Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [30]
Having Rita as my research assistant was very different from working with Fernando. Fernando concentrated on written texts. Rita knew, or had connections to, every capoeira angola mestre in the city. At first, I conducted the interviews, but after the first few, I realized that when Rita asked the questions, people opened up immediately, whereas with me, they were reserved. Also, often a mestre would refer to some happening in Salvador history or some religious ritual, usually connected to Candomblé, about which I knew nothing. Rita was already well-versed in such references and could draw the person out about that topic, revealing interesting information that I would have never understood enough to even approach. So, our style changed. I generally just sat quietly and asked a few questions at the end about topics we hadn’t covered or something in which I had particular interest.
One afternoon, after a day of interviews, I asked Rita why she had lost her job.
“After the elections, the city government did an upheaval, changing everyone. In my department, I’m the only black person except my boss.” She poured me some beer from the bottle we were sharing as we sat together at an open-air street bar. “Do you know what I mean by black?”
“African descent.” I thought about my conversation with Fernando, but said nothing. I wanted to hear what Rita had to say.
“Yes and no. I am dark and from the shantytown—my accent still gives me away on that, and I don’t hide my neighborhood anyway. My boss, who is almost as dark as me, was brought up in a lower middle-class neighborhood. That his background is more middle-class than mine makes him whiter in the way people think here. At the time we both went to school, in the sixties and seventies, the school system worked somewhat better than it does now. If you were dedicated, a good student, you could get into public grammar schools that actually gave you a decent education. That’s why either of us had any chance of going to university, but particularly me. These grammar schools don’t exist anymore. They disappeared during the worst of the dictatorship.” She took a sip of her beer. “My politics are known. I’m black. My boss was threatened by me. So he fired me.”
“But how can that be racism—if he’s black, I would think he’d stick up for you.”
Rita laughed. “Oh, no. Here in Brazil, the blacks who were poor and then become middle-class are the greatest oppressors of their race and of the poor.”
“Why?”
“They don’t want to be reminded of their past, I suppose. They want the status quo. They want what the middle class has—more, they want to be the middle class, just pretend they’re white and push away those connected to the misery they knew before. That’s why we don’t have an effective Black Power Movement here as you have in the States. There the blacks have to stay in their black neighborhoods, don’t they?”
I nodded. “There is strong residential separatism in the States.”
“Here not nearly so much, as I understand. And overt racism is illegal, written into our Constitution. So no one can openly call me a ‘nigger.’”
“But they can fire you.”
Rita bought a paper cone of peanuts from a small boy who came by our table. She opened the cone, laid out the peanuts for us both and ate a few before she answered. “They’re not supposed to. I might even be able to file a legal suit in this case.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yes. At least I can try.” She nibbled more peanuts. “The legal system works to protect the Constitution and the laborers—if you can afford a good lawyer. Which of course most poor people cannot.”
“Like Gato or Jorge.”
“Like Gato or Jorge. In the countryside it’s even worse. But Gato and Jorge at least have middle-class friends. So do I. Most people don’t. The difficulty is that poor black people can, if they’re lucky, get jobs like Jorge or Gato have. Or had … they lost them, didn’t they?”
I nodded.
Rita snapped a peanut in half. “That’s so screwed.” She paused. “The bigger problem