Letter from student Beatriz Sousa to black women and girls

Over the years (and I'm only 15), I grew up without an identity, not knowing if I was black, brunette, brown, mulatto, I was even called “café com leite” and I accepted each of these terms because, in reality, I was too confused to debate.

Our race is something interesting, because even when we say we're of one race, someone comes along and says we're of another. This Brazilian miscegenation is something wonderful, although it was gradually created on the basis of rape, this “middle race” that for some is the key to ending inequality and racism, because it “unites the two races into one”, is also the cause of many insomnia.

My curly hair called me black, while my lighter skin, compared to the other black people I knew, called me “white”, so I was too black to be white and too white to be black, I was brunette, but is brunette a race? I mean, there wasn't a single land in history that was colonized, discovered or populated by brunettes. Brunette is a color, but it's not a race, it's not a people and people don't want to call you black because they believe it might be an exaggeration or racism and as my father would say, “I don't see white people fighting when they call them white, I'm black and I want them to call me black.”

And when you don't know your race you don't have a great story to tell and a nose to hold, in the best possible way, a chest puffed out with pride to debate racism, quotas, historical debt and everything else. I'm not going to tell you that I've cried about it or anything, I'd be lying, but there's always that racist friend, especially when your parents go out of their way to pay for a private school in the neighborhood, the one who always makes “jokes” about your braided hair and your more “burnt” color and since you're not black, you're cafe con leche / brown / chocolate / brown or anything else that isn't black, it's okay for her to make jokes.

Then comes the age of 11, when you want to change yourself to look like anyone you admire, and then you straighten your hair and everyone likes it but you, but you smile, put on some gloss and take a photo anyway, since it makes you accept yourself, so why not!

However, there is salvation when you meet a person who is not café com leite or brunette or any of those things, a person who is black, N E G R A, my first black image was my Portuguese teacher, Deisiele Souza, I hope she reads this one day, “Pro Deise” had black and wore it very loud even with all the volume and talked about it and was the most “good vibes” person I knew, saw beauty in everything and was beautiful... It's beautiful. Even if it wasn't right after her, I know that it was looking at that teacher writing on the board and shouting at us, because that's what teachers do best, that I thought “I want to be her!”.

Now I know that I don't want to be Deise, or Taís Araújo, or Maju, or anyone else, I want to be me, because I'm the most beautiful person I know and I didn't know that a while ago. And that's why I cut my hair and why I understood feminism and why I fought with my uncle about the most varied social taboos over several quiet Sunday lunches.

I can't say that I'm proud of every fight I've started or everything I've posted on Facebook in favor or against. It's just that after Deise, I looked more closely at photos of my parents in the 90s, my mother with black hair and looking too much like me and my father being... my father, my aunt Paloma and my uncle Fábio and so on, even if I don't want to admit it, I owe a lot to my friend Júlia, because the transition is that phase when you even think about selling your soul to the devil to make your hair grow, and I had a wonderful friend my age with short hair always telling me that moisturizing was good and encouraging me to keep going, thank you!

And today I ask myself why I have so many doubts if I'm black and it's not a problem, it's not extraordinary, it's normal, that's how I see it, it's like breathing, even if prejudice is a kind of asthma, but don't think I'm saying that being black is easy or that it's just a matter of getting a haircut, I wish it was, maybe it's different for each person, I hope it's easier for you than it was for me and I also hope I've helped you, because even though I'm Beatriz, I want to be the Deise in someone's life!

*Beatriz Sousa - 15 years old, a resident of Nordeste de Amaralina, a high school student at Colégio Estadual Polivalente de Amaralina and a young black communicator with Agência Yalodês (Expanding the Rights of Young Black Women through Communication/Odara).

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Editorial link: https://institutoodara.org.br/1691-2/