Too bad for interrupting the Brazilian family’s weekend with uncomfortable matters. The Holy Week 2022 menu is rare racism.
Easter Sunday, for observant Christians, marks the return of festive meat-based feasts – after the 40 “fishernian” days of Lent, in respect of the martyrdom of Jesus.
It was certainly to celebrate Easter that someone asked for a barbecue budget, to feed 50 people next Sunday (17), Tatiana Pretona – a professional roaster who works in carnivore events and private parties.
Tatiana responded to the request and spent a few days without opening Instagram messages. When she returned to the app, she was numb — a word she repeated several times throughout the phone conversation. The message refused Pretona’s services with the following text:
“Your quote was one of the best we’ve received, but unfortunately we won’t be hiring your services because our client doesn’t like people of his skin color.”
The supposedly polite tone seems like a sadistic capstone to the outrageous and unbelievable racist speech.
“I didn’t sleep for many days”, says Pretona. “By the way, I’m still sleepy.”
The grill does not want to expose or denounce the author of the injury (by the “thank you”, it is assumed that it is a woman). “I’m not going to give a stage to these people”, declared Tatiana in the stories (temporary posts) of Instagram.
Pretona’s caution has yet another reason. After she photographed the offending message, the person who wrote her deleted the text and blocked the grill in the app. “I was afraid they’d think I was lying to promote myself.”
Couldn’t hold back. He posted the screenshot of the unpublishable response on his own account. “You know what? Fuck it,” she blurted out, “sorry for the swearing.”
The attack on the black grill says a lot about the world in general, Brazil in particular, and, in an even tighter magnifying glass, about the “macha” and generally reactionary culture of barbecue, beer, hard rock and motorcycles.
Women in this environment are very rare – colleagues Larissa Morales and Paula Labaki, Lígia Karazawa and Tatiana herself are heroines in an inhospitable environment. Black people are also rare.
Black women, then, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. As a matter of fact, I only know Pretona. I met her this Thursday (14), by the way, when a hamburger owner sent me her outburst by direct message.
“Luckily, the person rejected the budget. If he had accepted and said this thing in the middle of the barbecue, the capoeira would have been there.”
Tatiana Pretona, mother and resident of Parque do Lago, in the southern depths of the outskirts of São Paulo, has lived with discrimination since she was born. She slipped into an environment in which she was always a foreign body and, silently and resignedly, took the racist “jokes” of which she was always a victim. Until this week.
“I’m done.”
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