Brazil at work: Black and held back

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Despite the quotas and positive discrimination, many black Brazilian professionals still struggle to feel accepted and get promoted.

Ivana Davidovic hears from Luiza Trajano - Brazil’s richest woman and the owner of the country’s largest retailer, Magazine Luiza - who explains why she decided to launch a coveted management trainee scheme for black people only. Former model and director of the Identities of Brazil Institute NGO, Luana Genot, talks about her own experiences of being held back because of the colour of her skin and her work helping companies change their culture around black staff.

Alabe Nujara recalls being the first in his family to go to university and feeling out of place as a black man, which inspired him to successfully campaign for the introduction of quotas for historically disadvantaged students at federal institutions. Plus Brazilian sociologist Graziella Moraes Silva discusses why Brazil has an image of a racially inclusive society, which many black people would not recognise as their reality.

(Picture: Worried young businesswoman in office corridor in Brazil; Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me, Ivana Davidovich.
0:04.4	In today's program, why did Brazil's richest woman decide to launch a management program
0:09.3	that was only open to black people?
0:11.5	I also used to think that I didn't have any kind of prejudice, but I realized I carried
0:16.8	structural racism inside of me.
0:19.7	For example, at my birthday parties and in my house, there were
0:22.9	never any black women present. And despite positive discrimination and quotas, how do black
0:29.1	Brazilian professionals feel in the workplace? I felt my career was limited by my skin tone.
0:35.4	No matter my competences, they would say, oh, you don't match the profile.
0:41.1	I don't think that you would be someone that we would pick for a promotion or something like that.
0:47.6	And I felt that this was because of my race.
0:51.3	That's all coming up on Business Daily from the BBC.
1:00.0	Thank you. of my race. That's all coming up on Business Daily from the BBC. In February this year, large crowds were protesting across 20 Brazilian cities, including
1:05.2	Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, after the murder of a 24-year-old Congolese refugee Moise Muggenye Cabagambe, who was beaten to
1:13.3	death in January for seeking unpaid wages.
1:19.7	Demonstrators called for justice and harsh punishments for those involved in Kabagambes' death,
1:24.6	comparing this case to the murder of George Floyd in the US.
1:28.2	Many protesters also highlighted the wider issues of racism
1:31.7	and perceived lack of opportunities faced by not only refugees
1:35.5	by the whole of the black community in Brazil.
1:42.3	Anti-racism protests are common in Brazil,
1:45.1	despite the fact that over 50% of the country's 208 million people
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.