By coming to terms with themselves, black people enhance their existence with their peers

The paths to Kalunga, Ivaporunduva, Palmares and others quilombos in Brazil they were traveled by those who yearned for less painful days. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, enslaved blacks fled and found shelter, food and social shelter in the collective organization to resist constant violence.

The end of slavery did not guarantee, in practice, access to basic rights for the entire Afro-descendant population. Thus, the quilombos remain as a space of resistance and shelter for these communities until today. But not only them. With mobility, new configurations brought the possibility of squatting in structures not delimited by a territory. Today’s motivations for coming together may have different contexts than those of our ancestors.

However, the search has the same meaning: to enhance strength and knowledge through affection, a feeling that is so barred in the experience of blacks and browns from the African diaspora. In an attempt to recover it, psychologist and psychoanalyst Ana Carolina Barros Silva, 30 years old, from Cuiabá, sought out black coworkers to share the high demand for care by African-American patients.

Thus was born the Roda Terapêutica das Pretas, a network of mental health professionals. “We reflect on the place psychology occupies and the inaccessibility not only financially but territorially, since most of the offices are in the center”, says Carolina Cristal, 27 years old, from São Paulo, another member of the collective.

The Black Women’s Therapeutic Wheel was the first place where Ana, Carolina and the other participants were able to share professional and personal experiences and questions without fear. Their meeting inspired Ana Carolina to create a physical space of resistance and protection of ancestry, Casa de Marias, located in the east zone of São Paulo.

“The initiative is the opposition of the hegemonic discourse of psychological science. Of the 14 professionals, 13 are black, all born in the outskirts of different states of the country”, explains Ana about the collective, inaugurated in February of this year. Mostly black, patients have individual, family and collective care available. With the pandemic, consultations and virtual meetings were the way out to continue activities.

In 2009, American sociologist Patrícia Hill Collins defined this type of initiative as the creation of safe spaces. In the context of her country, she considers that “these new meanings offered African-American women potentially powerful tools to resist controlling images of the black woman’s condition”.

Jaqueline Conceição, a psychoanalyst from the Ionene Institute and a doctoral student in social anthropology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, also links the importance of Afro-referenced groups to the economy. “These are cultural, social and economic initiatives in which people of African descent can be welcomed and access the production of knowledge of their ethnic-racial community”, she points out.

These movements still foment market and enterprise strategies. “The community is strengthened when it has economic autonomy to invest in its projects,” says Jaqueline, who is also the founder and executive director of Coletivo Di Jejê, a black feminism teaching platform created seven years ago and with more than 10,000 black women trained in the virtual and face-to-face courses offered at Casa Preta, in Florianópolis. The initiative’s goal for the coming years is to transform itself into a college and set up headquarters in São Paulo.

Even without eye contact, virtual connections also have their genuine power of attraction, but the paths are not always clear. In search of an Afrocentric relationship, social educator Lázaro Silva, 30 years old, from Rio de Janeiro, noticed the difficulty in finding black men who declared themselves homosexuals in the Facebook group Afrodengo, a space for loving flirting and building friendship between blacks and browns .

“Jeferson Silva and Fernando Machado, who I met online, also noticed this and we decided to create Afrodengo LGBTT+. Afrocentre is to combine our affections and interests. In the group, we still talk about other things like job vacancies, mental health content and scholarships. Just like relationships, having a structured psychological part, gaining financial independence and acquiring knowledge are essential steps”, he considers.

Just like Lázaro, it was on the internet that Kenya Odara, 22 years old, from São Paulo, strengthened ties and gained comfort to talk about subjects that she previously avoided. She is one of the creators of the Siriricas CO collective, which was born as a WhatsApp group in 2018, which brought together women to talk about sexuality without taboo. Some members left until there were nine, all black. “We gained more intimacy and realized that this impact could add other black women”, she reveals.

Four months later, they created the podcast and Instagram account. “It’s not just a profile to go viral. We interact with the followers’ publications, leaving our space open for them to share their content and we always seek to keep this connection as real as possible”, emphasizes the law student. Siriricas CO’s themes range from insecurity due to dark spots in the crotch to quarantine productivity.

We are not all the same nor do we talk only about racism

Ethnic-racial identification is not synonymous with homogeneous opinions and experiences between blacks and browns. The amount of melanin impacts on the discrimination suffered and the recognition of its identity, which we call colorism. “I am a light-skinned black woman; there is a complexity that runs through our family issue. I found myself black at the university with the social and racial movements, because until then I had frequented mostly white spaces”, recalls psychologist Carolina, who, in addition to being part of the Roda Terapêutica das Pretas, is a student at Casa de Marias, where she prepares to the master’s degree.

According to Jaqueline, the point of origin of the class reflects on the understanding of reality itself. “Professional and personal production have a different influence if the person comes from the periphery, from a central or intermediate neighborhood”, she points out regarding references that should not be denied and hostile.

A deep black, Kenya never had doubts about her race, but this solid identification did not deprive her of disagreements with herself. “I didn’t straighten my hair because I was encouraged by my mother since I was a little girl to see beauty in my features. Except that, away from home, I was surrounded by white people and tried to fit into a style close to theirs, which was not mine. She looked at the groups of black girls in the United States and dreamed of participating in one like it here ”, recalls the member of Siriricas CO.

For Jaqueline, black youth find it easier to create new configurations of initiatives, opening doors. “It’s no use starting from an Afro-referenced knowledge if the form of dissemination is not from a perspective that black people can access. Black content in white form hits who?”, she questions her. The researcher also reinforces that accessibility is necessary due to the diversity of experience, not due to a lack of technical competence on the part of people of African descent.

“It is a political strategy to think and study about us and take care of us”

Carolina Cristal

With our difficult social scenario, the pressure to talk about certain topics, such as cases of racism, or the veiled obligation to be didactic with white people, regardless of age. “Our training is already a positioning. So we want to take advantage of this space to distract ourselves and talk about product tips and places to eat, for example”, explains Kenya.

Ana Carolina sees Casa de Marias as a crucial support point. “We can look at our peers and feel like we belong, discuss technical and professional issues more naturally. You know they’ll understand without having to wear yourself out explaining obvious things. We start from a common place. Casa das Marias is that quilombo: we welcome people, but we are also welcomed”, she celebrates.

Taking care of those who care is a consideration made by Carolina as well. “There is a call for continued strength from both Black people and health professionals. Therefore, it is a political strategy to think and study about us and take care of us. Those who attend also need to be cared for and strengthened”, she says. The comfort for her is knowing that the support network does not end with the course. Being with our people goes beyond a simple choice, it is a political power.

Jaqueline agrees and believes that, for this reason, the Afro-referenced meetings call for organization and strategy. “Unfortunately, we are in a historic position where we cannot afford to live without political resistance, even if not in a partisan way. For the researcher, just the presence of Afro-descendants in elite and white spaces is not enough to break the racist system.

Carolina’s master’s process response will come out at the beginning of the year, but she understands that the collective journey alongside her black companions was already the main achievement. “The most important thing, in this final stretch, is the emotional evolution that I identify, built in the midst of a pandemic, but within an affective relationship. I don’t feel obligated to pass, but with the help of the group, I managed to accomplish the tasks I set myself and I feel much more prepared. Entry will be a consequence.”

All women can (and should) take an anti-racist stance