During a flight to Luanda, a friend of mine told me a story of a white man who was travelling by car and telling the driver, who was also white: “Look, the negro!... Look, the negro!... Look out!... bum!!!... oh! I was afraid you might not have seen the negro...”
 
I was and am sure that my friend is not racist. This and other jokes he told during the trip only served to make our long flight from Lisbon more pleasant.
 
We stayed in the capital city of Angola for about ten days. There we were welcomed and taken care of, both by the man in the street and the officials we were in contact with. Black, white and half-breed people made us feel frankly good, surrounding us with care and the comfort possible in a country that had been tormented by long years of war and, because of it, many privations.
 
On one of our last days there, my friend was crossing the street alone, wearing a suit and tie, and carrying a briefcase in his hand, when a black man, who was driving a jeep, suddenly sped up towards him and made him jump to the sidewalk.
 
He came to me and the group of people I was with, pale and somehow shaken, and told us the story of “look at the white”. We spoke about the different forms of racism that, unfortunately, still exist. Some white people there – who lived for a long time in Luanda —, assured us that racism in Angola was then more evident among black people themselves than from whites to blacks or vice-versa.
This passage occurred to me because of the recent political development in South Africa, a country where racism was institutionalized and created serious social problems, bringing about general international criticism.
 
Recently, blacks and whites have made great efforts to break free from segregation. The white president Frederick De Klerk modelled an important example of political courage, when he assumed the leadership of effectively liberating measures. The black leader Nelson Mandela might have gone further, when he showed up with a temporizing speech, encouraging South Africans to live peacefully, after spending long years in prison for political reasons. He showed unusual insight and a great capacity to fight for a high and distinguishing goal.
 
We have been witnessing racism in many situations. In Germany or in England, we, the Portuguese, are treated as second class people. In the United States, I noticed on certain occasions that some black waiters, in restaurants and hotels, gave white Americans preference over the so-called Hispanic.
 
On the other hand, in the Far East we are treated as first class people – white, of course. In Senegal or Angola, black people who are queuing to buy something can give us a big smile and invite us to take their place in the queue. It happened to me.
 
Are we “more” in some places and “less” in others? I don’t think so. We are the same in essence. And if we could put an end to slavery, if we have been trying to minimize the preponderance of one sex over the other, if we have taken important steps so that all can have the same cultural opportunities, if today we really live economically closer to each other than a few centuries ago, then I believe we will be able to overcome the different types of segregation that still exist.
 
Europeans have been feeling the necessity to unite, to widen their economic community to the social and political fields. Russians are trying to reach an understanding between the different races and populations that constitute their country; this is indispensable for the survival within a group. Northern Americans are already studying the possibility of non-hispanic whites being just ten to twenty per cent of the population, the problems that this will bring, and measures to minimize these.
 
I have read something somewhere, written by an anthropologist, that the tendency of Man’s physical evolution is for Earth to become inhabited by just one race – the “dark-skinned” race. Besides, this would be an enlargement of what is now happening in Brazil, where Indians, whites and blacks are diminishing in terms of percentage, giving place to a growing number of “dark-skinned” people. But for this to happen in a large scale, it will take certainly some centuries or even milleniums.
 
Evolution might be slow, but it takes place a little bit everywhere. If on the physical level equality among men takes milleniums, we wish it can be faster on the psychological level.
 
Well, but while some still don’t know how to live in equality with those around them, at least may each of us try to do it, breaking free from each and every prejudice and eliminating all forms of racism. 
 
 

 about the Book |  know the Author  |  Index