Elisa Lucinda: This white people thing, how long will it last?

By Elisa Lucinda, on your Facebook - Visceral, conscious, active, legitimized, structural, septicemic in all organs of the nation, William Waack's racism is not unique to him. That's the worst news. "A black thing" is a common subtext in the minds of a large part of a society created under the parameters of the Big House.

The diabolical plan that began with trafficking, torture, and murder of Black people and lasted four hundred years is more nefarious and homicidal than the five or six years of the Jewish Holocaust, and humanity respects this pain more. I am not saying that one pain is less than the other. But I affirm that the holocaust of Black slavery continues to this day and does not move our society. It generally doesn't matter how many nameless, nameless Black people are murdered daily in the favelas and peripheries of this country. The obsolete idea that "a good Black person is one with a white soul," one without a voice, still lingers in the Brazilian imagination, and this imagination devalues ​​the Black ethnicity as if there were some scientific defense pointing to a race's DNA as predisposing it to subhumanity. 

What's most striking about Willian's video is his lack of conflict with the topic, his blatant comfort and ease within his convictions. When Globo, which thankfully acted very quickly, repudiating and removing the journalist, states that it will request clarification of the facts, one feels like being a fly on this professional's head to see what the best argument will be behind the scenes of his departure. The situation is indefensible. He didn't speak unintentionally, he wasn't nervous. I repeat: it's a conviction. Absolutely aware and slightly fearful that his words could compromise him, he almost avoids speaking openly: “Why are you honking? You fucking asshole! It must be a... I won't even say who. I know who it is... You know who it is, right?” But he couldn't resist. It came out. It jumped out of his mouth: "You know what it is. It's black. It's a black thing." That's how he thinks. He agrees with racism. He's its spokesperson. We are faced with a leak courageously disclosed by VT operator Diego Rocha Pereira, 28, and graphic designer Robson Ramos, 29, both Black and provocative in our place of speech. From this recording, we can imagine how many of these attitudes don't reach the public eye and become the butt of jokes behind the scenes. It wouldn't be reckless of me to say that this isn't an isolated incident by this journalist. A well-tuned racial discrimination detector might have no difficulty finding, in his and his family's upbringing, the ideology revealed in the pathetic video recorded in front of the White House, while Barack Obama was still inside. He was in the United States, he spoke Portuguese, he was in his "dressing room," and he didn't imagine that the Waack mask was being removed before the audience left the theater. I'm an actress, I live in the theater, and I know that if the audience, for some reason, sees the trick, the tip of the card hidden under the magician's cloak, there's no other way out for the artist but to surrender to the truth. It's over. The audience saw. It's screwed. It's better to admit it. The incriminating evidence is undeniable. Any attempt to discredit this blatant truth is embarrassingly powerless. 

What's at stake here is how to stop modern-day slavery, the kind brought about through the language of the most disgusting expressions that destroy the self-esteem of Black people every minute, and that keep the legacy of slavery in the minds of young white people, of white children, in 2017. The seed of evil is reproduced everywhere, including in journalism, including in fiction. I am also a journalist by training, and I know the public responsibility we have with information, I know the power of influence of journalistic words in shaping opinions. Given this, in a democracy, having a journalist who presents an important news program on a channel that reaches millions of viewers daily, defending racist positions, even exposing himself to a lawsuit, points to the immediate dismissal of this professional. I see no other way out. For me, it's as serious as a doctor refusing to treat a Black and poor patient in the emergency room. For William Waack, the life of a Black person, the thoughts of a Black person, the attitude of a Black person, the rights of a Black person are lesser, and everything about them is worth less. This intellectual aberration is ingrained in its white, dominant cultural DNA. Its ignorance is sophisticatedly crude, given its prestigious position in television news. And this ignorance is as sophisticated as it is pernicious; it represents a prevailing thought that rarely dares to show its face, to come out of the closet. But it is this thought that generates the practical attitude of closing doors, and of provoking in us, in our civil organizations and in the laws, the fortunate strategy of quota systems. When Cazuza says that the bourgeoisie stinks, this is what he is referring to. There is a Catholic hypocrisy, disguised as charitable, adorned with apparent good customs, but which wallows in the toxic mud of its prejudices and in its struggle for the preservation of slave quarters, storage rooms, and the varied persistence of whips. Prisons, maids' quarters, the rubble of favelas and peripheries—everything is modeled after the basements of slavery. 

I would be ashamed to teach racism to my children, William isn't. I would be ashamed to be racist in my workplace, William isn't. I would be ashamed to be racist as a Brazilian working in a foreign land, William isn't. To use my language against the people who built my nation, William isn't. And for that reason, he represents a shame to the Brazilian people. His statement hits the faces of Black people who work for the success of this country's history and the company he works for; his statement is an affront, an insult to the talent of great Black actors who have given and continue to give their art to Brazilian television drama, contributing to a public success that spans decades. His statement also strikes at the conscience of white people whom he does not represent, embarrassing them, calling them to clear their own name. Punishing him with dismissal seems to me an act equivalent to the crime. It fits. His opinion causes great damage and puts his finger on a raw wound. If he works for a company that does not support racism, his blatant offense naturally removes him from the network. If Rede Globo doesn't want to condone discriminatory attitudes, it can't have anyone on its staff who thinks differently, since this issue is prevalent throughout its programming. Right now, I'm working on the UN's Black Lives Matter campaign. The numbers are alarming; we lose huge numbers of boys who leave school to crime, and among them, thousands are murdered while innocent, simply for being Black. And that's all. For being worth less. 

But tragedy only unfolds, only turns to bloodshed, only turns to gunfire, only ends in death after it has solidified in the minds of many people, and many people who are in charge in this country. This is the game we have to dismantle. When we say "black thing" as a synonym for inferior or bad, deep down we are producing content that will authorize killing. William Waack is not the only one who thinks this way; that's what the video revealed to us. It's a white thing, and it should shame good white people. The subject is booming. The racial issue in Daniela Thomas's new film will be discussed this Friday on Pedro Bial's show. We can't hold it back anymore. The world is asking for modern abolitionists and wants to know which side you're on.