George Floyd and João Pedro: how Brazil and the United States keep up with genocide politics

This is the first article I’m writing since I’ve decided to start this weekly-English-writing project during the quarantine. It’s a personal thing I’m doing to push up myself to keep up practicing my rusty English skills. I’ve chosen to start talking about racism, violence, and police politics in Brazil and the States because I also hope this project can be able to make social analysis, especially about Brazillian politics.

Black deaths as modus operandi

I’ve always thought Brazil and the United States have a lot of things in common. First of all, as a Latin-American country, Brazil has always been influenced by North American culture and lifestyle. However, we have decided to copy not only pop music addiction and Mc Donald’s unhealthy habits, but also the racist customs and genocide politics. Coincidentally, in the same period, we had an example of how the police is exterminating black people in Brazil and the United States.

The last May 19th, the young teenager João Pedro was killed after a police operation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The police defended themselves arguing they were only following the necessary procedures of the operation, but how does this explain the fact the 14-year-old boy’s house was covered with 70 gunshot marks? Seventy gunshot marks can not be a part of a “necessary procedure”, it’s more likely a part of a black young genocide that happens in Brazil.

According to Brazil’s Anual Public Security Report of 2019, 75,4% of the deaths due to police interventions had killed black people. From those victims, 99% were young men from 15 to 19 years old. These data show us that racism is a modus operandi of violence in the country.

One week after João Pedro’s case, a black man was suffocated until death by a white officer in Minneapolis, USA. The brutal George Floyd’s murder also got public opinion’s attention as is not the first time the American police officer acts with sickening violence against black people.

Slavery heritage

Although the statistics of both countries show us the painful reality we have when talking about police violence, people are hard to notice that racism is the main cause. Common sense usually avoids talking about racism because it remains to our shameful pass, the years and years of slavery.

Slavery was not only ‘a thing in the past that had existed some years before’, it was a whole economic system that used to base and rule our lives. When slavery ended, unfortunately, there wasn’t any politic to make black people truly part of society, they were left behind, and slowly the old ‘senzalas’ had become the new maid’s room, commonly in Brazillian white middle-class families.

Talk about police violence is always uncomfortable because it requires to talk about racism, the uncomfortable truth society is commonly denying to exist. It’s like the world or I don’t know who is saying ‘Ok, you can close your eyes when a white person crosses the street as soon as a black person appears in the same sidewalk, but when black people are dying by the only fact they are black, it’s impossible to deny racism existence.’

Nevertheless, people insist to deny this sentence once the slavery heritage is so deep-rooted in their minds and they start acting as we lived in a racial democracy.

Terrorist protests or other kind of racism?

During the last weekend, people would only talk about one thing on Twitter and other social media: the genuine or violent character of the latest protests in the United States and Brazil. In the USA, George Floyd’s murder was certainly the main cause of the manifestations. People seemed to approve the antiracist movement as long as things started getting rough. After protestors had put fire in some buildings— including an area near to the White House and a police office in Minneapolis — some people started to think that manifestants were exasperating chaos and they should be stopped.

In Brazil, João Pedro’s case had also motivated pro-democracy protestors to get reunited in São Paulo’s avenues, but the main cause was certainly making opposition to Bolsonaro’s followers. This wasn’t the first time bolsominions (Brazil president’s supporters' nickname) have disrespect social distance and the WHO recommendations to reclaim anticonstitutional orders as the closing of the Supreme Federal Court and military intervention. For the first time, though, pro-democracy forces decided to oppose them, in a curious movement composed by soccer teams antifascist supporters. The protests also got a bit rough, especially because of the violence of the police officers in the last case.

However, when dying because the way you were born is more likely expectation for black people, what’s the boundary to say when is a movement enough? How can we pacifically protest when there’s a black people genocide happening day after day? Or when people are begging for another dictatorial regime in daylight as it was the most common thing to do? Or when the United States president openly declares antifascist labeled as a terrorist organization?

As soon as Trump declares he’s a fascist and in addition to what all both Brazilian and American populations have been through during this pandemic, we’re now talking about other standards of valid protest. We’re now fighting against repression, killing, censure, fake news. We’re fighting against this rare dystopic age of fear, post-truth domination, and non-scientific speeches. We are fighting against fascism and it mustn’t have been any boundaries to do it.