President Lula of Brazil blames crisis on 'white and blue-eyed'

Source: The Times

arch 27, 2009
President Lula of Brazil blames crisis on 'white and blue-eyed'
Francis Elliott in São Paulo

Gordon Brown’s efforts to smooth a path to international agreement at next week’s G20 summit in London hit a bump in Brazil yesterday when he was told that the financial crisis was the fault of the “white and blue-eyed”.

President Lula da Silva of Brazil warned that there would be spicy discussions and “tough confrontation” next Wednesday as world leaders faced up to who should pay the costs of the banking crisis.

As Mr Brown looked on during a press conference, Mr Lula da Silva said that action was urgent since it would be intolerable for the poor — who were blameless for the collapse — to suffer the most from its effects.

“This was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by the irrational behaviour of people who were white and blue-eyed, who before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, but now have demonstrated they know nothing about economics,” he said, mocking the “gods of wisdom” who had been bailed out by the State.

“The part of humanity that is responsible should be the part that pays for the crisis,” he added.


Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5...

And our endless capacity as human beings for stupidity, too.

went to two of our profs and asked them how we could put together a seminar on Toni Morrison. I still remember, they were standing on the first floor landing and they just looked at each other (two women, both blonde and at least one blue - eyed) and my mentor said, "Those old white men will let you do that when pigs fly".

lol

Of course, Morrison won the Nobel later that year and shortly after, she read in Berkeley and then, pigs flew.

it's playing the race card, yes, however anyone feels about doing that.

But racism? Is Lula saying or suggesting that whites are inherently worse at economics? Is he playing on stereotypes of whites as being bad at economics?

No, he's introducing race into the discussion about the financial situation. Whether it should be there I don't know, but that's a discussion about playing the race card, not about racism.

inherently worse at economics.

Assuming the existence of a causal relationship between skin color and behavior is racism. Correlation is not causation.

as well as the ongoing struggle there by indigenous people for autonomy and against the predations of foreign, mostly European and American, capital. Maybe you can do that. There is no reason to expect Lula to do that.

relationship between eye and skin color, and economic ability (or lack thereof) is racist. I don't expect people to not be racist...but I do expect people to condemn it (and certainly not to defend it).

And for what it's worth, I speak and read Brazilian Portuguese and have studied there (i.e., I'm not speaking from a place of complete ignorance with regard to Brazil).

to unimportance in order to reach your conclusion. Thank you for the illustration.

End western control of IMF, World Bank: Britain

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 27-Mar-2009 15:51 hrs

The World Bank Group building in Washington, DC. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown signaled he would support ending a six-decade-long gentlemen's agreement under which leadership of the World Bank and IMF has been divided up between Americans and Europeans.

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/310042.asp

Apparently, Brown not only disagrees with you but he thinks as I do that Lula has a good point!

And what does the fact of being white skinned and blue eyed have to do, at all, with economic ability?

Please tell me which races are inherently good at economics so I can easily spot a good financial planner. (And which races are inherently bad so I can avoid them.)

the West since they were set up after WW2. Lula is absolutely correct.
The rest of the world has been at the mercy of blue eyed bullies. Why anyone is debating this is beyond pointless.

Not black & white

Has Brazil been able to create a racially integrated society? Some domestic and foreign observers would say so. But there is an increasing number of voices that dispute this. Recent polls have shown that while almost 90% of Brazilians say their society is racist only 10% admit having any racial prejudice. The lyrics of a song believed demeaning to blacks have provoked a national debate about racism and freedom of expression.

Rosemary Gund
To be Brazilian has always seemed to mean more than mere nationality. Brazilians like to define themselves as a real race -- the Brazilian race -- result of a mixture of other primary races such as African, Indian and white, this one being represented mainly by the Portuguese. This exotic hybrid was supposedly the origin to a self-proclaimed "racially integrated society", where there were no fundamental differences or racial conflicts.

The truth of the matter is that this "myth" of a racial democracy is becoming more and more questionable and has been debated more openly showing the veiled face of racism and discrimination in Brazil.

The most complete scientific-journalistic study about racism is Brazil was conducted just last year by the major newspaper Folha de São Paulo and the Institute of Research Datafolha. Some of the results were very surprising: while 89% of Brazilians said they believe there is racism in the society, only 10% admitted they were prejudiced; but 87% manifested some sort of prejudice by agreeing with racist statements or admitting having had discriminatory behavior in the past.

According to the same study, black people also manifest prejudice against their own color. About 48% of interviewed blacks agreed with such statement as "Good blacks have white souls" and the like.

~snip~
Pitta is not a common black person in Brazilian society either. On the contrary, he is the exception to the rule. He has an American diploma in business administration and is being backed up by a popular veteran Brazilian politician Paulo Maluf, the current mayor of São Paulo. But in reality, his conservative approach appears as the decisive response to his advantage in the polls so far.

"The population does not see in race an element of decision for the vote," affirmed Pitta on an interview with newsmagazine Isto É. But that was not the case of Brazilian senator Benedita da Silva. When she run for mayor in Rio de Janeiro, she was often victim of discrimination and racial jokes. "People made gestures imitating monkeys to me," she revealed. That is explained probably by the fact that she comes from a lower class than Pitta and of course is also a woman.

Even though racism in Brazil is by law considered to be a crime with no right to bail, cases like Benedita's have never ended up with anyone in jail. Because racism in Brazil is so subtle, it is easy to get it confused with other criminal offenses such as injury, calumny and defamation. Moreover, in Brazil, offenses of the like are almost always taken as mere jokes, like in the recent case of the Brazilian singer and composer Tiririca, who ended up having his song "Veja os cabelos dela" (see Rapidinhas in the September issue of Brazzil) censored because it referred to black people in a derogatory way. The song tells of a black woman who "stinks like a skunk." The song was censored and Tiririca, an illiterate circus clown from the drought-ridden northeast of the country, is being sued for crime of racism.

While that might seem like a just cause for many, for others it comes only to reaffirm the position of Brazil as a country full of contradictions and reveals the elite's hypocrisy towards the black people. Many believe indeed that Tiririca is a scapegoat, who did not offend blacks more than did many other popular songs that were Carnaval hits such as "O Teu Cabelo Não Nega" (Your Hair Can't Deny It) or "Nega do Cabelo Duro," (Hard-Hair Blackie) as was pointed out by writer Aguinaldo Silva. "In Brazil, it is no use the black movement, gay or lesbian try to reproduce American models The Brazilian black movement must find its own model," explained Silva to weekly newsmagazine Veja.

Hélio de La Peña, humorist of the TV group Casseta & Planeta, also declared to Veja that as a black he was not offended by Tiririca's song: "It is natural that people stink, independently of their race."

~snip~
Datafolha's research confirmed this hypothesis. According to the results of that research, Brazilians practice what they called "racismo cordial", in other words, the individual always denies being racist himself because he knows it is politically incorrect.

More:
http://www.brazzil.com/p16oct96.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Apartheid in Americas
Carlos Verrisimo discusses the interweaving of race, class and poverty in Brazil with Teresa Sanchez, CrossRoads, December/January 1994/95

Brazil is one of the Latin American countries that has most enthusiastically taken up neo-liberal economic reform. A nation of great natural wealth and human resources, Brazil shares the dubious honor -- with Mexico -- of having the greatest disparity between rich and poor in the Western Hemisphere. After two decades under a brutal military regime, Brazil has begun to re-establish civilian government and civic participation in national life. But whether this process is considered "democratization" largely depends on one's relative position within the country's socioeconomic and racial matrix.

Every two minutes, a child dies in Brazil; 53 percent of children under 15 live 50 percent below the official poverty line in families earning less than $70 per month.

Children currently make up 18 percent of the country's work force. Child labor has risen 11 percent since 1970. Youths between 14 and 18 years of age make up 45 percent of the work force, up from 31.4 percent in 1970.

For those children entering first grade, only 10 percent will complete primary school. Inadequate nutrition and poor conditions make it difficult to study. Most students cannot afford books and supplies and are forced out of the public school system forming a body of eight million marginalized street children.

The murder of street children in cities such as Rio de Janeiro has become epidemic. Business owners hire armed thugs, in some cases off-duty police officers, to assassinate children as they sleep. Eighty percent of the victims are Afro-Brazilian. The death toll over the last 10 years is double the number of U.S. troops killed in the war in Indochina.

Recently, under the guise of the war on crime, the governor of Rio de Janeiro turned over control of state and local law enforcement agencies to the Brazilian Army. The federal army will coordinate the roundup of suspected "bandits" and "drug traffickers" in Brazil's most famous city. Plans to crack down on drugs and weapons include the potential military occupation of 400 working class neighborhoods.

The timing of this extraordinary law enforcement initiative coincides with the mid-November special elections for state offices. New elections had to be called because the October election results had to be thrown out due to massive fraud.
A RACIST STATE

For Brazilian activist Carlos Verr!simo, these facts demonstrate the racist nature of the Brazilian state and the inequitable impact of neo-liberal economic policies. The unofficial-but-officially-tolerated policy of extermination of marginalized members of society exposes the underside of Brazil's transition to civilian government since 1984. While the military is no longer formally in government, the political and economic elites in power are, for the most part, the same ones who prospered under the military regime.

Increasing concentration of wealth -- and especially agricultural land -- continually forces migration to urban areas. More than 70 percent of Brazil's population live in the cities, swelling the working class shanty towns known as favelas. Favela residents often lack basic services such as water and electricity. Even workers with full-time jobs often earn sub-minimum wages and cannot afford daily transportation from home to work. Thousands of these workers live as homeless people on the streets of Rio Monday through Friday, only to return to their families on the weekends.

For activists such as Verr!simo, the issue of race and class are indivisible in Brazilian. Out of a total population of 150 million, 90 million are of African decent. "This gives the largest country in Latin America the third largest Black population in the world," Verr!simo says. "But when one looks at the government bureaucracy, the military hierarchy and the directors of corporations, one never sees a Black person".

More:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42/035.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Racism in Brazil
By Roadjunky, Posted May 18, 2007

At first view it might seem that Brazil would be one of the most multi-racial societies in the world, with every shade of skin from Portuguese white through to African black represented.

At first view it might seem that Brazil would be one of the most multi-racial societies in the world, with every shade of skin from Portuguese white through to African black represented. The slaves mixed with the colonisers here on a greater scale than anywhere else in the Americas and the result is the sliding scale of skin colour seen today.

But when you look closer at Brazil you see that, as usual, the whiteys are on top and the blacks take most of the shit that society has to offer. The favelas are 70% black, the poorest areas of the country are those with the strongest African influence and head to any expensive coffee shop and you’ll see that the moneyed classes could almost pass for Europeans.

Bur racism in Brazil is different to how it’s expressed in most places in the world. Brazilians are a people who prefer to brush uncomfortable truths under the table – or rather, they prefer to hire a maid to do it for them. Few people in Brazil will speak their prejudices out loud but they’re there all the same.

You will see people of brown or black skin mixing in moneyed circles without anyone making a fuss, but there’s a good chance that they’ll be called negrinho (blackie), a term that everyone insists is purely affectionate. The negrinho in question might even agree but deep down, everyone likes to be called by their name rather than their skin colour.

Those of African descent in Brazil have always been feared by the controlling classes, who found their dance, religion and culture to be alien and bewitching. In the early days of samba the jam sessions would be broken up by the police, fearing that the poor were beginning to organise themselves.

More:
http://www.roadjunky.com/cultureguide/1398/racism-in-br...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The challenge of eliminating racism in Brazil: the new institutional framework for fighting racial inequality

This paper argues that racism is a central force perpetuating socio-economic inequalities in Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world. Brazilian racism has its roots in the African slave trade. The historically popular opinion that Brazil is a ‘racial democracy’ continues to suppress acknowledgement of racial inequalities. Yet these are profound and persistent, trapping many black Brazilians in a vicious circle of poverty, poor educational outcomes, low access to goods and services, labour market discrimination, and violence. Brazil’s long-established black movement has fought for public action against racism. Recent achievements include the establishment of a legal framework for dealing with racism; a series of participatory policy discussions and conferences on racism; the creation of government institutions tasked with promoting racial equality; and the appointment of black people to senior government positions. The challenge remains to tackle institutional racism at all levels and to create a more constructive media environment.

http://www.inesc.org.br/library/other-publications/Raci...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Obama Win Forces Brazil To Take A Tolerance Check
BRADLEY BROOKS | December 5, 2008 11:44 AM EST | AP

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — What struck the Brazilian woman most forcibly as she watched U.S. election returns on television was seeing Barack Obama's two young daughters.

"I can't believe those two little girls with hair like mine will be in the White House," said 31-year-old Carolina Iootty Dias, putting her hand to her head, tears in her eyes as she watched the screen.

Black Brazilians such as Dias, a human rights worker, celebrated Obama's election as giving hope worldwide. But the country that prides itself on racial mixing and tolerance is also being forced to take a reality check.

Though half of Brazil's 190 million people are black _ the world's largest black population outside Nigeria _ power remains firmly in the hands of whites. The country has few blacks in top political positions, and government studies consistently show blacks in Brazil earn half as much as whites.

"This Brazilian hypocrisy that says racism does not exist is one of the things that keeps the nation from advancing," said Stepan Nercessian, an actor and Rio de Janeiro city councilman, who is white.

Latin America's largest country has long looked down its nose at the racial discord in the U.S. _ segregation laws, civil rights battles and a strained social dialogue that continues today.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/05/obama-win-forc...

Be my guest to argue the contrary.

claiming exactly that -- that they can manage economies and that brown people can't. That's exactly what Lula was referring to.

And just to make sure:

by failing (or refusing, as seems to be occurring in this thread) to recognize racism, regardless of the race under attack.

This type of stuff just provides justification for white, blue-eyed racists.

There are affluent whites who assume that they understand money better because they have managed it for so long.

Maybe you don't take it seriously, but here in the US there are still privileged whites who think that brown-skinned
people don't understand economics as well because, historically, they haven't been managing the economy.

Now with the acceptance that only blue eyed white people are the sole party responsible for the world's financial troubles, we can work on a final solution to this crisis based entirely on both ethnicity and eye color. Maybe we can dig up Mengele's bones (I believe they're in Brazil), clone him, and have him come up with some theories on punishing people!

Part 1: Blame Whites
Part 2:
Part 3: Profit

s

I wonder what real estate prices are in City of God?

Lula does not blame all white/blue eyed people in his statement (as the article's title claims). He just says that those responsible were white and blue eyed, which is a big difference. Of course, why should we be surprised that a Murdoch owned paper is distorting the comments of a progressive leader like Lula?

sorry, you can't see that.

fighting off predators like Allan Jones probably disagree with you.



http://www.wallanjones.com/jms.htm

I could care less if I'm in a minority when I do so. It's just one of those bright line things for me.

is not racism. Describing racism is not racism. Lula is right in his description of how the meltdown was brought about and how it disproportionately affects people of color.

you and others here embrace racism. I like Lula but his language was racist and he shouldn't have used it. He could easily have made the point you just made without using racist language. You did it. He could have too.

you're not stupid. that's why this is so ugly on your part. You embrace racism. You excuse it. Disgusting. You are now my one and only ignore.

What keeps them from understanding the material, anyway?

Looks like it would be so much more rewarding to spend some time not harrassing and ridiculing progressive posters, but in actually researching the material until they understand what is at stake, themselves.

It's impossible trying to discuss issues with people who have no grasp of the issue to start with. Don't know how you manage to maintain civility, patience, understanding, even kindness. Amazing. I just start seeing things twice, instead!


It's all beyond me that it takes so little to LEARN, to finally find out what has been happening, yet if they are rigid, it's just impossible for them to do it.

And why don't you try reading for a change instead of your endless fucking sychophancy of everything and anything SA as the holy grail of human achievement? Lula is a leader I find interesting and generally admire. I did not say he was racist. I said his language was. And it was. That's so clear that those denying it are simply disgusting apologist hypocrites. I understand the point Lula was trying to make. He totally fucked it up by using racist language. And that people defend that language is NO fucking different than assholes who defend the use of racist language toward any other ethnic group.

in this thread, this post is it. Bigotry and racism and the language it employs knows no bounds and anyone who denies it has to be either incredibly ignorant or horribly hypocritical.

is a racial stereotype!

lol

causal relationship between being white with blue eyes and being a greedy asshole.

Are you a believer in that backwards notion that racism can only flow from a more powerful group to a less powerful group?

Labor Victory in Guadeloupe After Six-Week Strike Reverberates Across French Caribbean and France

JUAN GONZALEZ: The financial crisis has had reverberations far beyond the United States and Europe, with people taking to the streets in cities across the globe to protest rising wealth inequality and to call for economic and labor rights. Perhaps the most significant action took place in the French Caribbean on the island of Guadeloupe. Labor leaders in Guadeloupe led a forty-four-day general strike that completely paralyzed the island. Starting on January 19th, workers revolted against the French government over the exorbitant cost of living by closing down roads, schools, gas stations and public transportation.

The strike was led by a coalition of union leaders called the LKP, an acronym in Creole that translates to the League Against Profiteering. They accused the ruling white business minority of exploiting the island’s black majority. While legally a full part of France and the European Union, Guadeloupe is one of the poorest parts of the national territory, with 23 percent unemployment and a high cost of living.

http://www.democracynow.org /

Lula is voicing a truth about Latin America and the Carribean, where the war on poor people is waged along racial lines as it has been for four or five hundred years. No one who knows this region can find his statement surprising in any way. It's like being surprised that black South Africans objected to Apartheid and the racist system that kept it in place.

that began on Wall Street and sent shudders throughout the global markets.

The Times article shifts the focus from the global crisis and tries to make Lula's remarks an internal problem for Gordon Brown.

Here is what Lula said.

O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva disse nesta quinta-feira que a crise financeira mundial foi causada por "gente branca de olhos azuis" e que não é justo que negros e índios paguem a conta da crise. "É uma crise causada por comportamentos irracionais de gente branca de olhos azuis, que antes da crise pareciam saber tudo e agora não sabem nada", afirmou, diante do primeiro-ministro britânico, Gordon Brown, e da imprensa britânica --quase todos com perfil semelhante ao descrito pelo presidente.

President Luiz inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday that the world financial crisis was caused by "white people with blue eyes" and that it was not just that blacks and indians pay the costs of the crises. "It is a crisis caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now they know nothing," he said beside British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the British press, who almost all had a profile described by the president.

Questionado por um jornalista inglês se estaria adotando uma postura ideológica no combate à crise, Lula negou e disse que estava apenas "constatando um fato".

Asked by an English journalist whether he (Lula) was adopting an ideological posture in the fight against the crisis, Lula denied it and said he was merely "stating a fact."

O que nós percebemos é que, mais uma vez, grande parte dos pobres do mundo são as primeiras vitimas", completou.

"What we can perceive is that once more a great number of the world's poor are the first victims," he said.

Brown evitou entrar na polêmica e disse apenas que a crise bancária começou no sistema norte-americano e que o resto do mundo teve que lidar com os problemas.

Brown avoided the controversy and said only that the banking crisis began in the North American system and the rest of the world has to deal with the problems.

(Portuguese)

http://noticias.bol.uol.com.br/economia/2009/03/26/ult4...

anything about blondes???

I thought he was smarter than this - unless something is garbled in translation.

Apartheid in Americas
Carlos Verrisimo discusses the interweaving of race, class and poverty in Brazil with Teresa Sanchez, CrossRoads, December/January 1994/95

Brazil is one of the Latin American countries that has most enthusiastically taken up neo-liberal economic reform. A nation of great natural wealth and human resources, Brazil shares the dubious honor -- with Mexico -- of having the greatest disparity between rich and poor in the Western Hemisphere. After two decades under a brutal military regime, Brazil has begun to re-establish civilian government and civic participation in national life. But whether this process is considered democratization largely depends on one's relative position within the country's socioeconomic and racial matrix.

Every two minutes, a child dies in Brazil; 53 percent of children under 15 live 50 percent below the official poverty line in families earning less than $70 per month.

Children currently make up 18 percent of the country's work force. Child labor has risen 11 percent since 1970. Youths between 14 and 18 years of age make up 45 percent of the work force, up from 31.4 percent in 1970.

For those children entering first grade, only 10 percent will complete primary school. Inadequate nutrition and poor conditions make it difficult to study. Most students cannot afford books and supplies and are forced out of the public school system forming a body of eight million marginalized street children.

The murder of street children in cities such as Rio de Janeiro has become epidemic. Business owners hire armed thugs, in some cases off-duty police officers, to assassinate children as they sleep. Eighty percent of the victims are Afro-Brazilian. The death toll over the last 10 years is double the number of U.S. troops killed in the war in Indochina.

Recently, under the guise of the war on crime, the governor of Rio de Janeiro turned over control of state and local law enforcement agencies to the Brazilian Army. The federal army will coordinate the roundup of suspected bandits and drug traffickers in Brazil's most famous city. Plans to crack down on drugs and weapons include the potential military occupation of 400 working class neighborhoods.

More:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42/035.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~


For Which It Stands: Brazil
Colorblind melting pot or racially divided society? Either way, Afro-Brazilian leaders welcome Obama.
By Seth Kugel - GlobalPost
Published: January 8, 2009 17:21 ET
Updated: January 22, 2009 16:23 ET

~snip~
Here in Maragojipe, it took until 2004 for the town to elect a black mayor, Silvio Jose Santana Santos, a broad-shouldered 37-year-old with a penchant for red clothing, the color of his Workers Party. And even then, his campaign slogan, “A star is shining” was turned against him by an opponent, who in a speech noted that, “Black stars don’t shine.”

The mayor, who goes by the political name Silvio Ataliba, distinguished the history of Jim Crow laws in the United States from race relations in Brazil. “They say racism doesn’t exist,” he said. “But here’s what happened: we traded slave quarters for favelas (slums).

“Racism is camouflaged. People call you ‘neguinho’ and they think they’re being affectionate. They call you ‘black with a white soul.’ We still haven’t accomplished in our society what black Americans have in theirs, and I’m not just talking about Obama’s election,” Ataliba said.

Though black leaders in Brazil often looked to figures like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks as models, the movement in Brazil was dampened from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s by the military dictatorship. But there has been progress since, the mayor noted. Among the signs in the last decade: increasing roles for black actors and controversial racial quotas for admission to Brazil’s prestigious public universities. He notes that he has heard — but is not sure — that Obama was a beneficiary of quotas in the United States.

On a recent evening in Cachoeira, Gomes de Jesus, older and more skeptical than Ataliba, was watching a news report on Obama in his run-down but invitingly warm center, the Casa Paulo Dias Adorno. He is a priest of Candomble, the religion of African origin influential in this part of the country.

“Blacks in the United States had the opportunity to grow socially, culturally and politically,” Gomes de Jesus said. “So much so that today white Americans elected a black man president. That indicates that whites in the United States came to the conclusion that if you’re capable, you can have power, whether you’re white or not.”

Most Brazilian whites, he believes, do not feel the same way. He suspects that “white Brazilians find it absurd that a black man is president of the United States.”

More:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/america-and-the-worl...

s

I almost always agree with O Senhor Presidente Lula (whom I once declared was my President too!)

However, I myself am white and blue eyed... yet I had nothing to do with the economic crisis!

Most of the people in the world have no idea what a bank account is.

If you told them you did, they might say:
"You give your money to a stranger to hold for you? No way!!"

Most people in the world don't have anyone they can trust to hold their money even if they had an excess of money.

The present day banking system is based on trust. That trust has been violated, yes? And since violated is causing problems across the globe. Mainly, the high fuel prices are to blame, and most of that impact came from the financial markets jacking oil prices sky-high, financed by, here it comes, our banking system.

This is what the Reaganites meant by 'trickle down' economics.

and he's correct.An unfortunate use of words..he should realise it would be taken out of context.

He's also not responsible for everything that went on in Brasil before him.

Lula's language is a metaphor for a system that rests firmly on a history of imperialism and slavery; an establishment of economic dominance by light skinned people over dark skinned people for the purpose of exploiting labor and resources.

According to the reactionaries on this thread, pointing this fact out constitutes racism. This seems to be a right-wing tactic for diverting attention from uncomfortable facts that many white people prefer not to think about.

What I disagree with was the choice of words. There is an uncomfortable fact that many white people don't want to address; I don't see anyone here that denies there has been dominance by a mostly white establishment, however.

They thought they knew everything; they have demonstrated they know nothing.

Yes, he's talking about the relatively small band greedy rich white men who ruled the world economy, patronising developing countries as they raped them.

stupid is as stupid does

this comment is pretty damn stupid

pros.

(PS: Welcome to DU!)

So all those who took it as a personal affront can stop feeling aggrieved.

Unless you're bankers of course.

'Blue-eyed bankers' to blame for crash, Lula tells Brown
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/26/lula-attack...


'White, blue-eyed bankers have brought world economy to its knees': What the Brazilian President told Gordon Brown
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-11650...

Lula was just stating the obvious.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/26/usury_country_why...

It would have been nice had President da Silva used this Brazilian racial classification to describe the bankers:


Burro-quanto-foge ("burro running away"), implying racial mixture of unknown origin.

Think of all the surly insults we would, or should have avoided. Almost EVERYONE should be able to grasp his meaning from either one of these articles, with NO EXCUSES.

From your Guardian article:

'Blue-eyed bankers' to blame for crash, Lula tells Brown
Nicholas Watt Brasilia guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 March 2009 20.31 GMT

White, blue-eyed bankers are entirely to blame for the world financial crisis that has ended up hitting black and indigenous people disproportionately, the president of Brazil declared .

In an outspoken intervention as Gordon Brown stood alongside him, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva pledged to make next week's G20 summit "spicy" as he accused the rich of forcing the poor into greater hardship.

"This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person," Lula said after talks with the prime minister in Brasilia to discuss next week's G20 summit in London.

"This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics."

Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: "I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker."

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/26/lula-attack...

Thank you many times for adding this more complete material for those who could not or chose not to comprehend the first article.
Very deeply appreciated.

And inform. I have learned so much from your threads and posts.

You have my greatest respect.

what has happened, you can NEVER go back to the way you were originally. You have many friends here, you can be sure. There are many, MANY excellent people of conscience here.

It's an honor to think any info. I could find has been helpful. This is a wonderful place for pooling our information, comparing notes. As you've seen, it's not likely others can destroy our constant movement forward!

So glad you're here, welcome to D.U.

We had a story on DU about how the photo of Franklin Raines was being used when he was the only African American CEO among those caught up in this:



Basically, the financial disaster wasn't about race, and it's disappointing to see Lula trying to make it so. It was about rich people, and the rest of us.

s

Brown eyes AND blue eyes.

http://a.abcnews.com/Business/Economy/Story?id=6849315&...

Only white people with blue eyes are bad.

Thank goodness I've got brown eyes!

His heritage is Indian--he's not a northern European, which is what I think Lula is talking about.

Citigroup is the most likely to fall, and has been really sucking up taxpayer dollars.

Way to go, Vikram!

doo doo doo doo doo doot doot dedoo dedoo

I am guilty myself of being white and blue-green eyed. Don't know how off
the hook O am!

throughout both US political parties and, for that matter, among more than one nation. Your stupidity and your true colors are showing.

even in this Country, and make sure you make a case for the "blame" attributable to the even more deperately poor of Brazil, or Africa, or Asia?

As for the "white and blue-eyed bankers" it is, as far as I can see, a simple matter of fact that 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999...% of those who created this debacle are white, and probably the same % of those who starve and die as a result of it will be some shade of brown. Facing that fact, understanding what it means without getting our knickers in a twist over "racism" might be illuminating.

and that would include plenty of non-white non-blue eyed types. Go ahead and defend the irresponsible borrowers. And, having spent sometime in NYC and on wall street, I can tell you, not all bankers are white, blue eyed, and/or American, not by a long a shot. Furthermore, the foreign entities that speculated in the CDO's and other ABS's have nobody but themselves to blame as it was their willingness to gamble in risky investments that perpetuiated this mess. If you go to Vegas and lose big at the blackjack table, is it my fault that you didn't understand the game? Fuck. No. But don't let facts interfere with your "blame whitey" world view.

but, thank you for repeating Republican bs here.

but thanks for hating white people anyways.

No sale. And the rest shouldn't even be dignified.

If you bought more house than you could afford, it's your fault and no one else's. And if you were subsequently foreclosed on because you could no longer afford to live beyond your means, you helped contribute to the current economic crisis. You certainly aren't the only actor in this drama but you certainly played a part. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should have given AIG or any other financial entity a dime of tax payer money. I'm quite pissed off that we did in fact. I don't think irresponsibility and failure should be subsidized at either end of the SEC spectrum. Regardless, you don't seem like the type of person that would listen to a reasonable point if it threatened your world view so there's no point wasting anymore time discussing this with you. Keep on pointing fingers. See where it gets you.

for gravity, it entirely misses the bigger picture.

I would have liked to have bought a bigger house but I didn't because I couldn't afford it and I knew it. What's more, I took the time to learn about mortgages before I locked into one so that I din't make a poor decision like locking into an ARM with a preload penalty for instance. At this point, I don't blame poor folks for walking away from their mortgages either. As a matter of fact, I would encourage it at this point considering the ass rape perpetrated againt them by the powers that be. Furthermore, I'm not "blaming" them for the global financial meltdown. I'm simply stating that everyone contributed to this crisis. That being said, if you want to blame it all on white people, why don't you come out and say it plainly? Is that your point of view, that this is the fault of "white people with blue eyes"?

YES!

lol

against the elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and the entertainment was a comedian in a gorilla costume playing "Hugo," it wasn't reported in the corpo/fascist press. Chavez had been kidnapped, and his life threatened, and the fascist coupsters had suspended the Constitution, the courts, the National Assembly and all civil rights. Led by RCTV, 'brownshirt' mobs were hunting down members of the Chavez government and other leftists, trying to arrest them; some were beaten; some escaped. It was a 48-hour horror that was being celebrated in the U.S. embassy with racist humor.

I can't even find my source now. I've lost it. But I remember reading a report from someone who was there. The racial aspect of the hatred of Hugo Chavez and his use of the oil resource to help the poor, most of whom have indigenous, African-Venezuela or mixed race backgrounds, has never been acknowledged or condemned by our once progressive and now horrible, fascist press.

When Venezuela's corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies routinely portray Chavez as gorilla or a monkey, our corpo/fascist press just ignores it entirely. James Petras discusses this in a Democracy Now interview.

http://thestudyofracialism.org/about4267.html

When the U.S. (Bushwhacks) funded/organized a white separatist war against the indigenous in Bolivia, this last September, in which the fascist rioters machine-gunned some 30 unarmed indigenous peasant farmers, in an attempt to overthrow Bolivia's first indigenous president (Evo Morales), the white bigotry of the U.S. allies was never mentioned by our corpo/fascist press.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18837
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2008/09/racism-domina...

It is a dreadful fact that the white European minority of South American society are the ones who ally with the U.S. and other 'first world' financial dragons and corporate predators to impoverish the mixed race and indigenous majority, and have done so from the beginning. The poor are almost all brown-skinned, and they are the ones who suffer from World Bank/IMF loan sharks, and Chiquita, Inc.'s death squads, and Bechtel Corp.'s privatization of Bolivia's water systems, and Chevron-Texaco's "rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador, and Exxon Mobil's greed.

This is what Lula da Silva is talking about. It is the reality. And the people on this thread who get all huffy about racism are ignoring the reality of the U.S. corpo/fascist support of racism in other countries. It is the brown and the black who are suffering from the Bushwhacks' Financial 9/11, as they have suffered from U.S.-led looting, impoverishment, tyranny and ruination--including torture and death--for decades, and indeed throughout the 20th Century. And it is also the brown, the indigenous, the black and the mixed race who have achieved democracy over the last decade, and have elected leftists all over South America and now increasingly in Central America. And they most certainly have some things to teach us about social justice, grass roots organization, local/regional control of resources and finance/development for everyone's benefit, indigenous wisdom about the environment and democratic institutions, such as transparent, aboveboard elections. It has been largely "blue-eyed white men" who have destroyed our democracy and our economy, and are furthermore destroying the very planet we all depend upon. That is an undeniable truth. Why shouldn't it be spoken?

Those who cry "class warfare" when the poor start rebelling forget who started the class warfare. Those who cry "racism" when the brown and the black rebel forget who started slavery, segregation and bigotry. And it was Barack Obama who said that we must talk about this, and acknowledge this, if we hope to get past it. We cannot bury it any more. The slavery in our southern states was reiterated, on a large scale, with U.S. oppression of the largely brown-skinned peoples' of the southern hemisphere. And in its most recent manifestation--"neo-liberalism," "free trade" (for the super-rich), and the World Bank/IMF looting and destruction machine--"blue-eyed white men" dictated the dreadful rules that destroyed Latin American countries, and are now destroying us. Take a trip to the inner city anywhere in the U.S., or out to pesticide-ridden, ugly, corpo/fascist farms where the indigenous from the ruined economies of Mexico and Guatemala pick the poisoned food that goes to our supermarkets. Who is suffering the most? The brown and the black, who are systematically excluded from the rule-making.

I think Lula's remarks were right on--and I am blue-eyed and white (though with a trace of Kikapoo and lots of "black" Irish). It is time for the "third world"--and I mean all oppressed people, of whatever color or sex, in whatever country--to change the rules.