Tornar-se negro para quem? Um diálogo entre Brasil, África do Sul e a memória ancestral africana

Abstract

Since the colonisation of Brazil, the black population has been considered undesirable by white people and confined to certain areas. This racism imposed by the colonisers on enslaved people has a spatial and existential dimension influenced by race, which continues to echo in coloniality. This dimension of racism also permeated non-white people in South Africa through the institutionalisation of apartheid (1948-1994), which racialised South Africans into White, Coloured, Indian/Asian and Black, segregated them, and continues to affect everyday dynamics. Thus, through an experiential perspective centred on the Brazilian context and in dialogue with South Africa, taking into account the specificities of each country, we discuss how the racial marker dictates the formative dynamics of identity, intertwined with the spaces, places, and territories that constitute us and that we constitute. In this intertwining, we draw on writing and discussion of the concept of race. These choices enable us to highlight how black people become racialised in relation to white people, while at the same time this becoming can be understood as an existential-political manifestation of confronting whiteness. In dialogue with Neusa Santos Sousa, Robert Bernasconi, Linda Alcoff, Sara Ahmed, Franz Fanon, and South African authors Saul Dubow, Pearl Subban, and Jeremy Seekings, we propose to think about the relationship between race and spatiality in our existence since our ancestors.