The interview that Mano Brown did with the intellectual and philosopher Sueli Carneiro is historic in many ways, but I will restrict myself here to talking about the part in which they talk about football.
Sueli, daughter of a passionate Corinthians fan, learned to enjoy the game through her father’s eyes. Today, she watches the Premiere League, she says, to see Africans playing.
I will make a parenthesis here to establish the difference in the nomenclature that separates pretos, pretos and pardos as explained by the philosopher and also according to the Census metric.
Blacks are dark-skinned, dark-skinned people. Pardos are the lightest-skinned people who do not declare themselves white. Negro is the sum of these two groups, pretos plus pardos, a class established by the black movements in Brazil to understand the size of the population it represents. Black people form the majority of the Brazilian population.
The conversation between Brown and Sueli lasted more than two hours and is worth listening to in full. They begin by talking about the extermination of the black population: reasons, methods, ideologies. It’s a class. But, for what matters in this space, I go straight to the 52nd minute, when he asks her: How many blacks are in the Brazilian team, Sueli?
Before answering, Sueli makes it clear that she is very fond of football and that she watches the Premiere League because it is where she sees Africans playing. “Why doesn’t anyone find more black players here?”, she asks next.
Brown argues that this may no longer be the black kids’ dream. Sueli immediately disagrees and asks: “How were our boys being replaced by white middle-class boys? It’s not possible. You have to ask this question. They haven’t stopped wanting football. They have been gradually excluded. a profusion of black people like you don’t see anymore here in Brazil, which is the so-called five-time champion football and that was only five-time champion thanks to black players. We owe that to them. Now: how did they disappear?”
At this point Brown asks: Aren’t they going to other sports? And Sueli, in a higher tone, says: Nothing! They are being excluded! And he talks about France again, world champion with a black majority in the cast.
She then explains that racial exclusion in Brazil is so deep that we are preferring no longer to win the titles we used to pile up than to include blacks.
Then, retrieving an argument from Brown in the first part of the conversation, the philosopher says bluntly: “And don’t give me any fucking conspiracy theory! This is white talk on us. at any level. Is it a conspiracy theory that blacks died from Covid 70% more than whites? Why do we die of preventable and preventable deaths all the time? Why are we kept in destitution?”
Ahead, she tells Brown, in a reprimanding tone, that this kind of concession to racism cannot be made, referring to calling the exclusion of blacks from society and also from football a conspiracy theory. “I never want to hear you talk about conspiracy theories again!”
Not just anyone has the personality to catch the eye of a legend like Brown. But if there’s anyone who can do that, it’s Sueli Carneiro. Brown immediately agrees and says he’s drunk with happiness listening to her speak.
Listening to Sueli Carneiro talking about football is to deepen the notion that the game does not take place in an arena separate from society; on the contrary: it is inserted in it.
Football is politics, it’s economics, it’s culture, it’s a structural and structuring part of who we are. Precisely for this reason, the genocide practiced against the black and peripheral population of this country hits the game we love. It couldn’t be otherwise. And Sueli Carneiro, courageous, says this in an unprecedented and indisputable way.
The interview is historical, fundamental, indispensable. For everyone, everyone and everyone, but especially for white people.
Here you can access the full chat.
