What is the face of crime? The “bandit face”? What do the marked features on the face confess? What do they refer to? To whom?
Isaías Caminha, from Lima Barreto, knew why he was called to testify about a crime he did not commit. “Mulatinho”, the public agent referred to him when he suggested the profile of the thief responsible for theft at a hotel. Isaías and Lima Barreto knew who and how defined the face of crime.
Before, such prejudice had been limited to a time past. Before, long before, it would have remained a decaying portrait of a failed attempt at civilization. A figure in the history of this land that, for black people, was never home, in fact. Today, the open newspaper proves that literature is praxis. Theory, fabulation, the abstraction of reality to then portray it do not always end in tales. Before, long before, so be it.
“Photographic reconnaissance leads to arrest of 8 out of 10 acquitted defendants”, I read in this Sheet. I then think, among so many innocent people, what led Justice to make the same mistake over and over again? “In all, 242 processes were analyzed. Among the 342 defendants, 64% are black and 96% are men,” the text says. My mistake, in this case, is asking rhetorical questions in an attempt to get an answer other than the obvious one. flawed. The report by Ana Luiza Albuquerque exposed another portrait, that of someone who portrays criminality from another crime, that of racism.
There are two faces in front of the same mirror, that of the condemner and that of the innocent condemned. Reinforcement—innocent condemned. That it was just one, and not many, would be enough to open wide the gaze inherited from the times when the Royal Guard had as its target blacks and natives thrown into misery as a result of colonization. Blacks and natives as the only enemies of the so-called civilized. Blacks and natives cloistered in a painting in which the lines used to draw them defined them as those always thirsty to take from good men the deserved fruit of spoliation. Naturally doomed.
In modern times, a photo album whose color palette, at the moment of pointing the finger and choosing who will be the defendant at the time, doesn’t matter to colorism. From the darkest to the lightest, it has the mark that refers to the origin. The darkened skin, the curly, curly hair, the thickness of the lips, the size of the nose, the memory of the African dragged here, of the light-skinned black man who did not shed white in the eyes of white people. traits. Paths that lead to a face that imposes the idea of being the same for everyone. It’s a black face and that’s enough.
It fits, then, in the “album of suspects” whose criterion for composing it is as empty, as opaque as the consistency of the probative elements presented. The presumption of innocence is reversed. Proof that he is not a criminal is required. Nothing new for those who were born in mostly black territory and feel guilty, always, for something they’ve never done — or will do.
“You look like a thug in this profile picture”, I once heard in the workplace. In the flow of emotions that the moment caused, only one flow was possible. I asked myself, “What if the police think the same thing when I’m on my way home?” At the time, I arrived in my neighborhood late at night, after attending college classes. A sweatshirt is removed, a cap is removed, not my face. The shot is accurate. It was necessary to travel quickly through the streets of the village on the way between the point of crowding and the gate.
Bárbara Querino is a model, dancer and one of the voices fighting the mass incarceration of the black population, a factor that directly contributes to the genocide of her youth. She was the victim, in 2017, of a type of recognition already known, her hair was “the same” as the alleged criminal. traits. She was placed in prison until, in the year 2020, she was acquitted, voiding all charges.
I sent her a letter during this period when she was deprived of her freedom. “Vela”, a text about mothers and their sons and daughters who live on the periphery. About the everyday fear of seeing her legacy go and not knowing if she will ever come back. On the Sunday dedicated to matriarchs, I ask how many did not have the absence of their children on that date, to whom many attribute “the face of a bandit”. “Outside the home, we are born and what comes first is crying — ours. The mother’s, she holds”, read one of the excerpts. There are misconceptions that cost a life in life.
As long as the judicial system does not review the criteria adopted by police stations to compose what they call “album of suspects”, we will continue with discrimination that criminalizes. An error that is not just any. Specifically, he knows whom to harm. A known profile error.
A mistake with racist traits.
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