Nowadays, being Brazilian means lots of things. It not only means that your president wasn’t elected democratically, but also that you live in a diverse country. Genetically speaking, every single Brazilian there is has both black and native Brazilian ancestors, although we are still plagued by race issues like any other country. It also means having to live with a horrendous past of slavery and so much culture mixing. Seriously. A good example of how mixed we are is Nossa Senhora do Rosário, the only Catholic saint that is always and permanently portrayed as black because her devotees were slaves and ex-slaves, or the Bonfim party, where Catholicism and Candomblé, a religion developed by enslaved West Africans (Bantu, Yoruba and Fon), meet and court each other. The biggest attraction of Brazilian carnival, samba, is a traditionally black field.
It’s a beautiful mixture, and I’ll never deny that. There is one problem though: because of all the mixing that happened here, most of our population can’t tell cultural exchange from cultural appropriation — and there are few things as dangerous as that.
First off, let’s check what the dictionary has to say about those concepts. According to this website, cultural exchange is “a temporary reciprocal exchange of representatives, students, or artists between countries, with the aim of fostering goodwill and mutual understanding.” You see, mutuality is the key. As someone who plans to study History, I think we have actually very few examples of cultural exchange in the world. Brazilians love to say that lots of cultural exchange happened in our past, using how capoeira (a sport created by slaves) was integrated to our society or how Catholicism mixed up with other religions (both native and from African slaves), but I will disagree. As we just saw, cultural exchange is based on reciprocity, and there was none of it during the period when our cultures encountered. No, what really happened was that the white Portuguese culture was imposed over other civilizations here in Brazil, and, when it was convenient, that culture would take elements from others and put it into itself. The aim there is not to foster goodwill towards each other or mutual understanding, but to colonize another civilization.
Now, let’s take a look at what cultural appropriation means. Cambridge Dictionary says it is “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.” It honestly is such a better definition for what happened and keeps happening not only here, but all around the world. For me, the big difference between one and the other lies on respect. No, I won’t say it’s fine for white women to wear turbans (which caused a big polemic here in Brazil a while ago), for instance, but think about it. I, for instance, am a white person living in Brazil. One of my old teachers was black and, some days, she would wear turbans for class. I did my research on them and discovered they’re something deeply rooted in black culture. My teacher went through much for being black, a lot of bad things I never had to experience for the simples fact that I’m white. She wears her turban for a reason, and, if I did too, it would not only make it lose part of its meaning but also be disrespectful to her struggles; and to all the struggles black people went through simply for being black. If I truly respect its meaning, I simply will not wear them, because that would be hypocrisy, no matter how much I think turbans are beautiful and think they will fit my personal expression of self. It is valid, though, for me to want to learn more about black culture, and do what is in my power to normalize it inside my head, after all the centuries of marginalization of black and native Brazilian cultures we’ve had.
Because so many other cultures were incorporated into the one Portugal brought to Brazil when it first invaded our natives, it’s hard for most people to understand where the real difference lies. Although many people (even people from the left, like my father, who has been called a communist multiple times by multiple people) will say that cultural appropriation is just people wanting to feel like snowflakes, it is a matter that has to be discussed, and it has to be now.
