Party and Bullshit
It’s not often that I get a chance to spend time in a majority Black nation. I have, in fact, only been to three: South Africa, Jamaica, and Brazil.
In each of those places, the Black people move with a different kind of knowing as compared to how I think Black people move in nations where we are in the minority. They seem less…menaced. I say that not to suggest that they are free of the ever-harmful hand of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Whiteness has a way of making itself known even when its numbers are small. It defames and destroys everything it touches. It leaves behind a peculiar residue in its wake; a stickiness that can get on you or in you. It plants horrific seeds that when properly nurtured or summarily ignored, bloom into the perilous jungles that Toni Morrison uncovered in Beloved.
In countries where the majority is Black, anti-Blackness manifests with a deeply seductive cunning, simultaneously denying its own existence, making itself a non-issue, faking benevolence, and assuring the society that all is actually good, well, and equal, while igniting colorism, and extracting life, labor, and resources from the Black population. In other words, white supremacy in majority-Black Brazil is very, very careful.
But even a cursory examination reveals that the plantations have never truly gone away. They have merely been subject to makeovers, time and time again (and not even extreme ones), to suit contemporary sensibilities.
So when I say Black Brazilians move different, I mean to say that they move in ways that make clear that they understand that no matter what has been cast in their paths—whatever dogma or propaganda or indoctrination or insult or violence—this one thing cannot be taken from them: They know they belong here (and “here” can be Brazil, Earth, the Universe, Existence). And there is something in the movement of those who know they belong here that lifts them just a tiny bit higher than if they did not know. Within and between people who know they belong here, there is, I’ve observed, so much more affection.
I have to admit that I brought the menace of the U.S. with me to Brazil. I was on guard almost the entire time, waiting to be held in false account, wondering who was going to be afraid of me, trying to guess what kind of monster I was going to be made into based on someone else’s futile imagination. But I was surrounded by so much Blackness—which is to say: so much love—that this haunting faded into the background much quicker than I thought it might.
This was not my first time in Brazil. I visited Rio De Janeiro 10 years ago. But this was my first time in both Paraty (pronounced PAH-RA-CHEE), a colonial city (though, what cities aren’t colonized these days?), and São Paulo. I was there for the largest literary festival in Brazil, the Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty, also known as FLIP.
All of these places possess their own beauty.
A stunning country with stunning people, Brazil is a mostly tropical environment, with lush forests and expansive beaches. It has 26 states, and everyone I spoke to told me that I must visit the state of Bahia, which is the Blackest region of Brazil, and so I intend to return to visit it especially. In general, Brazil has the largest population of Black/Black-biracial people outside of Nigeria. Depending on who you ask, Brazil has somewhere between 90 million and 120 million people who identify as Black/Black-biracial, which is more than half the country’s population. But even though there is this significant number of African-descendant people, white supremacy still holds a mighty grip on the nation. This is the legacy of European peoples’ dehumanization of Indigenous African and Indigenous American peoples.
During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more enslaved Africans than any other country in the world. Brazil's foundation was built on the exploitation and enslavement of indigenous peoples and Africans. Out of the 12 million Africans who were forcibly brought to the New World, approximately 5.5 million were brought to Brazil between 1540 and the 1860s. The mass enslavement of Africans played a pivotal role in the country's economy and was responsible for the production of vast amounts of wealth. The inhumane treatment and forced labor of enslaved Africans remains a significant part of Brazil's history and its ongoing struggle with systemic racism. Until the early 1850s, most enslaved African people who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola).
Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, on May 13, 1888.
As I said before, Paraty is a colonial city, which means that all riches were/are accumulated on the backs of Black and Indigenous Ancestors. Like the U.S., it has a legacy of slavery that can still be felt. You can still hear (and see!) the rattling chains of haints that keep us forever linked to the shameful, yet shameless past.
Being in Brazil, it became apparent to me how much work white supremacist capitalist patriarchy does to ensure that Black people across the diaspora know as little about each other, and each other’s histories, as humanly possible. Its purveyors seek, at base, to shatter the idea that we share anything a’tall: aesthetics, histories, politics, spiritualities, worldviews, sexualities, ancestries. They overemphasize our differences to instigate tension and hostilities between us—since differences and the resulting grievances are easiest to manipulate and hierarchicalize. They encourage us to think the worst about each other so that when we finally encounter one another in the flesh, we act on the lies we had heard and the truth is nowhere to be found. This results in us believing the same things white supremacists believe about us. We take all the reeking pathologies that are white supremacy’s hallmarks and we claim them as though they were always ours.
Divided and conquered, separated by land, sea, and language, we do the plantation drudgery—this time voluntarily—on behalf of white supremacy by creating entire movements in which we split ourselves off from other Black people, and into tribes of white folks’ own making. Hostile to all those deemed “outsiders,” we replicate the same robber-baron strategies that decimated home, kidnapped family, distributed us across the wild like parcel, and put us to work like machines.
What a boon social media has been for the kingdom of this specific kind of evil. There, the messages of deception and division, and self-deception and self-hatred, are marketed, promoted, and amplified ad infinitum. And every participant and every recipient is so easily, willingly persuaded, thanks to a purposeful disinvestment in books and education.
Yet, our connections remain evident.
I got to meet so many of my amazing siblings from the Global South, including Eliana Alves Cruz and her husband Estevão Ribeiro, Evandro Cruz Silva, Jeferson Tenório, Juliana Borges, Fernanda Sousa, my editor
, and so many kind members of the FLIP team. Every time we got together, let me tell you: It was a party!I can also tell you with all certainty that Black Brazilians are very nervous about the upcoming presidential election. They are afraid that we will re-elect Donald Trump or that he will steal the election. They are afraid because they believe we are entirely unaware of how our political choices in the U.S. affect the rest of the globe. They know that if whatever semblance of democracy we have left in this country is voted away, it’s only a matter of time before the same happens in their country. They understand the domino effect of tyranny and they are terrified by it. They have already had their version of Donald Trump in Jair Bolsonaro, who, like Trump, ravaged the country during his short time in office. So they know the stench of bullshit when they smell it.
At the James Baldwin event I attended at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, an audience member asked: Amidst all the doom and gloom of the wars and the genocides and the bigotry and the violence and the corruption of the world, what do I find hope in?
Plainly, I find hope in Black people’s ability to survive. Or, as Dr.
recently put it: “Conjurers survive conquerors.”Despite the catastrophes that have been manufactured specifically for us, many of us, though not all of us, have managed to pull through. Not always intact, mind you. There is not a single thing in existence that is foolproof. But it is the survival itself that presents opportunities for another moment of healing, reflection, intelligence, truth, resistance, and living.
And I find hope, too, in art—which is, in my estimation, where the solutions for our greatest ills will most likely manifest.
And I hope reason and compassion surpass rancor and cruelty on November 5th.
Blessings upon blessings,
Robert
For access to an exclusive “behind-the-books” look at my trips to Paraty and São Paulo, Brazil, become a founding member of Witness:
Recommended Listening
I mitici lunedì del Sistina 1969 - 1979: recital di Elza Soares e Jorge Ben (I performed the moon of Sistina 1969 - 1979: recital by Elza Soares and Jorge Ben)
Recommending Reading
Solitária by Eliana Alves Cruz
O Embranquecimento by Evandro Cruz Silva
A Estação das Sombras by Léonora Miano
O Avesso da Pele by Jeferson Tenório
“Robert Jones Jr. and Evandro Cruz Silva talk about different ways of being”
Recommended Viewing
“Trump Is KILLING Democracy!” | Get Woke featuring
“Reading Racist Comments: Black Vote Edition” by Garrison Hayes
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser