Photo: Ana Carla Nunes Pereira Photo Credit: Cameron Hickey. |
Senator Barack Obama may have won last night’s President debate in the U.S., but in Brazil, another Barack Obama just lost the election. That’s Claudio Henrique-Barack Obama, a candidate for municipal council in the city of Belford Roxo, in the state of Rio di Janerio. Claudio Henrique “Barack Obama” dos Anjos was one of six candidates in this week’s elections in Brazil to register their candidacy under some form of the name “Barack Obama.” None of the Obamas won.
Politicians in Brazil often adopt attention-grabbing names during the election season — this year, about 200 candidates named themselves after the popular president Lula da Silva; others chose Bin Laden, Zinedine Zidane or Father Christmas.
Sen. Obama’s historic run for the U.S. presidency has been enthusiastically embraced by a country where almost half the population is of some African descent. This entire blog is dedicated to the Brazilian perspective on the U.S. presidential race.
In Brazil in Black and White, WIDE ANGLE reports on racial disparity in Brazil, following five college hopefuls from diverse backgrounds as they compete for a spots at the elite University of Brasilia.
On the contrary, the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed “racism without racists.”
The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable.
Most of the lost votes aren’t those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.
Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously.
“When we fixate on the racist individual, we’re focused on the least interesting way that race works,” said Phillip Goff, a social psychologist at U.C.L.A. who focuses his research on “racism without racists.” “Most of the way race functions is without the need for racial animus.”
For decades, experiments have shown that even many whites who earnestly believe in equal rights will recommend hiring a white job candidate more often than a person with identical credentials who is black. In the experiments, the applicant’s folder sometimes presents the person as white, sometimes as black, but everything else is the same. The white person thinks that he or she is selecting on the basis of nonracial factors like experience.
Research suggests that whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about — in other words, in ambiguous circumstances rather like an electoral campaign.
For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.
White participants recommend hiring a white applicant with borderline qualifications 76 percent of the time, while recommending an identically qualified black applicant only 45 percent of the time.
John Dovidio, a psychologist at Yale University who has conducted this study over many years, noted that conscious prejudice as measured in surveys has declined over time. But unconscious discrimination — what psychologists call aversive racism — has stayed fairly constant.
“In the U.S., there’s a small percentage of people who in nationwide surveys say they won’t vote for a qualified black presidential candidate,” Professor Dovidio said. “But a bigger factor is the aversive racists, those who don’t think that they’re racist.”
Faced with a complex decision, he said, aversive racists feel doubts about a black person that they don’t feel about an identical white. “These doubts tend to be attributed not to the person’s race — because that would be racism — but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience,” he added.
Of course, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to be against a particular black candidate, Mr. Obama included. Opposition to Mr. Obama is no more evidence of racism than opposition to Mr. McCain is evidence of discrimination against the elderly or against war veterans. And at times, Mr. Obama’s race helps him: it underscores his message of change, it appeals to some whites as a demonstration of their open-mindedness, and it wins him overwhelming black votes and turnout.
Still, a huge array of research suggests that 50 percent or more of whites have unconscious biases that sometimes lead to racial discrimination. (Blacks have their own unconscious biases, surprisingly often against blacks as well.)
One set of experiments conducted since the 1970s involves subjects who believe that they are witnessing an emergency (like an epileptic seizure). When there is no other witness, a white bystander will call for help whether the victim is white or black, and there is very little discrimination.
But when there are other bystanders, so the individual responsibility to summon help may feel less obvious, whites will still summon help 75 percent of the time if the victim is white but only 38 percent of the time if the victim is black.
One lesson from this research is that racial biases are deeply embedded within us, more so than many whites believe. But another lesson, a historical one, is that we can overcome unconscious bias. That’s what happened with the decline in prejudice against Catholics after the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in 1960.
It just might happen again, this time with race.
Eatonville, the first all-black town to incorporate in the country and the childhood home of Zora Neale Hurston, is no longer as simple as she described it in 1935: “the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, 300 brown skins, 300 good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools and no jailhouse.” It is now a place of pilgrimage. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Ruby Dee have come to the annual Zora! Festival in Eatonville to pay their respects to Hurston, the most famous female writer of the Harlem Renaissance.
The cause was a heart attack, her daughter Dhyana Kluth said.
Ms. Dawn’s death followed by 41 days that of her “Black Orpheus” co-star, Bruno Melo, who played the title role. The family did not publicly announce the death until this week.
Directed by Marcel Camus and based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, “Orfeu Negro,” as it is called in Portuguese, brings together an innocent country girl, played by Ms. Dawn, and a trolley car motorman and gifted guitarist, portrayed by Mr. Melo. They meet amid the frenzy of Rio’s carnival and are soon swaying to a provocative samba among the crowds. But Eurydice is stalked by a man in a skeleton costume. Eventually, Orpheus finds her in the morgue. In the end, bearing her body in his arms, he falls to his death from a cliff.
 Johnson's success prompted the search for a "Great White Hope" |
The US Congress has recommended that a presidential pardon should be granted to the first black world heavyweight boxing champion.
Jack Johnson won the title in 1908 but was later convicted of transporting white women across US state lines for immoral purposes.
Johnson served nearly one year in prison for what is now seen as a racially motivated conviction.
Congress stated that Johnson's success motivated other black athletes.
His 1908 victory over Tommy Burns prompted the search for a "Great White Hope" who could defeat the black man, but Johnson held the title until 1915.
After his conviction in 1913, Johnson fled the US, returning in 1920 to serve his term.
He returned to boxing but was unable to regain his title.
'Victim of the times'
The congressional resolution urges President George W Bush to grant Johnson a pardon.
It states that the conviction was racially motivated, prompted by his sporting success and his relationships with white women.
"He was a victim of the times and we need to set the record straight - clear his name - and recognise him for his groundbreaking contribution to the sport of boxing," said member of the House of Representatives Peter King, the author of the resolution.
US authorities had at first tried to unsuccessfully prosecute Johnson over his relationship with a white woman whom he later married.
A second white woman then testified that Johnson had transported her across state lines in violation of the Mann Act.
A similar resolution, sponsored by presidential candidate John McCain, now goes before the Senate for consideration.
