmative-action program that would offer
educational and healthcare advantages to Brazilians who are black.

Which brings us back to that earnestly debated question: Who is black?

*A COMPLEX MATTER*

The question is more complex than an American might believe. In Brazil, a
nation of indigenous peoples and descendants of African slaves, European
colonists and immigrants, a dark-skinned man who might automatically be
called black elsewhere has a racial vocabulary that allows him to skirt the
Africa in his heritage altogether. He can call himself moreno (racially
mixed), mestizo (colored) or pardo (medium brown). Anything but
"afrodescendente'' (Africa-descended) or negro (black).

In this, he's not unlike his counterparts in the United States, where black
people also have an extensive vocabulary to describe variations in skin
tone. In the United States, one can be ''high yellow'' (i.e., of very light
skin); one can be "red'' (i.e., with a reddish tint; one of Malcolm X's
early nicknames was "Detroit Red''); or one can be any of a number of
synonyms for dark. Like, for instance, "Smokey." In fact, the famous (and
"high yellow'') Motown singer William Robinson was given that nickname in
affectionate irony by one of his father's friends -- sort of like calling a
fat guy Tiny.

*THERE IS NO DOUBT*

But here's the thing: In the States, no matter your skin tone, your race is
never in question. Detroit Red was black. Smokey Robinson is black. T.D.
Jakes is black. Don Cheadle is black.

The same is not true in Brazil. And if the United States is a country where
black people with light skin used to sometimes ''pass," i.e., pretend to be
white, well, in this country "passing is a national institution." So says
Elisa Nascimento with a laugh. She is white, American-born and the wife of
Abdias do Nascimento, a 90-year-old black Brazilian artist and political
icon. And the insistence of some Brazilian blacks on "passing," she says,
has political consequences in that it tends to distort statistics on black
life. "The way racism works in Brazil . . . there is a hierarchy, and so
people tend to identify themselves lighter than they necessarily would be."

But Simon Schwartzman, a white social scientist, thinks that allowing
Brazilians to self-identify beats the alternative. "I think it's very wrong
for the government to start labeling people and saying, 'You are officially
black or you are officially white, or you are officially something.' You
have all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, and I don't think it's
the business of government to classify and label people."

So the question of "Who is black?" is tricky, to say the least. If a man the
color of T.D. Jakes or even Smokey Robinson says he is not black, do you
take him seriously? Do you laugh in his face?

*BLACK IN THE U.S. OF A*.

Maybe your instinct is the latter. In the U.S. of A., after all, we know
what black is.

Of course, the U.S. of A. is also the country where, in 1896, an
''octoroon'' (i.e., one-eighth black) man named Homer Plessy, white to all
physical intents and purposes, lost a Supreme Court case that started when
he was ordered to move to a "colored'' train car. And it's also the country
where educator Gregory Howard Williams, a man who would disappear in a room
of middle-age white men, saw his life change in 1954 from middle-class
comfort to ostracism and racial slurs when it was revealed that his father
was half-black.

As Williams, the author of the 1995 memoir Life On The Color Line: The True
Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black once told me in an
interview, "The issue in America has never been color. It's always been
race."

So in deriding the silliness of another nation's racial mores, an American
finds himself in the unenviable position of the pot calling the kettle, well
. . . black.

*THE ROLE OF LAW*

Indeed, it is America's history of encoding its racial biases in law --
everything from the Constitution designating blacks as three-fifths of a
human being in 1787 to the restrictive housing covenants and segregation
statutes that persisted into the 1960s -- that Yvonne Maggie points to in
explaining why she objects to Brazil's flirtation with affirmative action.

"We don't need to say that race exists," says Maggie, an anthropologist and
university professor. "We have to say that race is not important to define
people in social terms, that black and white are the same kind of people."

It is worth noting that Maggie is white, her ex-husband is black, and they
lived for a while in the United States. In 1971. In Texas.

"It was a rough time," she says in her imperfect English. "For me, was
impossible to live there. We could not be married. Why I married with a
black guy, you know? So when I say to you that Brazil was different . . .
even my first husband didn't think of himself as black. In Brazil, he was a
Brazilian, even though he was black. He never thought of himself as someone
different from me because he was another color."

Which brings you to the heart of the matter, the reason any discussion of
race and racial terminology that goes on long enough eventually comes to
seem silly and overly complicated. African American? Afro-Brazilian? Negro?
Colored? Moreno? Afro-descendente? Red? Pardo? Smokey?

*NO SUCH THING*

The reason the language struggles so hard for precision is that it seeks to
describe that which does not exist. As a scientific matter, there is no such
thing as race. We are all of the human race, something we probably will not
fully understand until it is explained to us by green people with eyes
waving on stalks.

Whereas U.S. history flies in the face of that fact with its centuries of
pretense to hard and fast racial boundaries, it's a point of pride for
Maggie that her country never -- officially -- bought into that lie.

I respect the principle she argues -- race does not exist and therefore
should not be acknowledged in law. But that raises a question: How can you
have racism without race?

Maggie insists that you can. She says that what Brazil has is a kind of
"social racism'' supported not by law, but by custom. One suspects that
those who suffer under it would be hard-pressed to tell the difference -- or
find reason to care. Which is why, given the choice, many dark-skinned
Brazilians choose to be other than "black." It is a means of escape, if only
linguistically.

One morning, my translator and I ride out to the favela made infamous in
City of God, the Oscar-nominated 2002 film about the drug wars that suck in
children and spit out bones. We wait outside a community center for the
Brazilian hip-hop star I have come to interview. Inside, a funeral has just
come to an end. A casket is borne out to a van, followed by a handful of
young people. Some have light skin, some have dark. All have sad eyes.

After a while, the man I'm waiting for appears. His given name is Alex
Pereira Barbosa, known professionally as MV Bill. The MV stands for
Mensageiro da Verdade, Messenger of Truth, and he is famous for rapping
about conditions in the favelas.

*CHOOSING ONE'S RACE*

When I mention the funeral, he explains that the dead boy worked for one of
the drug lords and met a violent end. When I mention that the boy was
mourned by young people both black and white, MV Bill gives me a look. He
considers all of them black.

"One of the characteristics of Brazilian racism," he says, "is that the
person can choose to be what she wants. 'Oh, I'm white, I'm not black.'
Here, the darker you are, the more discrimination you suffer. And that makes
it difficult for the blacks, from light to dark, to understand each other.
The lighter-skinned blacks avoid the darker-skinned blacks because they
don't want to suffer the same discrimination. It's hard for them to work
together because of the degree of discrimination according to your color."

The cruelest racism, says MV Bill, is actually intraracial, perpetuated by
light-skinned blacks against dark-skinned blacks. Fair skin, he says,
represents power, even in the favela.

*SELF-IDENTITY*

After being in this country a while, I find myself doing something I'd never
feel the need to do at home. I ask people I'm interviewing "what'' they are.
When dark-skinned people identify themselves as "black," there is an
unmistakable little thrill of victory, a notch for "our'' side, as in
someone who was brave enough and tough enough to accept the designation this
society despises. Someone who understands that the problem isn't color and
never was; rather, it is what some people have arbitrarily decided color
means.

Lucia Maria Xavier de Castro, coordinator of Criola, an activist group
representing black women, says she has known many people who were unable to
accept their own blackness. "The



person does everything to get rid of black traces. Straightens her hair,
dresses like white people -- not colorful. People do everything to eliminate
traces. It's as if this person had a birth defect and was trying to correct
it by taking those attitudes."

Brazil likes to think of itself as a racial democracy, says Miriam Leitao,
but that's a delusion. She has, she says, been making that argument for 10
years and has become one of the nation's most controversial journalists in
the process.

When she writes about racism in Brazil, people tell her she's crazy. "I
don't know how to explain the thing that, for me, is so obvious," she says.

And there it is again, that sense of race as a glimpse in a fun-house
mirror. Indeed, as Leitao relates the responses she receives, I find myself
laughing in recognition. One reader, for example, accused her of "creating a
problem because I talk about it."

"Because of you," the reader wrote, "one day, we will be racist."

I've gotten that exact same e-mail. Many times. And it's funny, Lord knows
it is, but it's also maddening. You wonder how intelligent people can turn
logic so thoroughly inside out. How smart people can say such stupid things.

Over the years, I have come to understand that it's not about the strength
of the argument. Leitao has a computer full of statistics documenting "a
very strong and permanent gap between black and white in Brazil." Over the
years, I must have quoted a hundred government and university studies
illustrating a similar gap between black and white in the United States. Yet
at the end of the day, sometimes, it's like you wrote it in sand.

You begin to realize that denial is stronger than logic. And that while it
is, your country -- whatever country it is -- will always fall short of its
self-image.

America, the land of the free? Not always, not quite.

Brazil, the land where race matters not?

"We have a carnaval song," says Leitao. "For 40 years, the people, every
year, sang this song. And this song is terrible. [Whites] never think about
what they are singing. The song is: ''Because your color won't contaminate
me, I would like your love."

"It's offensive," says Leitao. ''And the people never realize. Why we don't
never realize that we have a problem here?"

Her frustration makes me chuckle in recognition.

She is a newspaper columnist who writes about race in a nation 4,100 miles
away.

But she is also a reflection in a fun-house mirror.

 -------------------------------------------

Affirmative-action debate tests nation's notions of race
Elisa Larkin Nascimento <[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask]

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Walking across the Viaduto do Chá footbridge in downtown
Sao Paulo years ago, I noticed that the beggars on the street were black. I
was an exchange student at a private high school, and the family that hosted
me belonged to the city's Yacht Club. As we crossed the bridge, the father
of a fellow student explained to me how, in contrast to the United States,
there is no racial discrimination in Brazil. I wondered why the rich young
members of the Yacht Club were mostly blond, blue-eyed second generation
Europeans, while these urban homeless people and , as well as the rural
peons living in semi-slavery on the farm I had visited, were almost all
black. The response was unforgettable: "Oh, there's nothing you can do about
that; it's in the blood."

This statement captures the remarkable contrast between the white Brazilian
elite's conviction of its own nonracism and the stark reality of inequality
in income, education, housing, healthcare, and employment.

The deeply engrained racial democracy ideology promotes the idea that
biological notions of race do not exist in Brazil.

Yet stereotypes about indolence, intellectual backwardness, and criminal
tendencies permeate Brazil's social imagination, which has them lurking "in
the blood'' of African descendants. Social engineering to whiten the
population was major public policy during the first half of the 20th
century. "Cleansing the race'' was promoted as a civic duty and a social
responsibility. The advantage for parents was that their lighter-skinned
children would have more opportunities to climb a social ladder associating
prestige with proximity to whiteness.

There is a widely held belief that this color hierarchy has nothing to do
with race. The appearance criterion is said to be purely aesthetic and
non-discriminatory.

I have called Brazilian racial ideology the sorcery of color because its
sleight-of-hand transforms domination into democracy and launches a
permanent search for what I call "virtual whiteness."

Generally, whoever can credibly identify as white will do so. But there are
limits, and discrimination has driven many light-skinned Brazilians to join
the ranks of an Afro-Brazilian civil and human rights movement whose
political weight has grown enormously since the days of the Brazilian Black
Front, the Black Experimental Theater, and other organizations in the 1930s
and '40s. forties.

*INVISIBLE HISTORY*

The history of Afro-Brazilian resistance against racism has been made
largely invisible. We often hear that there is no tradition of civil rights
struggle in Brazil, but calls for [changes in] public policy date back at
least to 1946, when the National Conference of Brazilian Blacks presented
its proposals to the Constituent Assembly. Since then, the black movement
has mobilized demonstrations, organized itself in political parties and
labor unions, and found its voice in rich and varied cultural expressions.
It has earned enough political clout to win specialized agencies in city,
state, and federal government.

The most prominent example of recent policy measures are affirmative action
programs adopted at some 35 public universities, the cream of higher
education, from which African Brazilians have been almost completely
excluded.

These policies have unleashed a political backlash that uses tactics
employed against the black movement since the 1940s. Its language is similar
to neo-conservative discourse about race in the United States. Foremost
among its tactics is to accuse affirmative action proponents of racism
against whites. In Brazil, this argument is linked viscerally to the idea
that equality policies are "introducing'' race categories in a society where
supposedly they never existed. Since there is so much race mixture in
Brazil, the argument goes, how can we determine who is white and who is
black?

A handful of intellectuals used this argument in a recent manifesto promoted
in the news media with great flourish. Indeed, media power consistently
nourishes the backlash while giving sparse and slanted coverage to the
realities of affirmative action.

Undeniably, whites enjoy almost exclusive hegemony in the physical and
discursive space of the Brazilian academy. The tone and content of the
backlash show how some consider this hegemony theirs by right, as a question
of merit. Crediting themselves as the true anti-racists, they claim that the
notion of blacks and whites does not exist in Brazil and that to "impose''
this idea is to revive obsolete biological categories that science has
rejected. They brandish research results to show what we already know: that
genetic variation is greater within racial groups than among them.

*RACE AND EXCLUSION*

The scenario of exclusion in Brazil is based on a social construct of race
that has little or nothing to do with genetics or biology. Discrimination
exists; it is a social fact. Brazilian society's division into groups that
hold prestige and groups that are targets of discrimination is also a social
fact. As it denies benefits to some and confers privileges on others, this
society has never had trouble identifying who is black and who is white.
Statistical studies carried out by the most respected research institutes
exhaustively demonstrate the inequalities created by this society based on a
social construct of race.

By shifting their focus to the realm of science and genetics, the major
media offer unmeasured support to the neo-conservative backlash in Brazil.
They help discredit affirmative action policies and proponents by implicitly
branding them racist, and reinforce a status quo in which the myth of
non-discrimination is perhaps the greatest obstacle to overcoming racial
inequality.

The outcome of the debate on affirmative action will ultimately determine
whether Brazil is willing to make a real commitment to greater democracy.


Breaking through
Few blacks have made it to the top in Latin America. For them, race defined
their identities, and their careers
This story was reported by Alejandra Labanca in Buenos Aires, Nancy San
Martin in Guatemala City, Steven Dudley in Cali, Colombia, Pablo Bachelet in
Panama City and McClatchy Correspondent Jack Chang in Rio de Janeiro. It was
compiled by Bachelet.
[log in to unmask]

Colombian Police Gen. Luis Moore says he swallowed hard when his fellow
officers made offhand remarks that Afro-Colombians were lazy or not smart
enough.

One of his colleagues even told him to his face that he didn't like black
people.

But Moore, 47, who describes himself as a "positive person'' ploughed on. He
became Colombia's first black general and is now its top highway police
chief.

"This was not easy," Moore says. "There were moments when many others
rejected this. There were some that said, 'Why him and not me?' And others
that tried to stop me, because they thought that blacks weren't as capable
as them." Skin color makes for complicated identity in Latin America, where
so many people carry mixes of African, European and indigenous blood. What's
clear is that those with darker skins tend to be less educated and are paid
less. They live in the poorest urban districts, and farm the least fertile
lands.

But despite these odds, a small group has made it to the top. Their personal
stories reveal just how they were shaped by their color, and how this fueled
a determination to succeed. On the way, they faced humiliations, from a
Brazilian entertainer mistaken for a valet attendant to an Argentine singer
whose teacher ordered him to take off his afro ''wig."
  *THE REGGAE ARTIST*

BUENOS AIRES -- When musician Fidel Nadal chats with a fellow Argentine, he
braces for the inevitable question: You're not from here, are you?

"That's always, always, always the first thing they ask me," he says.

The 42-year old Nadal is a fifth-generation Argentine. Yet most Argentines
do not recognize Nadal as one of their own because he is black in a country
that sees itself as almost exclusively European.

Nadal recalls being the only black student in his Buenos Aires elementary
school in the 1960s. Some of his classmates nicknamed him Pelé -- after
Brazil's greatest soccer star, who is black. Others called him Kunta --
after the main character in the TV miniseries Roots.

The less creative simply yelled Che, negro -- hey, black man.

By the age of 14, Nadal had grown an afro. On the first day of class, one of
his teachers asked him -- in front of the class -- to stop kidding and take
off his wig.

"That was probably the first time that I felt my racial identity," says
Nadal.

"Calling my hair a wig was like asking an Asian man to open his eyes."

A music lover, he came across a record by reggae icon Bob Marley. And Marley
led Nadal to Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement and his connection to Africa.

"I identified with Marley," he says, "because of his -- and my -- race but,
above all, I identified with the rebel."

Today, he is recording his 15th record, Emocionado, and packing small clubs
in Buenos Aires. Nadal may not be mainstream, but a small and enthusiastic
audience follows him from his time as the frontman of Todos tus Muertos, a
famous Argentine punk and reggae band whose lyrics had social and political
content.

Asked if he feels he has become a stereotype in a country where black people
only bring to mind music or sports, he pauses to consider his answer.

"You know, I fought against the prejudice, against the ignorance for years.
And maybe yes, I have become a stereotype -- the black man with dreadlocks
who plays reggae," he says. "But I don't care anymore. Today I can say, 'I
am African, and this is who I am'."

*THE POLITICIAN*

PANAMA CITY -- Epsy Campbell, whose grandparents moved to Costa Rica from
Jamaica to work on the country's railroads, is an economist-turned
activist-turned politician who came within 3,300 votes of becoming vice
president of Costa Rica last year.

Outside the Caribbean, no Afro-descendant has ever reached such political
heights in the hemisphere. She's even mentioned as a serious contender for
the presidency in the next elections.

"I am the most atypical of the Costa Rican stereotype," she says, flashing a
politician's easy smile. "I'm black, and I'm a woman."

For 42-year old Campbell, racism can be subtle.

"I can't say racism doesn't exist," she told The Miami Herald at a
conference for black activists in Panama City, "but in a person like me it
manifests in ways that are so sophisticated that many times it is hard to
spot."

Occasionally, she notes expressions of surprise in people she meets, as if
her intelligence and eloquence defy expectations. It's almost racism in
reverse, she says, as though people are overcome with an "excess of
admiration."

Campbell is a busy woman these days, heading the Citizens' Action Party -- a
coalition of grassroots organizations that was created in 2002 and is now
Costa Rica's second biggest party.

But she still finds time to address Latin American black activists, with
speeches that are a mix of pep talk and hard facts.

There are few black judges in the region but many blacks in jail, she tells
her audiences. Latin American blacks in positions of power -- cabinet posts
and other senior government jobs -- number fewer than 20 and only 2 percent
of all elected legislators are black.

The novelty of a black female face in Costa Rican politics is beginning to
wear off, she said, and that's probably a good thing.

"You are no longer the exception, the rarity," she says. "Racism and
discrimination have much to do with ignorance and fear of the unknown."

*THE TV ENTERPRENEUR*

RIO DE JANEIRO -- As a child, José de Paula Neto sold candy to support his
poor family. After his mother died when he was 11, he raised his siblings
alone.

Two decades later, after he become a successful singer and TV personality,
he recalls crying after a white man at a fancy restaurant mistook him for a
valet attendant and handed him a set of car keys.

"I couldn't hold it back," he says.

De Paula has turned that pain into a lifelong fight against what he sees as
a society rigged against Afro-Brazilians. The 36-year-old has been one of
Brazil's few black celebrities to speak out on race issues.

In 2005, he launched TV da Gente <http://www.tvdagente.com.br/home/>, or Our
TV, Brazil's first channel targeting black viewers. The station is now
struggling to survive, but de Paula says it is needed in a country that is
half black but appears almost completely white on television.

"The networks put an (black) actor there, another one there and say that
everything's fine," he said. "Their tactic is to give visibility to a few
while forcing invisibility on millions."

His many critics have accused him of aggravating the country's racial
divisions by focusing on black audiences. The row over TV da
Gente<http://www.tvdagente.com.br/home/>may have cost de Paula his
long-running variety show on the Record network,
cancelled last summer.

De Paula sank millions of his own dollars and brought in Angolan investors.
Regulators wouldn't give the channel space on the airwaves and cable
providers wouldn't carry it. To save money de Paula moved production in
January from the southern business center of Sao Paulo to the predominantly
black city of Salvador in northeastern Brazil.

De Paula said he's not giving up.

"I didn't stop being black because I got some money," he said. "My struggle
is very serious. It's a commitment to my people."
  *THE BEAUTY QUEEN*

GUATEMALA CITY -- Marva Weatherborn's father died when she was 11 but she
remembers his advice: 'Never let anyone make you feel like you are less. We
all have the same rights."

In 2004 Weatherborn became Miss Guatemala, the first and still only black
woman to win the pageant in a nation where dark skin is not always embraced.

"Color," she said, "is automatically associated with inferiority."

Weatherborn's success brought a pleasant face and voice to Afro-descendants
in Guatemala, who make up less than 1 percent of the country's 12.7 million
people. They have no political representation, no organized movement, no
prominent community leaders.

But their status changed, at least a little, after Weatherborn's win.

Until she was crowned, she was left out of beauty pageant posters with other
contestants.

"When she won, it reinforced the idea that minorities can also have
opportunities," said Tony Berganza, a beauty industry veteran and owner of a
modeling agency that represented Weatherborn.

The youngest of three sisters, Weatherborn, 24, grew up in Puerto Barrios, a
small port town on the Caribbean coast. Most residents there are
Afro-Guatemalans, Caribbean immigrants and indigenous Mayans.

When she won the beauty pageant, she came to be known as the Barbie Negra.

"It doesn't bother me to be called black, but it depends on how it's used,"
Weatherborn said. "I'm a happy black person."

After winning the title, she got a job at the Institute of Tourism and
studied international relations. A serious car crash last summer derailed
her plans but she hopes to resume her studies soon and one day work for an
organization that helps Afro-descendants and others.

"Equality is a long way off here," she said. "I want to help people and, my
race, obviously. Now, because people know who I am, I'm treated as an
equal."
  *THE POLICE CHIEF*

CALI -- In many ways, Colombia's Gen. Luis Moore was fortunate.

According to government data, 80 percent of Afro-Colombians live under the
poverty line, many of them in rural areas where the country's long-running
civil war has forced many to flee, join or perish.

Moore grew up in a mostly white, middle class community along the Caribbean
coast. His mother was a lawyer and the first female governor of the northern
Choco province, and his father was a physics and math teacher.

It was his parents who imbued him with his sense of purpose, honor and
respect, he says. "You're not more than anyone, you're not less than
anyone," they would tell him. Moore joined the police force in 1975 and
became part of the first group of officers to fly helicopters for Colombia's
armed forces in the early 1980s.

Along the way, Moore became el negro Moore, a term that he acknowledged
could be used in a harsh or kind way.

"Colombia is a country of contrasts," Moore said. "We have a little of
everything. But there are some who think they're totally pure and so they
see the others as impure. They don't see themselves as part of this
mestizaje.

"And although some say, 'No, I'm not racist' -- when they have to decide who
should fill a position or do a job, they say, 'Well, I prefer the white guy
over the black guy."

Moore felt the stigma of race in his personal life as well, especially when
he began dating Graciela Díaz, a white woman from a small, conservative city
in the central Andean range.

"A lot of people saw it negatively," he said. "Others didn't care."

Díaz said she never thought about it. For her, he was a gentleman and after
22 years, still is.

"He has more culture than any white, blonde, or blue person that I've ever
known," she said. "He still opens the car door for me."


---------------------------------------
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