BBB 24: Searches for structural racism break record in Brazil after interview by Wanessa

The interview that Wanessa Camargo, 45, gave to Fantástico (Globo), boosted research into structural racism on the Brazilian internet. The term broke the Google search record for the last five years. The previous mark was November 2020.

According to Google Trends, the peak occurred at 11pm last Sunday (17), when the topic was mentioned in Renata Ceribelli’s interview with the singer and disqualified participant of BBB 24. The journalist asked what the interviewee understood by structural racism, an expression used by her in an apology video published days after she left the reality show.

Wanessa was expelled for attacking participant Davi in ​​the early hours of March 2nd. Before being disqualified, the singer tried to isolate her opponent from the other people in the cast, arguing that he was “aggressive, manipulative and disrespectful”.

“I was scared by the way people were seeing me,” Wanessa responded in the interview. “Being put in a place as serious as the word racist is something I can’t wear.”

The singer said she wanted to become anti-racist. “I listened to people who have a place to talk about this and I recognized that I am a white, privileged person and that I will never know how some words that have no effect for me can have any effect on other people,” she explained.

The journalist’s question had a reason. In the content released by the former BBB participant herself, five days before the interview with Fantástico, she evaluated her trajectory in the reality show. “Some of my speeches and behaviors towards Davi fall under structural racism”, acknowledged the singer.

Shortly after the interview, presenter Maju Coutinho also gave a speech on the subject that had repercussions on social media. “We can only fight and end what we recognize exists,” she commented. “So it’s a great opportunity to bring to the public debate what structural racism is and especially how it presents itself in our lives, how individual attitudes contribute to its existence, and for us to read in depth about it so as not to use the concept wrongly and continue to reproduce violence.”

Interest in structural racism on the Sunday of the interview increased 11 times compared to the week of March 10, the period of posting on the ex-sister’s networks, according to Google Trends.

Last week’s searches on the topic were already significant. They reached similar rates to surveys carried out in November, when Black Awareness Day is celebrated. This month, according to the history of the Google tool, the highest rates of interest in the academic concept are usually recorded.

Part of the reality audience pointed out that Wanessa’s actions could be framed as racial discrimination. The repercussion even made the Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Silvio Almeida, speak out on the web. “Every now and then, for the most unusual reasons, the concept of structural racism returns to fuel debates on social media”, published the jurist on March 14, without directly mentioning the program.

Almeida is the author of a book on the subject, released in 2018. In the message, he demonstrated concern about the direction that the use of the concept has taken in society. “What impresses me most about controversies is not seeing people who have never studied the subject or who are not from academia distort the concept, but the fact that people who are supposedly scholars or who come from academia talk about something they don’t know or about a book never read,” he wrote.

Next, Almeida cited an excerpt from his book where he explains what structural racism is for him. “Thinking about racism as part of the structure does not remove individual responsibility for the practice of racist conduct and is not an alibi for racists”, says the excerpt. “On the contrary: understanding that racism is structural, and not an isolated act of an individual or a group, makes us even more responsible for combating racism and racists.”

The term, however, is not a consensus among intellectuals. Muniz Sodré, author of the book “O Fascismo da Cor”, released in 2023, questions the expression. In an interview with Sheetin March last year, he said that the concept is limited in describing the discrimination suffered by black people.

“I have nothing against talking about structural racism, because I think that, from a political point of view, it’s good, it’s easy. It anchors the idea of ​​racism here in Brazil. But I say it’s not structural”, he assessed. For Sodré, the most precise definition would be institutional racism.