Structural racism is still present in Brazil – even 133 years after the abolition of slavery. This inequality is present in several areas of society, including entrepreneurship.
Data from IBGE and Instituto Locomotiva show that 56% of the population considers themselves black or mixed race and that there are more than 14 million black entrepreneurs in Brazil – a market that moves around R$1.73 trillion per year.
In an interview with CNN, Nina Silva, CEO of the Black Money Movement, said that structural racism also manifests itself in spaces of power (such as large companies). “All these spaces where there is capital influence are not blackened spaces because we are not the owners and owners of the means of production”, he says. “Black women have 40% of the basic income of white men, as do black men who are on that same base. The difference is that the black man receives about 55% of the salary of a white man.”
With the Black Money Movement, Silva created a hub of innovation with startups and social projects aimed at black entrepreneurship based on autonomy. “Black Money’s maxim is to rotate and generate wealth for a longer time within the black community so that we can generate better employability, business possibilities, and also an amplified dialogue in the ecosystem today.”
We demand that this inclusion and this diversity are also worked on throughout the value chain, not only in the collaborative framework of companies.
Nina Silva
The anthropologist, writer and historian Lilia Schwarcz pointed to the structural problem that has been present since the formation of Brazilian society, “Brazil was the country that had the greatest experience with commercial slavery.”
Slavery produced a language of difference and a language of inequality. That language was not altered by our abolition, Brazil that received half of the African population that forcibly left its continent, this population never had equal rights.
Lilia Schwarcz
Reference: CNN Brasil
