Brazzil
Race and Justice
March 2003
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.
Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and suffers São Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal@baguete.com.br
Translated by Tereza Braga, email: tbragaling@cs.com