Berkley Center

It has been seven weeks since my arrival, and I have yet to develop the language around how I identify myself. I have found that "Afro-Latina" does not flow so smoothly in Portuguese. I arrived to Brazil a week before the Olympic Games, but I decided not to attend or directly support the events. (Why? See here, here, and here). The most common question I received during this time was “Where are you from?" I usually wanted to say “My heart and soul are truly products of the Caribbean, but my education and my tongue have been adopted by the United States.” What I would actually say is “American,” desperately wanting to explain that my Americanness lives subject to a hyphen.

Most importantly, and exhaustingly, I typically found myself defending my blackness. Which has become unrecognizable, not only in my crossing of a border but my crossing of a social, political, and historical context. Within my own experience with self-exploration, self-love, and decolonization I have found comfort in my blackness and openly referring to myself as Negra (Black). Here in Brazil that has led most people to respond with a laugh, a shake of a head, and typically a correction: "Não, você não é negra, você é morena clara” (“No, you are not black, you are light brown”). Again, this originates from a contrasting sociopolitical context.

I have learned not to respond in frustration at what I read as a constant reminder of colonial violence and the erasure of my historical experience. Instead, I focus on dissecting how studying abroad has highlighted how I have come to fit into spaces of privilege. A light[er] complexion sprinkled with an American passport, a favorable currency exchange, a homestay (in a neighborhood worth more that the accumulated wealth of each one of my ancestors), and an education at a prestigious university has made it difficult for me to defend my memories of struggle. Instead I have opted to focus my energy on finding spaces where my blackness and the blackness of other Brazilians is simultaneously celebrated and welcomed.

My first experience in an exclusively black space came through an invitation from one of my professors to attend "A Roda de Filosofia Negra Ota Benga" ("Dialogue of Black Philosophy Ota Benga"), the name a reference to the Congolese man kept captive in the Bronx Zoo in 1906. This same professor taught me about the dangers of limiting dialogue of black liberation to spaces of privilege (i.e. the university) and living up to her theory it took two trains and an hour to arrive at Méier, a neighborhood located in the north zone of Rio.

I was overwhelmed with emotion to say the least; as I looked around I finally felt at home. The ambience was filled with food, music, and dialogue. “Unidade é nosso objetivo” (“unity is our objective”) could be heard all throughout the crowd. To my surprise this was also my first experience learning about black liberation through the ideal of Pan-Africanism. An online version of a collection of works by Marcus Garvey was distributed and read out loud during the event. His writing and teachings had permeated borders and consciousnesses.

A few weeks later I was invited to an event at my host university by the Coletivo Nuvem Negra (Black Cloud Collective), an alliance of black students whose name alludes to the relation between clouds and memory in information technology. Walking into the auditorium on campus I was handed various stickers, all of which read “Quantas professoras negras você tem?” (“How many black professors do you have?”) The event was meant to celebrate the launch of a self published journal, The Journal Nuvem Negra, which maps out black intellectuals and questions the role of black collectives in the institutional structure of higher education.

I was able to relate on a deep and personal level. Their struggle and the marks of their exhaustion reminded me of the similar struggles that occur at my home university. Our backgrounds differ greatly but the sense of hopelessness in private white institutions and spaces is very familiar. I was inspired by their ability to create tools of resistance and promote affirmation of the black body in academic spaces.

Much like my earlier experience in Meier I noticed how globalization seems to be speeding up the process of decolonization. People of the diaspora have been sharing, dialoguing, and working together to deconstruct the hierarchy and challenge the casa grande. So far, one of the greatest things that Brazil has taught me is how heterogeneous the black experience is and how black liberation comes in different shapes. For one group, black liberation was to be found in Pan-Africanism; for the other group black liberation was present in entering spaces of power and staying there long enough to bring your people up with you. I look forward to continue learning and unlearning.