Sexist racism and anti-racist resistance — Sheila Briano de Oliveira’s (SECBA//Uneb) review of “Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil”, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry
Abstract: Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, released in 2022 by EDUFBA, is an ethnography about the politics of black women in Brazil. The work aims to discuss sexist and diaspora racism, highlighting the struggle of these women for the right to land. Positively criticized, it reveals the intersection of race, gender and urbanism in the Brazilian context.
Keywords: Black women, politics, and urban evolution.
The book Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, was released in 2022 by EDUFBA with translation by Arivaldo Santos de Souza. It is a publication of ethnographic writing about black women’s politics. The work aims to enable discussion about sexist racism and racism in the diaspora, respecting similar differences. It explores the experience of the women who lead the community movement in the Gamboa de Baixo neighborhood, in Salvador-BA, from the perspective of someone who knew them and shares their friendship and has common ideals. Its preface is Josemeire Alves Pereira, who attributes to the work the understanding of how racism informs and shapes urban conceptions and practices in Brazil, stating that the book is a precious contribution to the field of urban studies.
Keishan-Khan Y. Perry, born in Kingston, Jamaica, migrated to the United States at age 10. He lived in Newark before starting his degree, a change that helped the author refocus on being black in the diaspora, urban and political life, and the history of social movements in the United States. She went to college with the prospect of becoming a professional interpreter (she is proficient in Spanish and speaks Portuguese), a diplomat, or a lawyer. However, she opted for an academic career, an assertive choice. She has carried out research in Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico and the United States and is currently studying French with the aim of expanding her research in the Americas, the world and Africa. The aforementioned book, also the result of his experience in the context of struggles for the right to land, has 260 pages and is divided into six parts, in addition to an “afterword”, “interview transcript” and “commented literature”.
The first and second parts bring reports about the city of Salvador, and its history of racial violence from slavery and colonialism that guides racial, gender and class relations to the present day. The author considers urban development, the mass demolitions of poor neighborhoods that define the power relations between the black majority and the minority white Brazilian population, since the period of colonial Brazil. She also reports on the consequences suffered by this population when Salvador ceases to be the country’s capital. The author narrates the struggle of black women to fight for land, and denounces their invisibility in the media scenario, which reinforces the lack of knowledge about the lives of black women in Brazil. The complaint continues in the third part, detailing the nature of Gamboa’s political organization, as resistance, in the face of constant threats by public authorities to expel and relocate the population of this waterfront neighborhood, to spaces further away from the center.
In the fourth part, Keisha-Khan, reports on the fight against police abuse that has become an integral part of the neighborhood’s political project. The fifth part begins with the story of resistance and the death of Dona Iraci, an activist and resident of Gamboa, who suffered a heart attack after a police confrontation. This loss stimulated the organization of residents, human rights groups, black movement organizations and black intellectuals who wrote open letters to denounce, through stories of black lives, the attacks and murders committed by the police force.
In the sixth part, Kheisha-Khan narrates the struggle of the Gamboa neighborhood association, whether for the participation of residents of the area, or for negotiation and discussion for improvements. The author does not lose sight of the fight for the right to land, integrated with political demands to legalize collective property rights and preserve the cultural and material resources that the sea offers to the residents of Gamboa de Baixo. From this perspective, it announces the speeches of black women activists who lead this organization, permeated with statements about personal and professional responsibilities at work. The statements speak, most of the time, about domestic work in the homes of white families and in their own homes at night. She also denounces unpaid work as a form of exploitation common to other black domestic workers, tells everyday stories of fighting for fairer wages, the attempted sexual exploitation of young girls and the difficulties of raising their own children.
From their experiences on the margins of political economy, these women demonstrate the importance of the collective action of black women in Brazilian communities. They mobilize and self -identify as residents and not as workers, declaring a class, gender and race perspective in a structural and historically unequal city. In the same chapter, the author highlights the influence of African tradition religions on the daily culture of black women and environmental policy in Gamboa de Baixo and in black neighborhoods of the city of São Salvador. “In many ways, the black population, especially black women, carry the burden of centuries of slavery and social marginalization. Terreiros have been spiritual spaces for racial and gender solidarity, in which black women maintain Salvador’s cultural and community identity. (p.195). It also denounces violent religious intolerance that many Afro-Brazilian religious communities suffer, the constant invasion of land and demolitions, carried out by the state.
In this part, finally, the author draws our attention to the relationship between race, gender and class structure, with emphasis on spiritual forces and the success of these women’s organizations, as they preserve the interests of the collective, both by the right to land , as for improvements in social conditions. It makes a clear distinction between men and women at the head of these entities and signals how women risk more for the collective cause by fighting the forms of action of society and the police. These women benefit from being more educated and prepared to participate in negotiations with the state. On the other hand, men are more likely to be arrested and to sell themselves to politicians and development agencies, to the detriment of the common good. They submit to class, gender and race domination for extolling their individual interests, such as the search for jobs, abandoning the movement or acting to nullify the collective project.
At the end of her work, the author present to the reader the causes that originated the struggle for collective properties to make mass removal and real estate speculation more difficult by the municipality. Thus, it explains that mass removals in the name of revitalization, in different neighborhoods of Salvador, as occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, in which poor people were removed from color, because of the gentrification and construction of highways and airports .
The author states that the restructuring of cities came at a high price for poor blacks, as well as exacerbating existing problems of violence, poverty and social abandonment. The fight against the global problem must be intensified.
Pillory, after reform ACM. Here people lived (unidentified photographer) | Image: Cronologia do Urbanismo
As we see, Keisha-Khan’s book draws the reader’s attention to the global invisibility of black women, regarding their knowledge of global politics in the African diaspora, despite these women playing a central role in struggles for black liberation, throughout the world. Ignorance of this experience leads to the proliferation of sexist and racist situations, reproducing the false idea that women are incapable of building political knowledge and leading political organizations.
From this perspective, the objective of understanding the place of international solidarity in relation to grassroots movements in the black diaspora was fulfilled in the work. However, the author herself admits that “understanding how racism informs and shapes urban conceptions and practices in Brazil can be considered a sensitive gap in these studies.” (p.218). Also for this reason, the work becomes mandatory reading for historians, educators, activists, anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, public policy makers, urban planners and political scientists. These agents will benefit from the information and theses announced about the role of black women in the fight for the right to land and housing and about the articulation of the concepts of race, gender and spirituality.
Summary ofDaqui em não saio, daqui ninguém, me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil
Nota do tradutor
Prefácio
I. Negritude diáspora e agência afro-brasileira
II. Formação dos movimentos de base
III. A lógica da exclusão urbana baseada em gênero e raça
IV. A infantaria do movimento Negro
V. Policiamento violento e eliminação de paisagens urbanas
VI. “Catando os caos”: violência cotidiana e a comunidade
VII. Política é coisa de mulher
Conclusão
Posfácio
Referências
Reviewer
Sheila Briano de Oliveira is psychopedagogue (ABPP/BA 1661) and teacher at AEE (Specialized Educational Service). Master’s student of PPGEAFIN/UNEB (2023.1), Pedagogue and Letter, Specialist in: Inclusive Special Education (UNEB Campus I), Clinical and Institutional Psychopedagogy (Uessba), Neuropsychopedagogy (Faciip), Educational Neuropsychology (ISAL) and Libras with emphasis on Inclusive Education (Faculdade São Salvador). ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/5090024078230648; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3962-8990; E-mail: sheilabriano@gmail.com.
To cite this review
PERRY, Keisha-Khan Y. Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém, me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil. Salvador: Edufba, 2022. 240p. Review by OLIVEIRA, Sheila Briano de. Sexist racism and anti-racist resistance. Crítica Historiográfica. Natal, v.3, n.14, nov./dez., 2023. Available at <Sexist racism and anti-racist resistance — Sheila Briano de Oliveira’s (SECBA//Uneb) review of “Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil”, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry – Crítica Historiografica (criticahistoriografica.com.br)>.
Sexist racism and anti-racist resistance — Sheila Briano de Oliveira’s (SECBA//Uneb) review of “Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil”, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry
Abstract: Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, released in 2022 by EDUFBA, is an ethnography about the politics of black women in Brazil. The work aims to discuss sexist and diaspora racism, highlighting the struggle of these women for the right to land. Positively criticized, it reveals the intersection of race, gender and urbanism in the Brazilian context.
Keywords: Black women, politics, and urban evolution.
The book Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, was released in 2022 by EDUFBA with translation by Arivaldo Santos de Souza. It is a publication of ethnographic writing about black women’s politics. The work aims to enable discussion about sexist racism and racism in the diaspora, respecting similar differences. It explores the experience of the women who lead the community movement in the Gamboa de Baixo neighborhood, in Salvador-BA, from the perspective of someone who knew them and shares their friendship and has common ideals. Its preface is Josemeire Alves Pereira, who attributes to the work the understanding of how racism informs and shapes urban conceptions and practices in Brazil, stating that the book is a precious contribution to the field of urban studies.
Keishan-Khan Y. Perry, born in Kingston, Jamaica, migrated to the United States at age 10. He lived in Newark before starting his degree, a change that helped the author refocus on being black in the diaspora, urban and political life, and the history of social movements in the United States. She went to college with the prospect of becoming a professional interpreter (she is proficient in Spanish and speaks Portuguese), a diplomat, or a lawyer. However, she opted for an academic career, an assertive choice. She has carried out research in Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico and the United States and is currently studying French with the aim of expanding her research in the Americas, the world and Africa. The aforementioned book, also the result of his experience in the context of struggles for the right to land, has 260 pages and is divided into six parts, in addition to an “afterword”, “interview transcript” and “commented literature”.
The first and second parts bring reports about the city of Salvador, and its history of racial violence from slavery and colonialism that guides racial, gender and class relations to the present day. The author considers urban development, the mass demolitions of poor neighborhoods that define the power relations between the black majority and the minority white Brazilian population, since the period of colonial Brazil. She also reports on the consequences suffered by this population when Salvador ceases to be the country’s capital. The author narrates the struggle of black women to fight for land, and denounces their invisibility in the media scenario, which reinforces the lack of knowledge about the lives of black women in Brazil. The complaint continues in the third part, detailing the nature of Gamboa’s political organization, as resistance, in the face of constant threats by public authorities to expel and relocate the population of this waterfront neighborhood, to spaces further away from the center.
In the fourth part, Keisha-Khan, reports on the fight against police abuse that has become an integral part of the neighborhood’s political project. The fifth part begins with the story of resistance and the death of Dona Iraci, an activist and resident of Gamboa, who suffered a heart attack after a police confrontation. This loss stimulated the organization of residents, human rights groups, black movement organizations and black intellectuals who wrote open letters to denounce, through stories of black lives, the attacks and murders committed by the police force.
In the sixth part, Kheisha-Khan narrates the struggle of the Gamboa neighborhood association, whether for the participation of residents of the area, or for negotiation and discussion for improvements. The author does not lose sight of the fight for the right to land, integrated with political demands to legalize collective property rights and preserve the cultural and material resources that the sea offers to the residents of Gamboa de Baixo. From this perspective, it announces the speeches of black women activists who lead this organization, permeated with statements about personal and professional responsibilities at work. The statements speak, most of the time, about domestic work in the homes of white families and in their own homes at night. She also denounces unpaid work as a form of exploitation common to other black domestic workers, tells everyday stories of fighting for fairer wages, the attempted sexual exploitation of young girls and the difficulties of raising their own children.
From their experiences on the margins of political economy, these women demonstrate the importance of the collective action of black women in Brazilian communities. They mobilize and self -identify as residents and not as workers, declaring a class, gender and race perspective in a structural and historically unequal city. In the same chapter, the author highlights the influence of African tradition religions on the daily culture of black women and environmental policy in Gamboa de Baixo and in black neighborhoods of the city of São Salvador. “In many ways, the black population, especially black women, carry the burden of centuries of slavery and social marginalization. Terreiros have been spiritual spaces for racial and gender solidarity, in which black women maintain Salvador’s cultural and community identity. (p.195). It also denounces violent religious intolerance that many Afro-Brazilian religious communities suffer, the constant invasion of land and demolitions, carried out by the state.
In this part, finally, the author draws our attention to the relationship between race, gender and class structure, with emphasis on spiritual forces and the success of these women’s organizations, as they preserve the interests of the collective, both by the right to land , as for improvements in social conditions. It makes a clear distinction between men and women at the head of these entities and signals how women risk more for the collective cause by fighting the forms of action of society and the police. These women benefit from being more educated and prepared to participate in negotiations with the state. On the other hand, men are more likely to be arrested and to sell themselves to politicians and development agencies, to the detriment of the common good. They submit to class, gender and race domination for extolling their individual interests, such as the search for jobs, abandoning the movement or acting to nullify the collective project.
At the end of her work, the author present to the reader the causes that originated the struggle for collective properties to make mass removal and real estate speculation more difficult by the municipality. Thus, it explains that mass removals in the name of revitalization, in different neighborhoods of Salvador, as occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, in which poor people were removed from color, because of the gentrification and construction of highways and airports .
The author states that the restructuring of cities came at a high price for poor blacks, as well as exacerbating existing problems of violence, poverty and social abandonment. The fight against the global problem must be intensified.
Pillory, after reform ACM. Here people lived (unidentified photographer) | Image: Cronologia do Urbanismo
As we see, Keisha-Khan’s book draws the reader’s attention to the global invisibility of black women, regarding their knowledge of global politics in the African diaspora, despite these women playing a central role in struggles for black liberation, throughout the world. Ignorance of this experience leads to the proliferation of sexist and racist situations, reproducing the false idea that women are incapable of building political knowledge and leading political organizations.
From this perspective, the objective of understanding the place of international solidarity in relation to grassroots movements in the black diaspora was fulfilled in the work. However, the author herself admits that “understanding how racism informs and shapes urban conceptions and practices in Brazil can be considered a sensitive gap in these studies.” (p.218). Also for this reason, the work becomes mandatory reading for historians, educators, activists, anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, public policy makers, urban planners and political scientists. These agents will benefit from the information and theses announced about the role of black women in the fight for the right to land and housing and about the articulation of the concepts of race, gender and spirituality.
Summary ofDaqui em não saio, daqui ninguém, me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil
Nota do tradutor
Prefácio
I. Negritude diáspora e agência afro-brasileira
II. Formação dos movimentos de base
III. A lógica da exclusão urbana baseada em gênero e raça
IV. A infantaria do movimento Negro
V. Policiamento violento e eliminação de paisagens urbanas
VI. “Catando os caos”: violência cotidiana e a comunidade
VII. Política é coisa de mulher
Conclusão
Posfácio
Referências
Reviewer
Sheila Briano de Oliveira is psychopedagogue (ABPP/BA 1661) and teacher at AEE (Specialized Educational Service). Master’s student of PPGEAFIN/UNEB (2023.1), Pedagogue and Letter, Specialist in: Inclusive Special Education (UNEB Campus I), Clinical and Institutional Psychopedagogy (Uessba), Neuropsychopedagogy (Faciip), Educational Neuropsychology (ISAL) and Libras with emphasis on Inclusive Education (Faculdade São Salvador). ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/5090024078230648; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3962-8990; E-mail: sheilabriano@gmail.com.
To cite this review
PERRY, Keisha-Khan Y. Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém, me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil. Salvador: Edufba, 2022. 240p. Review by OLIVEIRA, Sheila Briano de. Sexist racism and anti-racist resistance. Crítica Historiográfica. Natal, v.3, n.14, nov./dez., 2023. Available at <Sexist racism and anti-racist resistance — Sheila Briano de Oliveira’s (SECBA//Uneb) review of “Daqui em não saio, daqui ninguém me tira: a luta das mulheres negras pelo direito à terra no Brasil”, by Keisha-Khan Y. Perry – Crítica Historiografica (criticahistoriografica.com.br)>.
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Sheila Briano de Oliveira is psychopedagogue (ABPP/BA 1661) and teacher at AEE (Specialized Educational Service). Master’s student of PPGEAFIN/UNEB (2023.1), Pedagogue and Letter, Specialist in: Inclusive Special Education (UNEB Campus I), Clinical and Institutional Psychopedagogy (Uessba), Neuropsychopedagogy (Faciip), Educational Neuropsychology (ISAL) and Libras with emphasis on Inclusive Education (Faculdade São Salvador). ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/5090024078230648; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3962-8990; E-mail: sheilabriano@gmail.com.
