What a difference a year makes?

I cannot believe the year has gone so quickly and it is Dia da Consciência Negra (Black Awareness Day in Brazil) again. This got me thinking about what has changed in a year? Well since last year I have moved city, Brasilia to São Paulo, my son has moved schools and I have given up Regional Capoeira and taken up Angolan Capoeira, slower, more intense and kinder to me. I am just not programmed to master a handless cartwheel! However, something had not changed until last weekend.  I was yet to meet a single Brazilian of African descent who I could class as middle class and not in government, not that there are many of the latter either. I met literally a couple in Brasilia and God bless Bahia where I have met a few more.

You may ask why should class matter in this day and age?  Well personally, anyone fascinated with Brazil for as long as I have been, cannot help but buy in to the image Brazil promotes outside, of a rainbow nation, more rainbow than South Africa, of every race and colour living happily side-by-side.  It is half the reason I have always wanted to live and work here. From an objective point of view, social mobility for all sections of society regardless of gender or race is essential for ensuring that a country taps into the diversity of talent that will ultimately determine how high it rises or not. If over 50% of the population, over 50% of voters and the economic consumers in a society are not socially mobile, then there is a problem.

Young people need to look up and relate to people they aspire to be like, and yes as uncomfortable as the truth may be, it helps to have someone who looks like you or from a similar background to yours to relate to. This shows you that there are options beyond your daily reality. Following the race riots of the early 1980’s, the UK identified a lack of a black middle class as one of the factors that fueled dissatisfaction in our inner cities (alongside some “dubious policing”).

One of the subsequent government reports at the time recommended a conscious policy of developing a black British middle class. We are not there yet but we have come a long way. At least today, a young black person in Britain can look to the JP Morgan sponsored list of the 100 most influential black British people and find everyone from Judges, including the UK’s first female Attorney General Baroness Scotland,  to CEOs like Tidjane Thiam the first Black CEO of a FTSE 100 Company or billionaire Mo Ibrahim, or John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. In fact there isn’t a single black entertainer or footballer in the top 10. The list is diverse, broad and accessible to all, especially the young who need to see it.

Having a visible middle class, which reflects the ethnic diversity of a country, is not only important for any particular race in question, but for the country as a whole. It means everybody gets used to seeing successful people in all walks of life, and this broadens the mind, breaks glass ceilings and weakens stereotypes. My son unlike me will grow up thinking that not only is it possible for someone who looks like him to rule the most powerful country in the world (Obama USA), it is in fact old news. Bringing it home to Brazil a more visible middle class could make a difference in the little things others take for granted, but people of African descent notice.

For instance, a more representative middle class may mean that the security guard relaxes when he sees someone of color, including a child step into a posh mall or five star hotel as a guest.  Or that no black child will have to deal with the racial slurs my son has experienced here at school, like when a child in his class told him he looked like a monkey and another, ironically a child of Italian decent, asked him what he was doing in Brazil “you shouldn’t be here, go back to Africa.” Credit to the school both incidents were dealt with immediately and nothing of this nature has happened since. My son loves his school and is wiser for the experience.  However it is hardly surprising it did happen, my son really is a novelty for many of his friends, who are for the most part very friendly intelligent children.  However for many their reality is that the likely context in which they would ordinarily socialize with people of colour is through their beloved nannies.

Which brings me back to where I started. What happened last weekend?

Well I been invited by some American friends to attend an award ceremony honoring Brazilians of African descent called Raca Negra Award. I did not have to be asked twice. It was a great event which included the Brazilian Ministers for Education and Racial Equality, Vice Presidents of sponsoring banks like CAIXA, the president of the Brazilian Bar Association, Maju the first and only black weather girl on Globo, the Rector of University Zumbi dos Palmares , Brazil’s first black university (which has been visited by everyone from Mrs. Mandela to Hilary Clinton), –  and the Nigerian Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature Wole Soyinka (my hero).

The best part of the evening wasn’t just the message or entertainment, but finally… finally meeting upwardly mobile black Brazilians from different sectors. Speaking with them they acknowledged they still have a very long way to go and above all look to building links with and learning from the experiences (good and bad) of the UK, the US and African countries  (one in three Africans is middle class).

I am very hopeful that they will succeed, at the end of the day they are not asking for the earth; just that Brazil lives up on the inside to the powerful image it is celebrated for on the outside. And why not? This is the land of optimism, and as summed up in the words of one of the popular samba songs of the evening: “Canta forte, canta alto, que a vida vai melhorar” – “Sing loud life will get better!”