Black man who is a racism denier in charge of defending black rights in Brazil

When Damares Alves was appointed Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, she proclaimed that this was a “new era in Brazil: boys wear blue and girls wear pink”.

“Nobody will stop us calling girls princesses and boys princes, we are going to end this abuse of ideological indoctrination,” she said in her inaugural speech as minister.

From Left: Sergio Camargo and Jair Bolsonaro

Her supporters cheered; her detractors saw her as outdated. And her controversial views on expanding rights for women continues.

But Jair Bolsonaro’s government likes to stir. He’s ripping up the way politics is done in Brazil. And has done it again with another divisive appointment: Sergio Camargo.

This week, the president confirmed that Mr Camargo, a black journalist, would head up the Palmares Cultural Foundation. The influential government-funded institute is responsible for promoting and preserving the cultural, historic, social and economic values of black society in Brazil.

Mr Camargo describes himself on social media as a “black right-winger, an anti-victimist” – he’s also denied real racism exists in Brazil, comparing it to the US where he considers it a serious problem.

Sergio Camargo’s appointment was contentious from the start. His nomination was suspended at the end of last year after huge criticism. But earlier this week, the Supreme Court overruled the decision, allowing him to take up the role and paving the way for Mr Bolsonaro to reinstate him.

Mr Camargo responded to the news, calling it a “defeat for the racists on the left – the victory of a black person who thinks for himself and is free.”

In a social media post last year, he used the term “Nutella racism” to describe the problem in Brazil. The term came about after Nutella, is a brand of sweetened hazelnut cocoa spread, shared an Instagram cartoon showing two white children with Nutella around their mouths. Both children are pointing at a black child alongside the caption: “Who ate all the Nutella?”

“Black people complain because they are stupid and misinformed by the left,” Camargo said in the post. He has argued that “Brazil needs a black movement that is free with its opinions and political choices otherwise the victim mentality of the left will prevail”.

Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo also tweeted after the appointment, arguing that his work would be “immensely important in the fight against the handcuffs of ideological slavery that Brazil is subjected to”.

But racial justice academics from the Brazilian Centre of Analysis and Planning said they viewed his nomination with “fear and indignation”, arguing that “he didn’t represent the anti-racist organisations and civil groups that have built this space over the past decades”.

Sergio Camargo’s attitude is a minority view now but one that many in Brazil used to share – this idea that the country was a racial democracy, a place where there was little or no racism unlike the US or Europe.

“A lot of people believed the national ideology that there was little or no racism,” says sociologist Edward Telles. Attitudes changed, especially after the World Conference against Racism in South Africa in 2001, he says.

“Before that, people hardly mentioned race, it was a taboo subject. Then there was this tidal wave and it completely changed,” adds Dr Telles. “After that, by the mid- to late-2000s, it was clear that few people believed that.”

Jair Bolsonaro has himself defended Brazil’s slave trade – the biggest in the Americas.

“The Portuguese didn’t even set foot in Africa,” he said, erroneously, in a television interview before being elected in 2018. “It was the Africans themselves who handed the slaves over.”

Ana-Lucia Araujo, a Brazilian Professor of History at Howard University in Washington DC, says that Mr Camargo’s appointment “is an attempt to destroy what was conquered by Afro-Brazilians and Brazilian black movements since the end of the military dictatorship.

“The current government is a true disaster regarding the fight against racism and racial inequalities that are at heart of Brazilian history.”