Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [71]
“They won’t treat me as director,” Rita said. “I’m black, with a favela accent. They want you.”
“But Eduardo’s black.”
“Not here. You know that. He’s middle-class, lived in São Paulo for many years, and now lives in the United States.”
“So, I somehow have to disappear, and you have to act fiercer to those middle-class people, really be the director.”
“Margaret, what are we doing? Working hard to create little black mimics of middle-class values who will later happily oppress their former neighbors?”
I had no answer for her.
We both realized that we had to rethink this. If we were providing African-Brazilians—and by the mere fact that they were in the favelas to begin with was almost complete assurance in Salvador that they would be African-Brazilian—with the tools to enter the middle-class, why did this mean they would challenge the status quo and effect change themselves other than providing for their families? Indeed, every indication pointed to quite the opposite.
The black Brazilian writer and activist Thereza Santos wrote that in São Paulo during the military dictatorship, when she and other mothers confronted the Rota 66, which was assassinating their sons, they couldn’t count on the participation of the black movement in any confrontation because its members, many of whom had favela roots themselves, wanted to be seen as middle-class.
Likewise, Rita had told me about numerous incidents where the worst racial discrimination in job situations she and other African-Brazilians faced came from African-Brazilians who themselves had been poor and who had, usually through some very lucky chance, entered the middle class. This was particularly undermining when one considered the tiny percentage of African-Brazilians who were able to make this transition.
One African-Brazilian friend of Rita’s, originally poor, argued with his white, middle-class wife that they should not pay their maid more because it would make it more difficult for other middle-class people to hire them so cheaply. This man’s mother had been a maid herself.
Example after example in Salvador showed that middle-class African-Brazilians did not tend to support their birth communities. Indeed, they shunned them, associating mostly with whites and upholding a status quo that kept the vast majority of African-Brazilians impoverished and powerless.
It was becoming clear that education alone would only produce African-Brazilian middle-class upholders of a middle-class status quo.
I shelved these concerns and went to England anyway.
I had never understood how much class affected bureaucracy in London, how it determined how affairs were done. It was not an area of that society I had ever entered before.
Upon arriving in London, I visited the aptly named Charities Commission. Contrary to my preconceived ideas, Britain was much more organized than the United States; the Charities Commission had a brochure listing all the forms we needed and even a template of the answers to their questions.
Alex and Susie helped me through the entire registration process. Alex rang John, a lawyer friend who specialized in nonprofit formation and law, and invited him over for dinner and an excellent bottle of wine. Susie was co-director of the largest wine importer in Britain, so excellent wine was expected and available. John was very pleased with the wine, and we had a great chat. He told me exactly what to do, what to say on the forms, and what pitfalls to avoid. This type of knowledge took me months to acquire in the United States. In London, it took me less than a week.
The second night, Alex and Susie invited their friend Rob over for more excellent wine. Rob was a consultant specializing