These 7 Girls Explain Why It’s Racist To Say We’re All The Same

One of the most interesting and important things in recent times happened on Saturday the 23rd. TEDxSãoPaulo, an international event dedicated to the dissemination of ideas, took 18 women’s voices to a stage set up at the Hotel Unique, who needed to be heard by everyone. The best part? Most of them were black.

Read more: 11 Beaten Lies About Feminism That Need To Stop Being Repeated

“An initiative like this is important to show diversity, to give a platform to women who are making important movements, especially in the periphery, and often are not heard. From this, people can better understand the question of each woman, that each one is different”, he explained. Viviane Duarteone of the speakers and founding partner of the Plano Feminino platform.

Taking a ride on her speech and on “International Black Women’s Day”, celebrated this Monday (25), we, here at MdeMulher, took advantage of the event to talk to some women and solve a question that has been popping up on social networks for a long time : after all, is it correct to say that all people are the same, white, black and indigenous?

The singer Xênia France explains this a bit: “We arrived on slave ships, enslaved, humiliated… And this heritage is perpetuated until today. Therefore, we are not all equal, just as indigenous people are not equal, just as white people are not equal”.

Below, check out the position of seven girls – ALL of them black – regarding this erroneous and even racist opinion that “we are all the same”.

Nataly Neriyoutuber of the channel “Afros e Afins” and student of Social Sciences at Unifesp.

“Brazil has been influenced by different cultures since its foundation. A society made up of people who, from the beginning, faced extremely different problems because of the spaces they were in and the way they were treated when they arrived here, I’m talking about the black and indigenous population. So, it’s very naive, I think that’s the word, to think that people are homogeneous, that differences happened at the beginning and simply diluted throughout history and did not reverberate in what we have today. It is necessary, in fact, to emphasize the differences! Not to say that we are different and because of that we deserve different things, but when we talk about equity, we mean that different people need to be treated differently to become equal. If you treat everyone equally – having previous unevenness – that doesn’t exist, you know? These people are still on a footing of inequality. Equity is different from equality”.

Gabriela Oliveirayoutuber from the channel “De Pretas“.

“When a person has, for example, a sexual orientation that differs from the norm or when a person is black or foreign, we know that these differences exist. It is clear that internally as a human being, bone structure, we are all the same, but when we say ‘no, we are not the same, we are different’ it is because we understand that the treatment of people from different places, social levels and ethnicity are not the same. So, there’s no point in coming up with that ‘we’re all the same’ thing because that doesn’t exist”

Mel Duarte, poet and cultural producer. She published the books “Fragmentos Dispersos” (2013) and “Negra Nua Crua” (2016).

“I understand the saying ‘we’re all the same’, but we can’t forget that every human being has their particularity. And when we start talking about groups, specifically, black women, I can say that we have our particularity, our path… And it is different from that of white women, even if they are white women from the periphery”.

Silvia Nascimentojournalist and director of content for the Mundo Negro website.

“I think there is a word that explains well what is the issue of privilege, right? We know that depending on the color you were born in, the region you were born in, you grow up with some difficulty or ease. And some perks! So, those who have more privileges are not equal to the less favored person. Sometimes this empathy is not legitimate because your life story is different. I think you can sympathize with those who are not equal, but saying that we are all equal is a little wrong. For example, I don’t know where my great-great-grandmother came from – and a white person is very likely to know where theirs came from. Furthermore, my last name is a slave’s last name, it has no origin, it is abstract, it does not belong to me… It belongs to someone who bought someone from my family. I am not like any white person”

Xênia Francesinger.

“We are not all equal because we have a history of non-equality. We, black-skinned people, did not arrive here on an equal footing with the white people who are here. We arrived on slave ships, enslaved, humiliated… And this heritage is perpetuated until today. Therefore, we are not all equal, just as indigenous people are not equal, just as white people are not equal. There is a situation of privilege in Brazil that makes people different. So, it’s very important that everyone thinks about this so that we can really start talking about ‘we are all the same’”.

Mayara Silvalawyer, poet and member of the collective “Poetas do Tietê”.

“Equality is treating a person according to the inequality of the other person. We are talking about the lives of black people who need to be treated the same as white people.”

Tássia Reissinger.

“There is a very practical issue that we are not all the same: we don’t come from the same places, our families are different, beliefs, religions, our bodies, in this case, the shape of our faces, it’s all very different, really… For me to say ‘we are all the same’ is to put everything in a salad, to make our black history and all the cultures we may have come from invisible. This is a big blow that usually silences people not to fight for rights, not to fight for the right to exist for their own culture, religion and everything else. I think it’s a big shame to say that we’re all the same”.