Ana’s Story, Part I: Race

We sat at the back of the bus: I, a mulatta Dominican-American women of African descent with dark caramel-colored skin; Imani, an African-American woman of African descent and beautifully dark as coffee; and Valencia, a cocoa-skinned Pilipina - American woman. The white American and Brazilian students sat at the front of the bus, joking and laughing together as we rode through the desert of Northeastern Brazil. We were on our way back to our home stay city from Caninde where we had gone to learn about and experience the yearly pilgrimage to the Basilica of Saõ Francisco, a place where people from all over the Northeast go to heal. The irony of our own situation was not lost on the three of us as we struggled to swallow the racism that had colored our experience during the trip. This racism had left us isolated throughout the three days in Caninde, to the point that when it came time to go home, we were left with the only seats available in the small bus.

We, the American students, were on an exchange program. The director of our program, a black American man, had organized this trip to include us and a group of Brazilian university students in order to facilitate inter-cultural dialogue and exchange between peers. The dialogue, however, did not seem to be for all the students, but rather only for the white students - both Brazilian and American. As the bus rolled along, Imani, Valencia and I sat segregated at the back of the bus, generating our own dialogue with each other.

"Girl - is this what I think it is?"
"um hmm."
"Yeah - it is."
"Is this as WRONG as I think it is?"
"I ain't got nothin' to say."
"It's wrong."

We were not only segregated from the Brazilian students but also, consequently, the white Americans. Not only were we sitting in the back of the bus, but none of our Brazilian `peers' had spoken to any of the three of us over the course of our trip. It was immediately apparent to the Imani, Valencia and me that this dynamic was about racism and, that to the Brazilian students, the only true and valuable Americans to connect with were the five white-skinned ones sitting amongst them. We realized that what was happening was as much a result of the Brazilian racism as it was the white American students' participation in this racism. The white American students, people we considered our friends and peers in this program, witnessed what was going on without fully understanding or acknowledging it, and seriously lacked the tools to confront their own and others' racism.

This bus ride had not been the first incident of oppression that any of the three of us had experienced in Brazil. As I sat there looking out the window at the desert landscape, I tried to digest what had already happened to me during the course of the program. I was no longer going home to the original family I was assigned to. Instead, I was going to a family in the favelas, the poor urban living areas in the Brazilian city where we were based. This had come about recently: When I `came out' to my original home stay family as Jewish, I was promptly treated to a series of anti-Semitic epithets.

This same home stay family had also taken me to a gathering of their extended family and friends where I was several times beckoned by "aunts" and "cousins" who had the impression that I was brought along as the family maid. When my thick American accent spilled forth from my mouth in the little amount of Portuguese I had learned, I was promptly dismissed with an embarrassed wave. I was not only embarrassed but shamed and humiliated

The director, concerned for my safety, promptly removed me from this home and placed me with a family in the favela. Imani and Valencia were also removed from their original families and placed with families in the favelas. For all of us, it was due to similar reasons: For Imani, the darkest among us, her home stay family ignored her for the first two weeks of the program. For Valencia, her family spent less and less time with her as she got darker and darker in the Brazilian sun. On the day that the director had driven the three of us to our new families in the favelas, he confessed to us that this was not the first time American students of color had to be removed mid-program from middle class homes and placed with families in the favelas. I reflected on that conversation as we made our way back home, and realized that I should have seen the university student situation coming.

I looked around at the Brazilian students on the bus. All of them were light-skinned or what Americans would call white. I assumed that they were all from the wealthier classes, as in Brazil, private universities were generally reserved for the families that could afford them. I shifted in my seat as I realized that the racism I was experiencing was a particular brand of Latin American racism - where race and class are read as one and the same thing. And that in the other Latin American contexts I was familiar with, when I was with peers, I was usually sitting amongst the wealthier classes.

I looked down at my dark brown hands and curled them up into fists, sinking them into the seat as my tears unwillingly escaped from me tinged with anger and the bittersweet flavor of self-realization. I realized that up until that point, I had thought I still remained within the poor urban class of the Dominican Republic - the class of my extended family; I had not yet understood that I would be considered part of the intellectual middle class in the Dominican Republic due to my parents' wealth and professional standing, my caramel-colored skin and U.S. passport. Therefore, when I went to live in the favela, it felt familiar, like the summers I spent with my aunts in the Dominican Republic. I not only blend in due to my color, but because I was extremely comfortable with not having electricity, taking cold showers out of buckets, peeing in chamber pots and non-working toilets, and sleeping in bare bones surroundings. I was used to washing my clothes by hand and to the specific camaraderie of women who hustle in hushed whispers to make ends meet. Despite all of these intimate familiarities, on that bus ride I saw that my own intellectual and social formation had ALSO happened amongst the middle classes, as much as amongst the conditions of poverty of my extended family. I hadn't known what this meant until that bus ride back to our home stay city. It meant that part of my anger was not only about the racism that we were experiencing, but about the fact that I understood exactly how engrained and unquestioned the Brazilian students' thinking actually was. Because I had been amongst students like these before - in the country of my birth, the Dominican Republic.

Sitting at the back of the bus was not lacking in irony or symbolism for us as three women who were black and/or identified with black Americans. For Imani, this experience on the bus resonated historically with the struggles her family had lived through only 40 years before in Jim Crow Georgia. Here she was, the first woman to go to college in her family, the first woman to travel outside of United States, sitting at the back of the bus IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. For Valencia, this confirmed for her what she had always experienced growing up on the Southside of Chicago - that she was indeed `black' in the imaginaries of white people within the dualistic constructs of race in the U.S., and that as a Pilipina she had a natural alliance with other peoples of color. For me, living through this particular experience of segregation tied in my struggles as a black Latina Jew to the struggles of African-American, Asian and Indigenous women throughout the Americas. Most significantly, it was due to our perceived indigenous and black Brazilian (not American) identities that middle class `white' Brazilian society was treating us so poorly and that the white American students could forget about our existence.

It was in Brazil in 1995, only one year after Mandela's visit to Bahia, that I understood Apartheid and black/white dualistic thinking as it applied to the Americas. While I had been hearing from Brazilians, and reading from promotional materials and text books, that Brazil was a mulatto society, one of racial democracy and freedom, my own experiences as a black-skinned American Latina Jew were demonstrating that the truth was in fact, quite the opposite. Brazil, much more than the United States, is a country deeply divided by class, which is openly and insidiously determined by race and gender. And I immediately understood that if it was possible to experience these deep levels of oppression in a society that claimed to be "racially democratic", then in the U.S., where racial democracy was not even feigned nor publicly desired, Apartheid was even more concrete.

I simultaneously learned that the racial stratification of a society such as Brazil's did nothing to undo the underlying dualistic nature of racist thinking. Valencia, a Pilipina who went from "looking Japanese" to being a "caboclo" (a derogatory term for dark-skinned indigenous people) and I (who went from being a "caboclo" to being a "morena" to being "preita") both experienced similar issues of authenticity, legitimacy and invisibility. For her and me, our racial identities carried a certain ambiguity that led to multiple placements along the color stratum, depending on the context of our experience and how dark our skin became. For Imani and me, we both experienced the nature of a brand of racism perpetrated on black people in particular, one that carries the weight of a slave-master/domestic-doa relationship within a historical colonial framework. All three of us sat at the back of that bus, and would get off in the favelas. All three of us passed as Brazilian. In the black and indigenous communities throughout the Northeast, and especially in Bahia where we three found refuge for the last month of our program, passing as Brazilian allowed us to become immersed in Brazilian society to a degree that our white American counterparts could never do. And it led us to experience Brazilian society in ways that became our secret joys. For example, being embraced by the black women's collectives, the candombles, and the artist and musician's communities in Bahia, where we immediately felt the solidarity of struggle and resistance - an international solidarity.

Within the social circles that our program immersed us in (the middle class home stay families and university students, etc), we were faced with significant social struggles that our black and indigenous Brazilian friends and colleagues experience in systematic and long-term ways. However, because of our U.S. passports we had access to these spaces in a way that our Brazilian counterparts do not AND we could leave at any time. Even so, our invisibility rendered us stripped of the voices that we would have otherwise used to confront the various forms of oppression that exist within Brazilian wealthy society. And our allies, the white students in the program, lacked the understanding and/or the tools to effectively intervene on our behalf as well as their own.

I looked out at the city that engulfed us as we entered the favelas. The bus driver, the only other dark person on the bus besides us and the program director, slowed down to let the three of us off closer to home. The American students said "see ya later." No one else said goodbye. We didn't bother responding beyond a slight wave as we got off and started walking home. It would take weeks for us to digest the full depth of our experiences on that trip to Caninde. The lessons would become clearer as we made our way to Bahia, a town in Northeastern Brazil with significant resistance to colonialism, racism and imperialism. We looked back at the bus as it sped into the center of the city and breathed a sigh of relief. We were quickly absorbed and hidden by the brown faces surrounding us, welcoming us back to the favelas.