::
Spare Me
the Quotas
and
Other American Oddities
It
has been revealed that two very white female candidates increased
eightfold their chances of being admitted into a Rio university by
stating they were black. And Lula is selling the expedient idea
that Brazil is a country with a black majority.
Now
that the United States has admitted that enforcing quota systems for
blacks in universities was a horrible idea, Brazil, this splendid
country of ours, always in the tail end of the so-called First World,
insists in implementing a quota system. Not only at universities but
also in the public sector and, if people don't protest, even in private
companies. Considering that, from the legal point of view, a black
person is anyone who says he is black, the reader can easily imagine
what we can expect to happen in this land of the jeitinho.
Actually, it is already happening. In the last vestibular
examination given at UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University), which
was the first with quotas for blacks, two very white female candidates
stated that they were black women, thus increasing eightfold their
chances of admission into the university.
As
a bonus, our just-inaugurated President has already started selling
the opportunistic idea that Brazil is a country with a black majority.
Well, according to IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics),
blacks are only 5.9 percent of the population. By integrating mulattos
into this black contingent in order to create a statistic, black movements
incur in the error which makes racism so contumacious in the United
States. If you have a drop of black blood in your genealogy tree,
you will be black to the end of your days, as well as your children
and grandchildren. There is no fusion—the spontaneous movement
which results, with the passing of time, in the elimination of racial
edges.
Along
with this secular tradition of ours to only import the worst from
other countries, a judge with the 4th Civil Court of Santos, São
Paulo state, has determined that giant cigarette maker Souza Cruz
has to pay R$ 200,000 (US$ 56,000), plus price level adjustment retroactive
to 2000, plus 20 percent of this amount, to two smokers, Neide Luz
Gonçalves and Waldir Noronha Cruz, plus court costs, for pain
and suffering.
Neide,
who suffers from cardiac and respiratory problems, seems to have started
smoking inspired by Hollywood actresses. She has not managed to quit
the addiction yet. Waldir seems to have started smoking under the
influence of those old cigarette ads linking the smoking habit to
success in life. Both plaintiffs smoked brands produced by Souza Cruz,
including Hollywood and Continental, according to the lawyer.
Judging
from the way our judges make their determinations, the National Congress
could well close its doors and delegate to American legislators the
task of writing our laws. The Brazilian taxpayer would say thank you
very much. This is not the first time that the corporation in question
has to respond to this kind of claims and it has already received
120 favorable court decisions in Brazil in damage cases.
American
tobacco companies are paying millions of dollars to citizens who have
destroyed their internal organs with smoking. And nobody forced them
to smoke. The advertisements propose, but you only smoke if you want
to. By penalizing tobacco producers, the law seems to be saying: you,
smoker, is a poor devil devoid of freedom, unable to resist the appeal
of advertising. Since you don't have free will, the court will generously
compensate you for the feebleness of your spirit. With the allegation
of sheltering the victim of tobbacoism, the judges rule them devoid
of this inherent faculty of the human being, which is the faculty
to elect.
The most preposterous case has occurred recently, when
two obese citizens filed an action suit against McDonald's trying
to make that chain liable for their obesity. Considering that eating
is fattening, owning a restaurant becomes a high-risk occupation.
The judges did not accept the reasoning of the obese claimants. But
the claim itself demonstrates that there is a climate in the United
States allowing for such absurd actions. Churrascaria owners
and other Brazilian restaurateurs, beware. The fad may arrive here,
too, any day now.
I
was raised among smokers and lived my adolescence in the midst of
those Hollywood movies where both the bad guy and the good guy smoked
like chimneys. It never occurred to me to smoke. One day, in elementary
school, we had to smoke on stage, in a play. Everyone was happy to
be able to smoke in front of parents and teachers. I put the cigarette
in my mouth, inhaled once, didn't like it and threw it out the window.
I kept watching films in which smoking was a sign of elegance, wealth
and finesse, and I kept on living among smokers. But I never imagined
that smoking would help me succeed in life.
In
college, I discovered marijuana. Peer pressure was brutal and those
who didn't use it were considered square and ran the risk of never
getting a single woman. Still, it never occurred to me to use marijuana.
Maybe because it was a gregarious practice, and nothing gregarious
has any appeal for me. Besides, I was never able to detect signs of
intelligence among marijuana smokers. Cultural pariahs, they enclosed
themselves in their own intellectual deficiency and dedicated long
hours to gazing at their own navels. Perhaps it was this mediocrity
inherent to the consumers of the weed which detached me the most from
it.
Now
I read that Hollywood actors and actresses used to receive fat allowances
from tobacco companies to smoke in films, in an effort to take cigarette
consumption to the masses. As far as I am concerned, they threw money
away. I would never consume anything I don't like only because some
actor—even if I like him or her—consumes it. Almost every
month there are new reports about the dangers of subliminal advertising.
That is, the kind of advertising supposedly inserted into the most
innocent movies, in photograms which are so very fast as to be imperceptible
to the human eye. But, according to advertising theoreticians, they
do reach the unconscious.
They
can bombard me during the whole year, for decades, with such photograms
advertising cigarettes—or broccoli, or whatever it may be—and
they will never make me smoke a cigarette or eat broccoli. It is possible
that such photograms do reach the unconscious. But our actions and
attitudes in life are determined by our conscience, for god's sake.
Are we or aren't we rational beings, after all?
Anyone
can suck on cancer, if they want to. To claim damages in court, however,
is to resort to this strange Yankee idea that even stupidity can be
rewarded.
Translated
by Tereza Braga