Black cultures sell, but who profits from them? – 07/18/2023 – Policies and Justice

From northeastern couscous in the morning, to São Benedito coffee at the altar, there is not a Brazilian in this country who does not carry with him a custom, an affective cultural memory or who was not blessed in childhood.

Here, we are multicultural by origin, and even with the process of forced diasporic transit, our lives are books that record legacies and forge us as collective beings and consequently as a society.

From the burden to the bonus of this history, we are a continental country that pulsates with plurality, but also overflows with colonial reflexes and its most varied forms of violence that change the way we act, but that violate us to this day.

Although for some this all seems like a romantic tale, the permanence of all our identities is due to our interconnected cultures that generated human movements and allowed, from the exchange of contact, the grouping of people who, violated by the colonial structure, used their ” stories” and reorganized memories and created new technologies of coexistence and collective survival, such as a code of conduct, cultural movements.

As a result, we have today in our daily lives several dynamics resulting from a large ramification of ethnic-cultural roots, whether they are hybrids of colonial, migratory, diasporic or not processes, but which served as communication, belonging, human adaptation and mainly subsistence so that peoples exploited here could coexist by resuming their humanities.

In this regard, they ranged from eating habits to major political movements such as samba schools, popular festivals, black brotherhoods, candomblé terreiros, fraternities, the hip hop movement, black dance teams to young funk dances and its multi-diverse artistic, political and musical reverberations that ensured the persistence of our generations.

Therefore, the quilombamentos, indigenous resistance and survival strategies, LGBTQIAP+, black, female, migrants; Along with the flow of people between the states in the 1960s and 1970s, our cities overflowed with diverse strands of artistic and cultural expressions that formed contemporary civilizing landmarks for what we believe to be Brazilian culture today. How fluid, sometimes it arrives in spaces around the world, it spreads through listening and countless looks that most traditional education does not reach, building new imaginaries for what we are.

However, within the game of a capitalist system in which even the violence of coloniality is renewed, new lifestyles and cultural practices become a product, discarding their political marks, falling into the cold dilemma of the market.

So who profits from them?

The same as always, or rather, the heirs of the usual.

And just as if we had a great replication methodology, we observe new arms of a neocolonial market, this time with the same abusiveness, but this time more cult, more modern and more up-to-date; involved in the diversity trends of brands, ESGs, the UN Global Compact and its technologies, seeking to fit into a movement that sells culture and entertainment from the symbols of plurality, but enriches the pockets of people as usual and emptying our political movements and our role.

And is it worth it? According to the Itaú Cultural Observatory, the creative economy industry raised BRL 230 million in Brazil in 2020, corresponding to 3.11% of GDP, surpassing that year’s figures for the automobile industry.

However, we know that very little is the occupation index of black and indigenous people in decision-making in this large, albeit recent market. After all, despite the national cultural movements being highlighted as a global trend, being exported by several countries, as well as funk artists and the new names in music they call “urban” reaching their millions in numbers without needing large investments, the profits of this large market is not ours.

With this, I reaffirm that violence, although it diminishes its form, does not lose its performance, mainly in the face of an economic factor that generates autonomy for the exploited in a country with a slavery heritage.

Therefore, we are still talking about new forms of objectification and emptying of genuinely identitary movements, which shape the survival and imaginary of the country’s cultural futures; that although they occupy their media relevance, they continue to be persecuted and their rights to culture, deprived; because even though we are holders of their narratives, the cultural market that sells them still exploits, and does not set us free.

* This article was edited by journalist Giulia M. Ebohon

The editor, Michael França, asks each participant of the space “Politics and Justice” of the Sheet suggest a song to the readers. In this text, the song chosen by Ciça Pereira was “A conta vai estar”, by Bia Ferreira.