USP study shows that comedians strengthened the ‘whitewashing’ of Brazilian society with racist jokes | Saint Paul

In the study “Quaquaraquaquá, who laughed? The blacks who weren’t … ”, the teacher. Dr. Maria Margarete dos Santos Benedicto affirms that the first decades after the proclamation of the Republic in 1889 were marked by the search for a national identity, by the intensification of urban activity and, above all, by social instability, with the majority of the population in poverty and made up of recently freed slaves.

According to Maria Margarete, at the time, the political and intellectual elite were really tackling the “black problem,” and part of it he was effectively betting on the “whitening” of society through miscegenation and laws, which encouraged the immigration of European settlers, so that “the ‘black race’ could be reduced in three generations”. The professor recalls that the period was described by academic Abdias do Nascimento as the “materialization of institutional racism.”

Through extensive research and access to rare historical documents, the teacher identified that the magazines of the time, which featured the first satirical texts and cartoons produced and intended for the “literate class,” strengthened this ideology in the way that blacks were represented. .

“What we learn from books is a Eurocentric history, with political and social themes in Europe, so I could only suspect that the intellectual elite of that time was racist, which was proven in the amount of material I found in my research , in scattered sources. In this documentation, the commitment to whitewash the nation was clear. There was racism there, literally racism, “the teacher told G1.

“There is a verse by the composer Emicida that summarizes my thesis and that says: ‘the Jews’ shock the pain, our joke becomes,'” continued the professor. Dr. Maria Margarete dos Santos Benedicto.

See some of the cartoons of the time found by the researcher.

The cartoon above was called “National Hulha” because charcoal is a type of charcoal and was used as a reference to the black woman’s skin color. In the illustration, although elegantly dressed, the woman still asks: “Are you ready to cook?”, To which the white industrialist replies “It is for everything, my denial, for everything!”.

“Let us observe that the costume, the jewels, the bag, the hairstyle – which is no longer curly, but curled by the process of miscegenation – is the aesthetic representation inspired by the European model, and it is also a representation of the process. eugenic, ‘cleansing’, which he went through, ”wrote Maria Margarete in the study.

The illustrations appear in the magazine D. Quijote, owned by Manoel Bastos Tigre, who was also the director of the publication. According to the researcher, the magazine made fun of the typical affectation of the time called “Belle Époque”, while reinforcing stereotypes through cartoons, often representing blacks in a submissive, naive and poorly educated way, in addition to demarcating places. that should be occupied by them.

Above, “Chiquinho”, the footballer who could not score if the game was at night. Below, “A cigar full of cigars”, mocking the elegant black, “tout rempli de soi même” (all full of himself).

In “Salvo Seja” below, two white men speak: “Fake skinny? Incorrect. She is a fake black woman ”, revealing a“good functioning of the money laundering policy ”, which would culminate in the“ mulatto ”.

The published illustrations also showed that black employees “would be taking advantage of generous employers, who offered them confidence, while complaining, they were little used to work and gossip”, always dressed in aprons, even when unemployed.

Although many intellectuals of the time left these traces of racism in humor, the study of Professor María Margarete focuses on three well-known characters of the time – in addition to Manoel Bastos Tigre, owner and director of D. Quijote magazine, presented previously, he also analyzed the works of Antônio Torres and Emílio de Menezes, who wrote satirical texts published in print media.

According to the investigation, Antônio Torres presented himself as a mulatto, but revealed in his texts that he considered Europeans as civilized. In the satirical text “A Vitória dos Mulatos”, published in 1917 in the magazine D. Quijote, he ironically “denounces” the “flaws” that his contemporaries try to hide.

“In the town hall we have dr. Arnaldo Cavalcanti, honor of the breed. In the Senate, in addition to dr. Rivadavia Correia, who is a mulatto woman in disguise, has the young Eloy de Souza, who recently declared that he could not live with less than one hundred thousand kings a day. This is the perfect type of fragrant mulatto (…) ”, he wrote, who also came to describe João do Rio, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, as someone“ who calls himself a nobleman, despite his Ethiopian beiçorra and his Hamitic prognathism, ”he wrote.

“My great surprise was to discover that Antônio Torres was black, and to realize that he is the symbol of what ‘whitening’ and miscegenation did with part of the black population. Miscegenation, as the social scientist Carlos Moore indicates, In contrast to what was thought, it did not reduce racism, in fact, it enhanced it. The mestizo, in this context, ends up assimilating the culture of the dominant white, “said the teacher. G1.

Likewise, Emilio de Menezes, immortal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, wrote in 1911, in the magazine A Imprensa, about a contemporary of his, a doctor and intellectual who had come to London for a congress.

“The life of Dr. João Batista de Lacerda is in danger, who wrote that the vast majority of Brazilians are mulattoes. Such a slander cannot go unpunished. When he arrives, the whites of this land lynch him and the black grandchildren eat his liver. They will show that they are blonde and have blue eyes, ”he scoffed.

Moved by the question “Can humor contribute to the maintenance of racism in society?”, Maria Margarete concludes that it does, and that although the abolition freed the slaves, “the color defect persisted in the born Republic, the racial status quo, and began to be used to guarantee social differences ”, wrote the researcher.