Barack Obama Is Brazilian Resignifying Race Relations in Contemporary Brazil 1St Edition Emanuelle K F Oliveira Monte Auth Full Chapter

Barack Obama is Brazilian:
(Re)Signifying Race Relations in

Contemporary Brazil 1st Edition
Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte (Auth.)
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Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte
BARACK
OBAMA IS
BRAZILIAN
(Re)Signifying Race Relations in
Contemporary Brazil
Barack Obama is Brazilian
Barack Obama is
Brazilian
(Re)Signifying Race Relations in Contemporary
Brazil
Department of Spanish and
Portuguese
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-59480-8 ISBN 978-1-137-58353-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950708
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To Christopher Joseph Monte
“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well”
To Gabriel Samuel Monte
and Isabella Catherine Monte (in memoriam)
Acknowledgements
The idea for this project started in November 2013, when my friend
Renata Wasserman invited me to be the external member of a doctoral
dissertation committee of one of her students, Theresa Lindsey, at Wayne
State University. I was to participate in the qualifying exam and deliver
a lecture on any topic of my research. At that time, I was working on
a manuscript about representations of race, crime, and violence in con-
temporary Brazilian literature and film. I had several parts of the study
already written, but was having difficulties organizing them coherently.
Moreover, the extremely dark nature of the project started to take a toll
on me. Consequently, I wanted to lecture on another topic and, after
some research, I got interested in the representations of Barack Obama
in Brazil. Undoubtedly, as this book underlines, Obama’s election to the
U.S. presidency had a tremendous impact on the collective unconscious
of the African Diaspora; hence, I became intrigued by what Obama’s vic-
tory meant to Brazil, a country famous for its racial democracy myth and
where the majority of the population is of African ancestry. This manu-
script started from that essay read at Wayne State University, and I thank
Renata Wasserman for the opportunity to visit her department and to
deliver a talk on a promising, but still very immature, topic. My gratitude
also extends to my friends Carolina Castellaños, associate professor of
Spanish and Portuguese at Dickinson College, and Robert Kelz, assistant
professor of German at the University of Memphis, for having invited me
to present my work at their institutions in late 2015. Comments during
vii
viii Acknowledgements
the Q & A sessions provided me with valuable material during the manu-
script editing process.
When I was halfway through the book, the Charlie Hebdo attack
happened on January 14, 2015. This violence was a reminder of how
relevant the work of cartoonists is; they are the consciousness of their
nations, making us laugh and critically reflect upon current national and
international problems. This book is dedicated to all the cartoonists and
artists who, through their work, place key topics at the forefront of soci-
ety’s debate with talent and wit. I especially would like to thank all the
Brazilian artists and cartoonists who contributed to this manuscript:
Renato Luiz Campos Aroeira, Roberlan Borges, Hélio de la Peña, Lute,
Samuca, Pedro Marques, Fellipe Elias da Silva, Pelicano, Marcos Borges,
Carlos Latuff, Cerino, Regi, Boopo, Iotti, and Sattu Rodrigues. Your
amazing work informed my scholarship and made me laugh! It was a joy
and a pleasure to get to know you! A special thank you goes to Diogo
Ramalho, maker of the blog Humor Político, where many Brazilian car-
toonists post their creations. I found many of the cartoons used in this
study on this funny and fascinating site.
I have built my academic career on the captivating topics of Afro-
Brazilian literature and race relations. Looking back, I realize that I
owe much of my professional path to my adviser in the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles,
Randal Johnson. I was a very young and academically unpolished gradu-
ate student, and Johnson not only provided me with invaluable mentor-
ing, but also helped to shape my line of work. During graduate school,
I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation on the literature of the new
social movements in Brazil; prudently and wisely, Johnson suggested I
limit my focus and concentrate my interests on the Afro-Brazilian move-
ment and the question of race. I thank Randal Johnson for giving me
these fascinating and important topics of a lifetime!
Very few people worldwide study Afro-Latin American literature or,
most specifically, Afro-Brazilian literature and culture. I am very grateful
to be part of this tight-knit and supportive group. I am forever indebted
to Marvin Lewis and Russell Hamilton (in memoriam), true pioneers
and two of the greatest scholars of the field of Afro-Diaspora literature,
whom I had the pleasure to work with early in my career. Their influence
on my work is undisputable. Christopher Dunn from Tulane University
has always been a dear friend and empathetic colleague. When he came
to give a lecture in 2015 at Vanderbilt University on his wonderful new
Acknowledgements ix
book Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in

Authoritarian Brazil (2016), I described my manuscript during a dinner
conversation, and Dunn enthusiastically encouraged me to conclude this
project. Isis da Costa and Lúcia Costigan, from Ohio State University,
have always been a constant presence, sharing work-related projects and
life experiences. Antonio Tillis, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and
Social Sciences at the University of Houston; Ana Beatriz Gonçalves
from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora; Cristina Rodriguez from
North Carolina Central University; and Eliza Rizo from Iowa State
University are all part of a wonderful community of Afro-Latin American
scholars coming from the University of Missouri, Columbia, where I was
fortunate enough to hold my first academic position. Thank you all for
being there, despite the long distance and busy schedules!
Moreover, I am also very privileged to be part of such a wonderful
group as the Luso-Brazilian studies community in the United States.
Since my graduate school years, David William Foster has always been an
amazing mentor and friend; thank you, David, for your wisdom, gener-
osity, and friendship! I had the pleasure of working with Luiz Fernando
Valente of Brown University on several committees of various profes-
sional associations, and he has always impressed me with his professional-
ism and kindness. Jeremy Lehnen from the University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, has been a constant intellectual presence in my life, shar-
ing academic interests and lesson plans. No woman is an island, thus
my work would have not been possible without the support of amazing
women scholars from different generations. Peggy Sharpe (Florida State
University), Cristina Pinto-Bailey (Washington and Lee University),
Susan Quinlan (University of Georgia) and Phyllis Peres (American
University)—since the beginning of my career, I have been inspired by
your strong work ethic and loving hearts! Similar research interests have
solidified old bonds and helped to form new ones; Rebecca Atencio
(Tulane University) and Regina Dalcastagné (University of Brasília)
have been very important influences on my work and have graced my
life with their friendship. Leila Lehnen (University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque)—no words can ever express how grateful I am for your
constant presence in my life, on a personal and professional level! I am
positive that I could not be standing where I am now without the emo-
tional and academic support of these amazing women!
My colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese have
provided me with sure guidance when needed. I would like to thank the
x Acknowledgements
Chair, Benigno Trigo, and the Vice Chair, Victoria Burrus, as well as
Earl Fitz, Cathy Jrade, Edward Friedman, and Ruth Hill for their con-
tinuous advice. Andres and Marivi Zamora and Christina Karageorgou-
Bastea have been caring friends in times of need. I thank Victoria
Gardner and Alicia Lorenzo for our unforgettable coffee hours, where
we laughed and chatted about the tribulations and joys of the profession.
I could not have asked for a more gifted, thoughtful, and appreciative
core of graduate students. Kelly Samiotou, Charles Geyer, Jacob Brown,
and Fernando Varella—I thank you all for being part of our academic
family! Outside my department, I found colleagues who have always
provided me with inestimable help. From the Department of History,
Marshall Eakin, Celso Castillo, and Jane Landers are not only remark-
able scholars, but also incredible people; how lucky I am to count on
you all! Since I started as an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University,
Lynn Ramey from the Department of French and Italian has generously
embraced me, giving me priceless career advice and a friend’s shoulder to
lean on.
When I was searching for potential presses to publish this manuscript,
my colleagues highly praised Palgrave Macmillan. For this interdiscipli-
nary study on comparative race relations, I was seeking a press with a
strong academic component, as well as a sophisticated marketing strategy
and global distribution. I am very glad that I decided to send my manu-
script to such a solid and innovative company as Palgrave. I would espe-
cially like to thank Shaun Vigil and Glenn Ramirez (editor and assistant
editor, respectively, of film, culture, and media studies) for believing in
this project, even when there were bumps on the road that caused unex-
pected delays. Thank you for always being extremely accessible, courte-
ous, and professional! I thank the reviewers for their careful reading of
the manuscript and great editing suggestions, which certainly helped to
enrich the final product. My gratitude also goes to Ron Marmarelli, my
English copy editor, who has been with me for many tortuous but fun
years! My prose is forever changed because of your competent reviewing!
I completed Chaps. 2 and 3 of this book while pregnant with my son
Gabriel in 2014. What was supposed to be a period of trial and anxi-
ety, because I was put on bed rest, truly became a time of contempla-
tion and nurturing. In many ways, I owe my son and this manuscript
to the expertise of doctors who came together to make my dream of
motherhood come true. I thank Dr. Andrew Toledo as well as his amaz-
ing nurses and staff from Reproductive Associates of Atlanta for never
Acknowledgements xi
giving up on me. It so happened that the fifth attempt was the charm!
I also would like to thank Dr. Douglas Brown, from the Obstetrics and
Gynecology Center at Saint Thomas Medical Partner; Melissa Grooms,
R.N., from Maternal and Infant Services at Saint Thomas Midtown;
and Dr. Cornelia Graves, from Tennessee Maternal Fetal Medicine
in Nashville, for advocating for both mother and child during a diffi-
cult pregnancy and delivery. Gabriel and I could not have been in safer
hands. It took a village to conceive my Gabriel, and so it goes that it
takes a village to raise him! While I was rounding off the pages of
Chaps. 3 and 4, Valerie Marshall, Elizabeth Becker, and Karen Rodgers
were tending to Gabriel with love and care. I especially thank Valerie
Marshall for being much more than a nanny, but rather a second mother
to Gabriel and part of a loving extended family!
Finally, most of my gratitude goes to my family. My father, Luiz
Carlos Felinto de Oliveira, has always inspired me to relentlessly pursue
my dreams; my stepmother Cristiane Ferreira Barroso has always lent
me attentive ears and provided consolation in troubling times; and my
brother Erick Felinto has been always present as a loving sibling. Thank
you, Erick, for suggesting some of the readings in the field of media
studies! My eternal gratitude goes to my wonderful in-laws, Catherine
and Joseph Monte, who opened their arms and hearts to receive me as
a daughter, being there for me in sickness and in health. Christopher
Monte, my husband and friend, a true companion through wonderful
and terrible times, I witnessed our love to become stronger in adversity.
Thank you for being a caring, considerate, and loving partner and father.
To Isabella Catherine Monte, my angel in heaven, I love you and miss
you. To Gabriel Samuel Monte, you are the light that brightens my days,
now and forever. I love you more than words can express! I thank my
family—my rock and my safe port in the storm—for always being there
for me. Ultimately, I thank God, an accepting and loving God, who
rejects hate and bestows grace and love upon every living thing!
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land

of Racial Democracy 17
3 Barack Obama Is Brazilian 53
4 Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender

in the Realm of Political Humor 87
5 “Our” Candidate Obama: Barack Obama

in the Brazilian Elections 117
6 Conclusion 141
Endnotes 151
Bibliography 181
Index 203
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Cover of Dreams from My Father23

Fig. 2.2 Cover of A origem dos meus sonhos25
Fig. 2.3 Cover of Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama
teria nascido33
Fig. 2.4 Barack Obama Sr. 36
Fig. 2.5 Breno Mello 37
Fig. 2.6 “Esse é o Cara” by Lute 44
Fig. 2.7 “G20: Peça ao barbudo, ele é o cara” by Samuca 45
Fig. 3.1 “Obama: Presidente do Brasil” by Roberlan 59
Fig. 3.2 “Não vote em branco” by Gordonerd 61
Fig. 3.3 “Presidente Obama: Brasil—Março, 2011” 65
Fig. 3.4 “Presidente Obama (de la Peña): Brasil—Março 2011” 66
Fig. 3.5 “Yes, We Can/Yes, Weekend” by Lou 67
Fig. 3.6 “Obama foi ao Rio” by Pedro Marques 70
Fig. 3.7 “Obama no Brasil!” by Fellipe Elias da Silva 71
Fig. 3.8 “Obama Go Home!” 79
Fig. 3.9 “Obama, volte para casa!” 81
Fig. 3.10 “Jantar com Obama” by Pelicano 81
Fig. 3.11 “I love Pré-Sal!” by Marcos Borges 82
Fig. 3.12 “Obama chega ao Rio…” by Carlos Latuff 82
Fig. 4.1 “Isso não é sério, é?” by Aroeira 89
Fig. 4.2 “Espionagem: Obama quer conhecer
o Brasil a fundo” by Cerino 94
Fig. 4.3 “Não adianta se esconder, Obama!” by Regi 95
Fig. 4.4 “Olha lá, Obama…” by Boopo 97
Fig. 4.5 “Porra, Obama!” by Aroeira 98
xv
xvi List of Figures
Fig. 4.6 “Obama!!” by Iotti 99

Fig. 4.7 “Ô Obama, a sua esposa não vai gosta” 104
Fig. 4.8 “Você é muito mais gata que a Angela Merkel” 106
Fig. 4.9 “Não fique assim … Você sabe que só espiono você!”
by Aroeira 109
Fig. 4.10 “Chupa, Obama… Essa vai pro Face Agorovsky”
by Aroeira 111
Fig. 4.11 “Encontro de Cópula” 114
Fig. 4.12 “Dilma rejuvenesceu” 115
Fig. 5.1 “Use bem seu voto” 125
Fig. 5.2 “Dilma, Coração Valente” 128
Fig. 5.3 “Dilma Rousseff” by Sattu Rodrigues 129
Fig. 5.4 “Uai We Can” by Sérgio Kalamakian 132
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Barack Obama’s election to the American presidency in 2008 sparked a

renewed interest in the theme of race, not only in the Americas, but also
worldwide. In the United States, the election of a black man to the office
of the most prominent country in the global, political, and economic
landscape led some analysts to postulate that North America was living in
a post-racial era; that is, theoretically the nation had forged an environ-
ment that surpassed racial preference, discrimination, and prejudice (Ifill;
Kinder and Dale-Riddler; Tesler and Sears).
Obama’s road to the presidency goes beyond the personal story of a
middle-class mixed-race boy who through education ascended socially
and landed in the White House. Obama is an open sign, in which peo-
ple’s expectations, anxieties, and hopes are placed and displaced in order
to respond to society’s needs and perspectives. In “The Tale of Two
Obamas,” David Theo Golberg analyzes the “two Obamas in the body
of Barack” (201): Obama the Person and Obama the Phenomenon. In
a so-called post-racial era, Golberg underscores that Obama emerges as
a new face of America: self-describing as a “mutt” and a “mongrel,” he
becomes the “quintessential American … unabashed and unashamed
about his resonant mestizaje” (202). The “new Negro” is thus refash-
ioned into the post-racial politician, as an African–American who goes
beyond black, in whom the American trumps the African, pushing the
latter category to the background. In his article, Goldberg reminds of
© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_1
2 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE
the dangers of post-raciality; in other words, post-raciality is about new

markets and new identities, a multiplication and proliferation of racial
inputs, which turn multiplicity into denial: a denial of historical racial
conditions and contemporary constraints, or a denial of “the legacy of
racially driven inequalities” (203). In the neoliberal landscape, the inter-
section of race and class renders the once black subject whiter by vir-
tue of his class standing (203), but offers no respite from society’s real
oppressive conditions. In this new post-racial era, the African–American
is never American enough, continuing to be the “other.” Goldberg con-
cludes by affirming that post-racialism creates a pernicious society in
which racism does not emerge in formalized state policy, but appears
more diffused in the social body (and is, in this sense, not less damag-
ing): “racisms are manufactured and manifested more silently, informally,
[seen as] expressions of private preference schemes … reproducing the
given and seemingly gone” (211).
Obama’s rise to the presidency led American scholars and the general
public to reflect on the new meaning(s) of race in America, which was
revealed to be “a new” that had more of the same. In poor communi-
ties, black people remained oppressed, and, outside their perimeters, they
were quickly reminded that, no matter their privileged class status, they
were still confined to stereotyped representational schemes. Racial ten-
sions continued to be visible during Obama’s presidency; in fact, they
acutely escalated in the last years of his mandate. Racial profiling and kill-
ings of black citizens at the hands of police have brought tensions to a
boiling point, leading to riots (such as the one in Ferguson, Missouri,
following the death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown on August 9,
2014) and the formation of the movement “Black Lives Matter” (after
George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of seventeen-year-old
Trayvon Martin). The movement is a call to black people to
actively resist our dehumanization, … a call to action and a response to the

virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. Black Lives Matter is
a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black peo-
ple by police and vigilantes.
When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation

around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are
intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about
the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and
dignity. (“About the Black Lives Matter Network”)
1 INTRODUCTION 3
“Black Lives Matter” placed racial tensions once more at the core of
U.S. human rights debates. In the Obama era, racism outmaneuvered
post-raciality, demonstrating that the election of a black president did
not bring a less bigoted social reality. Still, Obama’s symbolic appeal
persists, even after he has left power. Going beyond American national
politics, his election also had a tremendous impact on the imaginary of
the African Diaspora. What did Obama’s victory mean to Africa, a con-
tinent plagued by authoritarianism and profound economic inequalities?
Even prior to the Afro-American candidate’s victory, Cameroonian writer
Alain Patrice Nganang1 announced that he was campaigning for Obama
and celebrated the candidate as “his brother”: “je me sois dit qu’il
m’était important d’aller battre champagne pour mon frère, car après
tout, Obama est mon frère.” [I told myself that it was important to go
and campaign for my brother, because after all, Obama is my brother.]
Brotherhood is, therefore, expressed not only by the color of the
skin or African ancestry, but—and most importantly—by the hope for
change, locally and globally. Nevertheless, a shadow of doubt is cast
when the Cameroonian writer poses the intriguing question “Et si
Obama était camerounais?” In this article, “And What If Obama Were
Cameroonian?” published in June 2008, Nganang notes that despotism
in Cameroonian politics renders this proposition impossible. The estab-
lished ruler would quickly crush an opposing Cameroonian Obama, as
happened with economist Celestine Monga, who was imprisoned for
criticizing President Paul Biya in an open letter in 1991. Biya ascended
to power in 1983, after the resignation of President Ahmadou Ahidjo,
and remains in the Cameroonian presidency today. Nganang, therefore,
concludes that in Cameroonian politics, the racially and democratically
charged credo “Yes, We Can” would be displaced by the oligarchical,
repressive word “power,” thereby indicating the impossibility of forging
a true Diasporic democracy in the African nation.
Also in the post-election setting, Mozambican writer Mia Couto2
published in November 2009 “E Se Obama Fosse Africano?” [What
If Obama Was African?], an article that saluted Obama’s victory. Like
Nganang, Couto perceives Obama’s victory as a symbol of hope and
change:
Os africanos rejubilaram com a vitória de Obama. Eu fui um deles. Depois

de uma noite em claro, na irrealidade da penumbra da madrugada, as lágri-
mas corriam quando ele pronunciou o discurso de vencedor. … Na noite
de 5 de Novembro, o novo presidente norte-americano não era apenas um

homem que falava. Era a sufocada voz da esperança que se reerguia, liberta
dentro de nós. Meu coração tinha votado, mesmo sem permissão: habitu-
ado a pedir pouco, eu festejava uma vitória sem dimensões. Ao sair à rua,
minha cidade havia se deslocado para Chicago, negros e brancos comun-
gando de uma mesma surpresa feliz. (209)
[Africans rejoiced with Obama’s victory. I was one of them. After stay-
ing up all night, in the unreality of the penumbra of the dawn, tears ran
(down my face) when he gave his victorious speech. … On the night of
November 5, the new North American president was not only a man who
spoke. He was the suffocated voice of hope that reemerged, freed inside
of us. My heart had voted, even without permission: I used to ask for lit-
tle, I celebrated a victory without dimensions. When I went to the streets,
my city had moved to Chicago, blacks and whites sharing the same happy
surprise].
Despite rejoicing this “happy surprise,” the Mozambican writer, much

like his Cameroonian colleague, asserts the impossibility of an African
Obama ever reaching power. This imaginary candidate would face
insurmountable challenges on the road to the presidency of any African
country. For example, the established ruler would employ any type of
non-democratic strategy to keep his power, such as changing the con-
stitution to extend his mandate or limiting the opposition candidate’s
access to the media (Mia Couto 211). Most interesting, nevertheless, is
that Obama’s biracial status would be a political handicap: “Sejamos cla-
ros: Obama é negro nos Estados Unidos. Em África ele é mulato. … [O]
novo presidente americano seria vilipendiado em casa como represent-
ante dos ‘outros’, dos de outra raça.” [Let’s be clear: Obama is black in
the United States. In Africa, he is a mulatto. … The new American presi-
dent would be scorned at home as the representative of the “others,” of
the ones of the other race.] (212) His mixed heritage, therefore, makes
him an “unauthentic African,” whitening him in the eyes of the general
public.
The question of whether Obama is a black or mulatto man is central
to his mutable identity. Obama would refer to himself mostly as black,
but at times also hint that he is a mulatto, playing with this dual racial
register and bringing more malleability to his racial status. In this sense,
when considering Obama, black and mulatto (or biracial) will be used
interchangeably in this study, as this represents the flexibility of Obama’s
1 INTRODUCTION 5
own racial register. This investigation analyzes an ever-changing Obama,

who oscillates between being a “cosmopolitan mulatto” and a “black
icon,” categories that play extremely well within Brazil’s flexible racial
system and that country’s notion of social harmony.
Undoubtedly, the 2008 American election captured the hearts and
imagination of the entire globe; hence, Alain Patrice Nganang and
Mia Couto expressed the feelings that populations experienced on the
African continent. But what about Brazil, a country that has tradition-
ally promoted its image of “racial paradise”? This current study proposes
that Obama’s victory complicated the supposed harmonious balance of
Brazilian racial discourse. International scholars have long investigated
race relations in the United States and Brazil, frequently comparing and
contrasting these two racial systems (see Gilberto Freyre; Carl Degler;
Thomas Skidmore; Florestan Fernandes; Carlos Hasenbalg 1985, 1992,
1999; Nelson do Valle Silva; and more recently Edward Telles, just to
name a few). Since the redemocratization period, Brazilian academ-
ics, the black movement, and certain segments of civil society have
been challenging the notion of racial democracy. In the midst of these
new racial debates, Obama poses Brazilians with a new dilemma. To
Brazilians he is “uma verdadeira batata quente,” a hot potato, leading
them to face the realities of their own racial system.
Would it be possible for this country to elect a black president com-
mitted to Afro-Brazilians and marginalized segments of the population?
Or is racial democracy forever destined to be a myth, an appeasing dis-
course that, in reality, relegates blacks to society’s lower strata? In the
market of racial relations, Brazilians have always considered the United
States as the undesirable model, a society marked by profound racial
violence and segregation, whereas Brazil emerges as a nation that has
embraced all races and ethnicities, and that has always been known for its
racial tolerance and absence of racism. However, the election of a black
candidate to the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world
has been revealed to be a conundrum for Brazil, as this nation is faced
with the possibility of considering the candidacy and election of a black
president. In the land of presumed racial harmony, would it be possi-
ble to have an Afro-Brazilian president, identified with black discourse
and demands? In this sense, what did Obama’s victory mean to Brazil, a
country in which over 50% of the population is black?
This manuscript seeks to delve into the abovementioned questions,
while examining Obama’s depictions in the Brazilian media, especially
vehicles of political humor, the charges políticas [political cartoons].

In the visual representations analyzed, another set of questions arises.
How is Obama portrayed? What elements of Brazil’s racial conceptions
are projected upon Obama’s figure? Does Obama confirm or challenge
the Brazilian racial representations’ imaginary? In a country where the
myth of racial democracy has been systematically challenged by the black
movement, and yet has demonstrated a tremendous enduring power,
what does the election of a black American president represent? How do
Brazilians (re)signify their own racial discourses in light of Obama’s vic-
tory? Barack Obama Is Brazilian delves into these intriguing questions,
revealing a continuous dialogue between the United States and Brazil,
a dialogue in which racial categories are continuously rearticulated and
reformulated.
This investigation seeks to demonstrate that Obama’s depictions
either confirm or challenge Brazil’s racial relations imaginary. In this
sense, if Brazil could not elect a black president, Brazilians had to show
how Obama was not really American, but in reality a “true” Brazilian, if
not by his nationality, then by his “essence.” To that end, Barack Obama
Is Brazilian examines how Brazilians rearticulated Obama’s rise to power
in light of their own racial perceptions, anxieties, and aspirations, using
various types of cultural products, from the Brazilian Portuguese trans-
lation of Obama’s Dreams from My Father to political cartoons and
Internet memes. Ultimately, this study intends to dialogue with the rich
tradition that compares racial systems in Brazil and the United States,
examining how their dynamics affect both nations. In this sense, the con-
stant process of contrasting/comparing produces an intense dialogue on
racial perceptions and representations between these two countries.
Chapter 2, “Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land of
Racial Democracy,” is subdivided into three sections. The first sec-
tion, “Dreams from My Father Revisited: From U.S. Black to Brazilian
Mulatto,” discusses the publication and reception of Obama’s Dreams
from My Father in Brazil, which occurred before the U.S. election, in
the beginning of 2008. Mainstream media and blogger reviews seem
to pay special attention to the episode in which Stanley Ann Dunham,
Obama’s mother, watches Marcel Camus’ film Black Orpheus (1959).
Here the Greek myth is transposed to a favela [slum] in Rio de Janeiro,
and Orpheus is a poor Afro-Brazilian samba composer who hopes to
achieve fame and fortune with his music, and attracts Eurydice, an inno-
cent black woman from the countryside who recently migrated to the
1 INTRODUCTION 7
city. Ann Dunham watched the movie when she was young and loved
Black Orpheus so much that she insisted Obama come with her to see the
movie when he was an undergraduate student living in New York City.
Although Obama was highly critical of the film, it is important to note
that the Brazilian translation of Dreams from My Father tried to high-
light Brazil as a positive site of race relations by mistranslating some of
the words in the English original. The Portuguese translation conveys
an idea more attuned with the celebrated Brazilian notion of mestiçagem
[miscegenation], downgrading Obama’s racial critique.
The second section of Chap. 2, “Marcel Camus, the Creator of Barack
Obama,” investigates a curious book released in 2009, Fernando Jorge’s
Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido [If it were not
for Brazil, Barack Obama would have never been born.] As the title indi-
cates, the phenomenon of Barack Obama—the man and the candidate—
would not have been possible without Brazil. In other words, Brazil not
only forged Obama himself (as Ann Dunham sought to recreate the
movie’s exotic love affair with Obama Sr.), but also offered a “road map”
for Obama to celebrate multiculturalism and multiracialism in the United
States. From the “Brazilian spirit”—the essence of a country shaped
by the harmonic mixing of races—Obama was born; therefore, Jorge
suggests that Obama is Brazilian, if not by his birthplace, then by his
“essence.”
The last section of Chap. 2, “Lula and Obama: How Hope (Momentarily)
Trumped Classism and Racism,” analyzes how the mainstream and
social media depicted the relationship of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva
and Barack Obama. This section focuses on Brazil’s rise in the global
political and economic arena. The country withstood well the 2008
global economic crisis, taking its place as the sixth largest economy in
the world. Brazilian President Lula (2002–2010) provided jobs to the
lower-middle classes by increasing government spending and lifted
36 million people from extreme poverty, becoming one of the most
prominent world leaders of the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury.3 Meanwhile, enduring the waves of the 2008 economic crash, the
recently elected Obama sought to strengthen U.S.–Brazilian economic
ties. Lula and Obama developed an amicable and close relationship,
because they both rose from underprivileged backgrounds to occupy
the most important public office in their respective countries. In fact,
Brazilian media frequently compared Lula and Obama: the first a poor
northeastern migrant who worked as a metallurgist in São Paulo and was
one of the founders of the Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Party],

the latter an African–American middle-class man who was a social activist
in poor black neighborhoods in Chicago and became a senator for the
state of Illinois. Sectors of the Brazilian media emphasized that, while
Lula worked for the poor, Obama bridged the gap between blacks and
whites by embracing his biracial heritage. Both leaders are inclusive—
they connect class and race gaps respectively—, encompassing wider seg-
ments of society. It is not a coincidence that Obama’s motto was “hope
and change” and Lula’s was “a esperança venceu o medo” [hope con-
quered fear]. Both the U.S. and Brazilian societies trumped racism and
classism to realize their true American dream: no matter who you are,
America, the New Continent, will embrace you. Thus, Obama’s “rheto-
ric of hope” greatly resonated with Brazilians.
Nevertheless, when considering Obama’s rhetoric, Brazilians down-
played its political aspect (the trust in the institutions of an egalitarian
state, which will ultimately uplift its citizens) to emphasize its social
element (the inclusiveness of a multiracial society that incorporates its
citizens through the power of miscegenation). In this sense, Chap. 3,
“Barack Obama Is Brazilian,” seeks to understand how the Brazilian
media reinvented Obama according to their country’s own racial anxi-
eties and desires. Stephanie Li’s notion of “race-specific, race-free lan-
guage” provides a useful road map to comprehend the construction of
Obama as a sign within various geographical and cultural contexts. Li
proposes that Obama forges a “race-specific, race-free language” speech
that reflects the legacy of multiculturalism in the United States, where
the praising of diversity coexists with anxieties about how to face dif-
ference. The “race-specific, race-free language” discourse emphasizes
racial diversity, while refusing to speak about racial tensions. Chapter 3
examines how this conception converges with the Brazilian ideal of racial
democracy: the celebration of African roots, and yet the denial of racial
frictions. Obama is, therefore, a malleable sign that perfectly fits the
Brazilian myth of racial harmony.
To that end, the first section of Chap. 3, “Obama, President of
Brazil,” analyzes how Brazilian artists reimagined “Obama as Brazilian”
prior to and immediately after the 2008 U.S. election. The same trend
emerged during the 2011 Obama trip to Brazil, only 100 days short of
the beginning of the government of the first female elected president
in the country, Dilma Rousseff. Section two of Chap. 3, “Obama as
‘One of Us’: Obama’s 2011 Visit to Brazil,” discusses how the media
1 INTRODUCTION 9
reappropriated the U.S. president as Brazilian, linking him to symbols of

national identity, such as soccer and samba.
Obama himself seemed to be very comfortable in his role as a
Brazilian. In his first encounter with President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da
Silva in Washington on March 15, 2009, he joked with journalists when
he affirmed that he looked like a Brazilian (D’Ávila). Obama’s biracial
heritage and multicultural personal history allow him to reinvent him-
self as a “brother,” instead of posing as a foreigner. In his article “Jambo
Bwana: Kenya’s Barack Obama,” Keguro Macharia analyzes Obama’s
performance of identity during his first visit to Kenya as recounted in
Dreams from My Father. When, in an open market, Obama wanted to
buy a necklace, his sister Auma warned him that he was being charged
the “wazungu price” [foreigner’s price, in Swahili], and not the “Kenyan
price.” Obama asked his sister to tell the seller that he is Luo, an ethnic
group from Kenya and Tanzania (qtd. in Macharia 214). Macharia notes
that Obama understands that “the proper kind of identity allows one
to gain certain privileges … and to negotiate the strangeness of a for-
eign space” (214). Therefore, in a foreign space (be it Kenya or Brazil),
Obama perfectly articulates the interaction between friendship and kin-
ship, exploring how to navigate multiple identities. By articulating his
“Brazilianness,” Obama hoped to be accepted as an equal, consequently
enjoying all privileges that would pertain to this group.
Moreover, Obama’s themes of change and hope had a universal
appeal, forging a “politics of empathy” (Sampson 54) which tapped into
the voters’ emotions in order to elicit positive sentiments. According
to Tony D. Sampson, the fascination with Obama went far beyond the
United States, spreading to several parts of the globe mainly via social
media networks (155). Obama’s “politics of empathy” stirred a “world-
wide love contagion” that opposed the violence of emerging neocon-
servative groups (154–155). Thus, “Obama-love,” as Sampson names
it, represented affective flows that rejected homogeneity and celebrated
difference, which revealed the positive role of globalization in relation to
the issue of race (156–157). Since race is a key element of the affective
themes in Brazil, Obama could be easily reshaped to become part of the
country’s culture and identity.
However, not all visual representations portrayed Obama in a posi-
tive light. As Macharia indicates, there are “moments in which Obama
is both “brother” and “stranger,” the face of U.S. imperialism and the
smile of racial fraternity” (214). In this sense, Obama at times emerges
as the dominant face of imperialism, threatening to exploit Brazil’s

natural resources. Section three of Chap. 3, “Obama: The ‘Friend’ or
the ‘Foe’?” investigates the negative representations of Obama; that is,
when the U.S. president arises as a symbol of intervention or domina-
tion or both. In fact, his visit to Brazil was not devoid of controversy;
on the contrary, many political groups fiercely criticized his presence on
Brazilian soil, and protests erupted in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. Social
movements and political cartoons gave special attention to the Pre-Salt,
Brazil’s recently discovered rich oil reserves, suggesting that Obama was
actively seeking to steal the country’s natural resources.
Chapter 4 examines this same dynamic—close and distant; kin and
foreign; friend and foe—vis-à-vis Obama’s relationship with 2010
Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff. “Obama and Dilma in Love:
Race and Gender in the Realm of Political Humor” studies the interest-
ing relationship between these two important worldwide political figures:
the first black U.S. president and the first female Brazilian president.
Focusing on the 2013 espionage scandal, the section “Obama, the Spy
Who Loved Brazil” analyzes the Obama administration’s active and sys-
tematic surveillance of several countries, including Brazil. Whistle-blower
Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was
eavesdropping on Brazilian private and public companies, as well as on
President Rousseff and her staff. This revelation put an enormous strain
on U.S.–Brazilian relations, and the Brazilian government and media
swiftly and strongly condemned the espionage affair. Cartoonists once
more portrayed Obama as a tool of U.S. imperialism, an enemy who was
inconspicuously waiting for the right moment to steal Brazil’s riches.
However, visual representations also put an interesting spin on the
espionage scandal. The section “Obama, the Voyeur Who Loved Dilma
Rousseff” examines how Obama surprisingly appears rather positively
in many cartoons and Internet memes; he is represented not as a villain
interested in material exploitation, but rather as an emphatic lover who
is clearly captivated by Dilma Rousseff’s charms. Therefore, these visual
representations transform the espionage affair from a serious interna-
tional incident into a romantic episode, forging a noteworthy interplay
of race and gender that celebrates mestiçagem, a fundamental concept
to Brazil’s national identity. These depictions of the curious love inter-
est between Obama and Rousseff are even more surprising when one
considers that the Brazilian president had to be feminized to appeal
to a larger number of voters. Her past as a guerrilla fighter against the
1 INTRODUCTION 11
1960s military dictatorship and as President Lula’s chief of staff created

an image of Rousseff as a rigid (and consequently unattractive) woman.
Therefore, “Obama, the Voyeur Who Loved Dilma Rousseff” draws
from Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject, as well as Barbara Creed’s
notion of the female body as a source of horror and site of abjection, to
explore how Rousseff’s body emerges as the focus of a male gaze that
concomitantly produces repulsion and desire. In the political cartoons
examined, her physical body and political power transmit elements of
seduction and fear, which would, in turn, produce the humorous gag:
the paradoxical pairing of the seductress female with the masculinized
woman-in-charge.
Humorous Internet blogs and memes also imagined a romantic con-
nection between presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff, many of
them centering on an event that was known as “the kiss episode,” when
they greeted with an affectionate kiss on the cheek at the G20 meeting
on September 2013. Pictures of their kiss were highly publicized and cir-
culated in the Brazilian mainstream and social media. Hence, this section
of Chap. 4 also investigates how Internet memes based on this amica-
ble interaction between Rousseff and Obama represented a set of Brazil’s
affective and emotional discursive, rhetorical, and visual references.
Chapter 4 demonstrates how the imagined romance makes up part of the
country’s collective imaginary that ratifies the idea that Brazilians per-
ceive themselves as being more socially and racially accepting people.
When considering memes, rather than employing Susan Blackmore’s
evolutionist approach, this study favors Tony D. Sampson’s virol-
ogy notion in order to better comprehend the memetic Internet phe-
nomenon. Blackmore’s classic The Meme Machine borrows the term
“meme” from neo-Darwinist biologist Richard Dawkins’s best-selling
book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins describes human evolution as a competi-
tion between genes, in which genes’ only purpose would be to replicate
themselves, passing on certain traits to future generations. Genes are,
therefore, “selfish,” as they are exclusively concerned about their own
reproduction (Blackmore 4–5). According to Dawkins, “all life evolves
by the differential surviving of replicating entities” (qtd. in Blackmore
5); that is, organisms survive and thrive because of selfish replicators that
indefinitely copy their DNA.
Dawkins believes that the same process happens in the realm of cul-
ture, in which “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,”
what he names a “meme” (from an abbreviation of the Greek root
mimeme and the French word même [memory]), is continuously repli-

cated through the process of cultural imitation (Dawkins 192). Memes
propagate “by jumping from brain to brain, liken[ing] them to para-
sites infecting a host, treat[ing] them as physically realized living struc-
tures, and show[ing] how mutually assisting memes will gang together
in groups just as genes do” (Blackmore 6). The idea of God, for exam-
ple, is an excellent example of a meme, replicated by spoken and written
words, as well as by visual representations and musical traditions. God
as a meme has great survival value because of its strong psychological
appeal, as “the god meme” “... provides a superficially plausible answer
to deep and troubling questions about existence” (Dawkins 193).
Drawing from Dawkins’s concept of memes, Blackmore seeks to
develop “an effective theory of memetics” (23); that is, to understand
how selective imitation can successfully propagate an idea (29). To
Blackmore the age of digital technology offers unlimited means of dis-
seminating memes (142); nevertheless, memes can only survive by a
process of cultural selection in which the human brain discards some
visual and discursive information, but chooses to store other data that
it deems important (216). Blackmore’s neo-Darwinist, evolutionist read-
ing of memes has attracted criticism from digital scholars (see Matthew
Fuller; Davi Johnson; and Tony D. Sampson, just to name a few).4 Tony
D. Sampson argues that Blackmore’s conception of a meme carries a
deterministic feature, since it misguidedly “focuses on the readiness of
a human mind to blindly accept a programmed idea” (67). Moreover,
Sampson notes that her use of evolutionary selection in the age of digi-
tal media does not completely explain why certain memes “survive” and
why people would creatively develop variations of them (72), variations
that pertain to particular messages of certain specific groups. He writes:
“[t]here is an interaction between code and environment, in which
the circulation and interruption of productive flows exceed the causal-
ity of an evolutionary code” (74). Opposing the neo-Darwinist model,
Sampson proposes that the interaction between circulation and inter-
ruption in the age of technology is based instead on social relationality;
that is, flows of ideas are carried on by particular affects, emotions, and
sensations (3–4). In fact, conscious and unconscious imitations, desires,
and inventions “contaminate” the net of social relations. Sampson, there-
fore, seeks to develop a theory of viral contagion that includes relational
encounters within the collective body, in which “the affective transfer is
always, from the outset, social” (86, author’s emphasis).
1 INTRODUCTION 13
Hence, one could argue that the Brazilian memes about “the kiss epi-
sode” partake of certain affective and emotional themes pertaining to
the country’s collective unconscious: to imagine an affair between the
“Brazilianized” Barack Obama and the feminized Dilma Rousseff is to
reshape and ratify Brazil’s myth of racial harmony. In this sense, politi-
cal humor (be it in the form of cartoons or memes) rereads the myth
of mestiçagem, recreating different and interesting scenarios in which
other characters emerge to disrupt the biracial romance. Important
international political figures, such as Angela Merkel or Vladimir Putin,
appear to trouble the couple’s relationship, but Obama ultimately wins
the Brazilian president’s (and the country’s) heart, as many political car-
toons, satirical memes, and Internet sites suggest.
Chapters 2 and 3 investigate how the Brazilian media and politi-
cal cartoons “Brazilianized” Barack Obama, and Chap. 4 examines the
construction of an Obama seduced by the Brazilian charms of Dilma
Rousseff, who consequently finds himself immersed in the nation’s
mythic ideal of racial accord. Chapter 5—“‘Our’ Candidate Obama:
Barack Obama in the Brazilian Elections”—investigates “Obama-mania”
in Brazil, conversely focusing on how Brazilian political candidates reap-
propriated Barack Obama in pursuit of victory in local and national
elections. The first section, “The ‘Obamization’ of Brazilian Politics,
or How Obama Stole the Scene from Brazilian Politicians,” investi-
gates how candidates “obamized” Brazilian elections: from black can-
didates who renamed themselves after the U.S. president to politicians
who used the Obama campaign’s visual and discursive cues, candidates
tried to replicate Obama’s story of personal and political success in the
Brazilian voting booths. The second section of Chap. 5, “‘My Name Is
Claudio Henrique, but You Can Call Me Barack Obama,’” studies how
Afro-Brazilian candidates seeking political posts have sought to fol-
low Obama’s personal story of overcoming social, economic, and racial
barriers to become one of the most influential leaders of the beginning
of the twenty-first century worldwide. In this sense, it is important to
note that while candidate and president Obama frequently downplayed
racial issues, Afro-Brazilian “wannabe” representatives placed race at the
core of their political campaigns, promoting a “darkening” of Brazilian
politics.
Moreover, the section “Rousseff as ‘Mother of the People’ vs.
Aéciobama and ‘Brazil Can Do Better’: The 2014 Presidential
Campaign” analyzes how candidates Dilma Rousseff and Aécio Neves
tailored the 2014 presidential campaign to attract important segments of

society, especially Millennials, who became increasingly disillusioned with
national politics. Youngsters were very influential in the articulation of
the 2013 wave of protests in Brazil and became 10% of the electorate
in 2014. While Dilma Rousseff put her gender at the forefront of her
campaign, constructing her role as a metaphor of the Brazilian people’s
“mother,” Aécio Neves concentrated on his youth and opposition to
twelve years of Workers’ Party rule, evoking Obama’s slogans of “hope”
and “change” in his presidential campaign. Neves’ supporters also refash-
ioned Obama’s visual cues—such as the famous Shepard Fairey posters
of Obama—using the Brazilian presidential candidate’s image in order
to evoke the thematic elements of progress, hope, and change. Obama
was a center-left candidate from the U.S. Democratic Party; contrari-
wise, Neves represented a center-right candidacy in Brazil as a candidate
of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira [Party of Brazilian Social
Democracy], the PSDB, showing that Obama’s visual and discursive ele-
ments have such a broad appeal that they can be easily reappropriated
and reshaped under distinct—and sometimes opposing—ideological
spectra.
Finally, the conclusion ponders Obama’s legacy after Donald Trump’s
2016 election. This section examines the shortcomings and virtues of
Obama’s administration, and reflects upon the impact of Obama’s sym-
bolism internationally. Will his legacy be enduring? After the historical
election of the first black U.S. president, a right-wing populist candi-
date was elected. Donald Trump was one of the most vocal sponsors of
Birtherism, and his campaign had strong xenophobic and racist under-
tones. In this sense, how much did the issue of race play a role in the
2016 elections? Was Trump’s victory a backlash from white, lower-class
voters who felt disfranchised by neoliberal economic policies and threat-
ened by the political rise of minorities? In the conclusion, I investigate
male white privilege in the United States and Brazil and further conjec-
ture about the possibility of the election of a black president committed
to Afro-Brazilians and disfranchised segments of society. Or one could
infer the contrary; in other words, that the world’s political moment will
give rise to another populist right government, ideologically capturing
the largest country and the most important economy in Latin America.
In summary, will Obama’s legacy be all but forgotten or will it be lasting,
possibly continuing to influence Brazil’s political, social, and racial imagi-
nary in years to come?
1 INTRODUCTION 15
Methodology
The data on Obama’s visual representations in Brazil could certainly
involve an impracticably large collection of depictions. Data for this
study was gathered through Internet research using the search tools
Google and Yahoo in the United States and Brazil, as they are the largest
search engines used in both countries (Bing is the second largest in the
United States, but only the third in Brazil).5
Political cartoons and memes were selected from random sam-
ples, using the abovementioned image links of Google and Yahoo. For
Chap. 2, the keywords entered were “Obama and Lula”/“Obama e
Lula” and “Obama Lula this is the guy”/“Obama Lula ele é o cara,”
and for Chap. 3 the phrases “Obama visit Brazil 2011”/“Visita
Obama Brasil 2011” were used. For Chap. 4, the keywords “Obama
Dilma espionage 2013”/“Obama Dilma espionagem 2013” were
employed, and for Chap. 5 the following phrases were input: “Obama-
mania Brazil”/“Obama-mania Brasil” and “Obama Brazilian
elections”/“Obama eleições Brasileiras.” From these randomized sam-
ples, certain interesting patterns emerged, such as the representation
of a romantic relationship between Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff,
examined in Chap. 4.
In regards to Obama’s coverage in the Brazilian mainstream media,
three main Internet library platforms were employed: LexisNexis
Academic, ProQuest and Factiva. Periodicals consulted were the news-
papers Folha de São Paulo (from São Paulo) and O Globo (from Rio de
Janeiro), as well as the magazine Veja (from São Paulo). Folha de São
Paulo, O Globo, and Veja were chosen because they have the largest print
and digital circulation in Brazil.6 “Obama” was the general keyword used
to ascertain Brazilian coverage of the U.S. presidential elections (as exam-
ined in Chap. 2), which presented pertinent articles from September 1,
2008 to November 30, 2008. “Obama” was also the input for Chap. 3,
and the articles selected ranged from January 1, 2011 to March 31, 2011,
when the media continuously reported on the U.S. president’s March
2011 visit to Brazil. For Chap. 4, the search “Obama and Dilma and espi-
onagem,” from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013, produced rel-
evant results from the abovementioned databases. Finally, for Chap. 5, the
keywords “Obama elections Brazil”/“Obama eleições Brasil” were used
in the search engines Google and Yahoo (United States and Brazil), and
articles in the “News” sections of these web pages were surveyed.
CHAPTER 2
Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto

in the Land of Racial Democracy
Dreams from My Father Revisited: From U.S. Black

to Brazilian Mulatto
In early April 2008, seven months prior to the U.S. presidential election,
Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father was released in Brazil. Acquired
by Editora Gente, a publisher specializing in self-help books, the autobi-
ography quickly captured the attention of Brazilian readers. Immediately
after its release, A origem de meus sonhos made the best-seller list (remain-
ing there for one week) and went through six editions. According to
Carolina Rocha, senior editor at Editora Gente, the publisher decided to
acquire the second edition of Dreams from My Father because Obama
was one of the most important global figures at the time, and the book
fit the publisher’s catalogue, which included autobiographies of world
leaders (personal interview). Moreover, the idea of the self-made mulatto
who reached unattainable goals fit well with the Brazilian publisher’s edi-
torial formula. Editora Gente’s web page delineates four main trends:
happiness, success, wealth, and future (“Linhas editoriais”). Obama cer-
tainly represents the epitome of all of those: the working-class biracial
individual who surpassed racial prejudice and economic constraints to
become the leader of the world’s most powerful nation, pointing to a
brilliant future for race relations everywhere.
Reviews by writers in the Brazilian press and independent blog-
gers unanimously praised the autobiography. These reviews highlighted
the reasons the autobiography was so successful in the Brazilian literary
© The Author(s) 2018 17

E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_2
market: the combination of universal themes (the search for identity,

overcoming obstacles, and individual triumph) with national aspira-
tions (the “cosmopolitan mulatto”).1 Some emphasized Obama’s quest
for personal identity, others that Obama was not a “typical” African-
American. Amanda Cordeiro remarks: “Ele [Obama] conta sobre sua
infância, como ser ‘mulato’ num país onde só existem negros, brancos e lati-
nos. … Todo negão com problemas de auto estima devia ler esse livro
e ver como um negro pode se impor e ter orgulho de ser quem ele é sem
ficar bancando o coitadinho afrodecendente. Black power total” [He tells
about his childhood, how to be ‘mulatto’ in a country where only blacks,
whites, and Latinos exist. … All blacks with problems of self-esteem
should read this book to see how a black person can self-affirm and have
pride without claiming to be a poor Afro-descendent. Total black power]
(emphasis mine). Cordeiro focuses on Obama’s “mulattoness,” placing
him at a third, interstitial space between blacks and whites. The mulatto
Obama does not succumb to the plight of young African-Americans—
poor education, joblessness, and recurrent incarceration—and affirms
his self, constructing a positive identity.2 The successful mulatto prevails;
black power is in the individual “hero” Obama, in a process that under-
mines the collective black community.
Paulo Fagundes Visentini also notes that “Obama não é um afro-
americano típico, carregado de ressentimentos sociais. Ele trabalhou
nos guetos, sentiu a discriminação pessoalmente, mas tem um outro
tipo de estrutura mental. Numa América que passou do otimismo lib-
eral do ‘Fim da História’ de Fukuyama ao ‘Choque de Civilizações’ de
Huntington e à Guerra ao Terrorismo, Obama se revela um cosmo-
polita, de que tanto a América necessita hoje” [Obama is not a typical
Afro-American, filled with social resentments. He worked in ghettos,
felt the discrimination in person, but has another type of mental struc-
ture. In an America that passed from the liberal optimism of Fukuyama’s
“End of History” to Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” and the
War on Terrorism, Obama emerges as a cosmopolitan, which America
so needs today] (emphasis mine). Despite being discriminated against,
Obama surpasses obstacles to forge “another type of mental structure,”
devoid of social resentment and defeatism. On the contrary, he con-
structs himself not as an African-American man, but as a cosmopolitan.
Again, blackness gives place to a more universal—and appealing—con-
ception: Obama is, at the same time, paradoxically one (unique) and all
(familiar).
2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 19
In his review, Maurício Santoro emphasizes Obama’s search for iden-

tity, comparing it to the mythical Greek quests: “a história de um rapaz
tentando descobrir quem é, e o que pode esperar da vida, a partir da
busca por entender a trajetória extraordinária de seu pai, também cham-
ado Barack Obama. A trama tem ressonância mítica: lembrei da Odisséia,
de Têlemaco dizendo que gostaria de ter conhecido o pai, e partindo
para encontrar Ulisses” [the story of a young man trying to discover who
he is, and what he can expect of life, which has as the starting point the
extraordinary trajectory of his father, also named Barack Obama. The
plot has mythical resonance: it reminded me of Telemachus’ Odyssey,
(Telemachus) saying that he would like to have known his father, and
going away to meet Ulysses]. “It is a spectacular book … very rich in
human observations of a variety of themes,” Santaro concludes, not-
ing that the autobiography reveals the personality of a man who might
become the most powerful man in the world. Santoro does not focus on
racial issues; on the contrary, he highlights the individual quest for iden-
tity (raising Obama to a heroic mythical status) and his “human observa-
tions” (equalizing the myth to that of a typical man). Hence, to Santoro,
Obama is concomitantly ordinary and extraordinary, which helps to cre-
ate an iconic figure that is widely accepted and greatly revered. Despite
having high praise for the autobiography, Santoro is very critical of its
Brazilian Portuguese version, especially the wrong translation of the title
that “desvirtua o fio condutor da obra” [distorts the book’s leitmotif].
The Brazilian readership could certainly identify with aspects of
Obama’s biography, drawing parallels with the nation’s supposedly
inclusive racial system, which permits a more fluid conception of race
identity. Dreams from My Father is constructed as a Bildungsroman, in
which the homodiegetic narrator surpasses social, economic, and racial
obstacles to be assimilated into society, consequently displaying the
rhetoric of African-American integrationism (Turner Jr. 15) and focus-
ing on progress toward social harmony (6). Indeed, as Bertram D. Ashe
asserts, “Obama’s quest for identity is less about being biracial and more
about being bicultural,” noting that a more “hybrid, fluid, and elastic
sense of black identity” marks the autobiography (103). Ashe goes as
far as affirming that decentering and destabilizing black identity are at
the core of Dreams’ authorial project (107). Ignacio López-Calvo also
indicates that Obama “embraces more inclusive, open-ended, and across-
racial line alternatives” (79), complicating the traditional black and white
dualism in U.S. society (66). Although racial conflicts dominate the
narrative, causing the narrator’s identity crisis, Obama seems to carve a

path of racial redemption that allows him to surpass feelings of aliena-
tion and displacement in order to be incorporated into mainstream soci-
ety. Therefore, instead of becoming “the mixed blood, the divided soul,
the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds”
(Obama, “Introduction” 16), as he describes in the introduction of the
second edition of Dreams from My Father, he thus becomes the “cultural
mulatto,” who, educated by multiracial cultures, effortlessly navigates
the white world (Ellis qtd. in Ashe 105).3
Elements such as a fluid racial identity and the self-assured “cultural
mulatto” (which can be equated to the “cosmopolitan mulatto” of the
reviews) appeal to Brazilian sensibilities. Since the nineteenth century,
Brazilian social scientists have promoted the idea of interracial breed-
ing as a solution to the surplus of blacks. Racial mixing provided Brazil
with a more malleable and pluralistic scale of social classification and
established the mulatto as the cornerstone of Brazilian national identity;
nonetheless, it is also important to note that racial mixing promoted a
whitening ideology: as Thomas Skidmore notes, the general idea that
“whiter is better” is prevalent in Brazil (44). Yet what remains in the
Brazilian collective unconscious is the positive stock value of mestiçagem
[miscegenation], the conception that a fluid racial system allowed for the
construction of a more inclusive society.
At the height of the discussion on the implementation of affirmative
action policies in the first decade of the twentieth-first century, journalist
Ali Kamel’s controversial best-seller Nós Não Somos Racistas was released
in 2006. In the book, the author—described as one who seeks to defend
Brazil from undesirable racially imported ideas—lectures readers about
the implementation of social policies targeting the black population:
these alien concepts would transform Brazilian society into a biracial
nation, where harmony among races would no longer exist. Embraced
by some intellectuals and rejected by others, including leaders of the
black movement, Nós Não Somos Racistas has remained at the heart of
the heated racial debates in Brazil.4
In his article “Barack Obama,” Kamel writes about the 2008 U.S.
election a few days prior to the popular vote. The journalist celebrates
Obama’s candidacy and possible victory as proof that the world is becom-
ing post-racial and forging a path beyond racial differences. He thus
praises the mestiçagem as the nation’s foundational myth and condemns
the “racists” who want to transform Brazil into a biracial, racially divided
country. Kamel affirms that Obama goes beyond the dichotomy of black
and white to embrace all people because, after all, “races do not exist”
(“Barack Obama”). Anthropologist Yvone Maggie, a vehement oppo-
nent of racially based affirmative action policies, follows the same argu-
ments as Kamel: right after Obama’s victory, Maggie laments that Brazil
“is following a backwards path” by institutionalizing “race” in Brazil. To
Maggie, the supporters of “identity politics” are prompting a racialization
of public policies and national traditions (897) and creating “uma inter-
pretação [do Brasil] diversa da nossa mistura e do nosso ideal” [an inter-
pretation (of Brazil) that differs from our mixture and our ideals] (899).
They are also currently forging the myth that racism has been active and
widespread in the country. The anthropologist, therefore, quotes isolated
cases of racism that captured society’s attention to affirm Brazil’s true
vocation: being an “ethnic and social democracy” (899). Maggie opposes
a bipolar racial system, observing that when the United States lived under
Jim Crow laws and race hatred, Brazilians “estavámos irmanados contra o
racismo” [were united against racism] (399). Nevertheless, with Barack
Obama, the United States seems to have overcome its racial problems.
Maggie salutes the president because he distanced himself from a racial
discourse, choosing to represent a universal way of being American and
representing all Americans (897); he thus “fala para as comunidades das
nações e não para a comunidade [de negros]” [speaks to the communities
of nations and not to the community (of blacks)] (902).
Kamel and Maggie conveniently “misread” Obama—an operation
that the Brazilian media frequently perform—to ratify their own ide-
alized construction of race relations in Brazil (a notion that continues
to sustain racism as an exception, and not as structurally embedded in
society). Although Obama constructs himself as a multicultural and mul-
tiracial candidate, he does not reject race, as the reflections in Dreams
from My Father and his speeches demonstrate. Furthermore, by reading
Obama’s candidacy as a sign of a post-racial—more “civilized”—world,
they blatantly disregard the rising racism during the U.S. presidential
campaign, which trigged personal attacks against Obama (e.g. criticism
of his friendship with Reverend Wright and the allegations of the Birther
movement).
Muniz Sodré, sociologist and activist of the black movement, also
deconstructs Kamel’s and Maggie’s idyllic readings of Obama’s accom-
plishments and beliefs. In “Um particular sobre Obama,” he notes that
the president’s personal history—his biracial origin and multiethnic
upbringing—did not blind him to racist violence; on the contrary, to

Obama the word “mestizo” did not evoke a “candura conciliatória”
[untainted conciliation], but described a repressive and violent world.
Muniz also reminds readers that without a history of black struggles and
further achievements, Obama would not have been possible: “Obama
… é o resultado de uma luta civil empreendida pela comunidade negra
norte-americana, na qual o estabelecimento de quota foi uma importante
conquista política” [Obama is the result of a civil struggle promoted by
the North American black community, of which the establishment of
racial quotas was an important political achievement]. Obama is certainly
well aware of the abovementioned issues.
Still, the idea that Brazil has constructed a society devoid of racism
has proved to have tremendous endurance: the myth of racial democracy
is so strongly rooted in the nation’s collective unconscious that many
Brazilians continue to believe in the affable idea of racial equality. Thus,
it is not surprising that the Brazilian Portuguese translation of Dreams
from My Father helped to highlight what readers might have perceived
as positive elements in the narrative on the one hand, while deempha-
sizing the effects of Obama’s critical racial assessments on the other. In
fact, one finds minor but significant differences between the U.S. and
Brazilian editions. Broadway Books’ cover (Fig. 2.1) features three pic-
tures, presenting a triad that encapsulates the idea of African Diaspora:
on the left side, Habiba Akumu Hussein, Obama’s maternal grand-
mother, holds the young Barack Obama Sr.; on the right side, Stanley
Dunham, Obama’s maternal grandfather, smiles next to the young
Ann Dunham; and in the middle, Obama displays a serious and reflex-
ive expression, looking pensively to a distant point ahead, as if he was
searching for something impenetrable, longing for the past, or yearning
for the future.
The pictorial representation evokes an interesting dialectic: two
different worlds that unite and produce a third, novel component,
Obama, originally informed by two cultures, and yet himself a signif-
icantly new and altered element. As the biography illustrates, Obama
(the synthesis) would not erase the thesis (West) and antithesis (East),
but would transform them by his personal multicultural experiences and
quest for social and political knowledge. In this sense, Obama’s search
for an identity is a dynamic process, in which historical roots are as
important as the collection of experiences he acquires throughout his
youth and adulthood.
Fig. 2.1 Cover of Dreams from My Father. Source Broadway Books, a division
of Random House
The title, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,

centers on the paternal figure, mostly absent and yet all encompassing,
throughout Obama’s story. Claire Joly indicates that the “dream” was
not used as “a pleasant fantasy (as opposed to a nightmare), but more in
the sense of what which is imagined (the father) because it has no tangi-
ble reality” (77). Obama, therefore, constructs his father using fragments
of family stories, a few pictures, and personal speculation.5 Moreover, the

“inheritance” reinstalls the paternal presence into the identitary subject
construction,6 unwillingly or not, and the category “race” gains new life
and importance in the light of the protagonist’s upbringing in a racially
divided country (even though the book depicts Hawaii as a site of rela-
tive racial and ethnic diversity and tolerance). Analyzing the autobiog-
raphy’s epigraph, Joly notes that the “we” of the quote represents all
humanity, but the words “strangers” and “sojourners” highlight “the
physical and emotional displacement of the African diaspora” (76).7
The Brazilian translation of Obama’s autobiography, however, down-
plays the construction of the imagined father and mythical Africa. The
title Dreams from My Father becomes “The origin of my dreams” [A
origem dos meus sonhos] in Portuguese, and the subtitle “A Story of
Race and Inheritance” is completely erased. This section of this chapter
underlines, therefore, that the title’s translation fabricates the annihila-
tion of the father figure related to Africa in order to focus on the per-
sonal achievements of the individual mulatto. In this sense, the use of
“my dreams” conveys an idea more attuned to the celebrated Brazilian
notion of mestiçagem; “the origin of my dreams” connects to the materi-
alization of “my dreams,” although it is not clear by the title’s translation
how “my dreams” originated or what they truly are. The “inheritance”
(Africa) and “race” (blackness) are conveniently deleted, giving place to
the mestizo subject, one who is an opportune product of a whitening
process. In this sense, the Obama of the Brazilian publisher stands alone
and victorious on the cover; his face and trademark smile take center
stage, evoking more the optimism of an existing presence than the strug-
gles of a historical past (Fig. 2.2).
Although Obama’s personal story highlights crucial issues of race
and class in the United States, in the comparison of the English origi-
nal and the Brazilian Portuguese translation, this study concentrates on
a short passage in the book: the episode in which Stanley Ann Dunham,
Obama’s mother, watches Marcel Camus’ film Black Orpheus (1959).
The movie was based on the Brazilian poet and composer Vinicius de
Moraes’ play Orfeu da Conceição. Moraes transposes the Greek myth
to a favela [slum] in Rio de Janeiro, where Orpheus is a poor Afro-
Brazilian samba composer, who hopes to achieve fame and fortune with
his music, and attracts Eurydice, a naïve and pretty black woman from
the countryside, who recently migrated to the city. Their romance devel-
ops against the background of Brazilian carnaval and, despite the joyous
Fig. 2.2 Cover of A origem dos meus sonhos. Source Editora Gente
celebration, Moraes retains the myth’s tragic ending: in trying to escape

an inexorable fate, the two lovers meet Death (a character in the play)
and perish.
Brazilians were very critical of Camus’ film. Film critics were reluctant
to embrace a movie by a French director with a French production, in
which one of the protagonists, Eurydice, was the American-born French
actress Marpessa Dawn. Moreover, they also lashed out at the movie’s
romanticized version of poverty, the sensualization of black people, and
the overexposure of celebratory images, where carnaval festivities per-

meated the society’s entire structure (M. Santos, “The Brazilian Remake
of the Orpheus Legend” 50).
Nevertheless, Black Orpheus received many international accolades:
in 1959, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film; received the Palme
d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; was considered the Best Foreign Film
and the Best Film by the New York Film Critics’ Circle and the British
Academy respectively; and was awarded the Golden Globe Award in
1960 (M. Santos, “Black Orpheus and the Merging of Two Brazilian
Nations” 108). Foreign audiences were clearly fascinated by the idyllic
version of poverty in the Brazilian favelas, the dazzling images of car-
naval, and the exoticized Afro-Brazilian subjects. This strange yet exu-
berant and colorful universe captured the imagination of Obama’s
mother, as described in Dreams from My Father.
Ann Dunham watched the movie when she was young, and she loved
Black Orpheus so much she insisted her son see the movie with her when
Obama was attending Columbia University in New York. Below I trans-
pose this passage from the original book, followed by the Portuguese
translation:
One evening, while thumbing through The Village Voice, my mother’s

eyes lit on an advertisement for a movie, Black Orpheus, that was showing
downtown. My mother insisted that we go see it that night; she said it was
the first foreign film she had ever seen.
“I was only sixteen then,” she told us as we entered the elevator. “I’d just
been accepted to the University of Chicago—Gramps hadn’t told me yet
that he wouldn’t let me go—and I was there for the summer, working as
an au pair. It was the first time that I’d ever been really on my own. Gosh,
I felt like such an adult. And when I saw this film, I thought it was the
most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
We took a cab to the revival theater where the movie was playing. The
film, a groundbreaker of sorts due to its mostly black, Brazilian cast, had
been made in the fifties. The story line was simple: the myth of the ill-fated
lovers Orpheus and Eurydice set in the favelas of Rio during Carnival.
In Technicolor splendor, set against scenic hills, the black and brown
Brazilians sang and danced and strung guitars like carefree birds in color-
ful plumage. About halfway through the movie, I decided that I’d seen
enough, and turned to my mother to see if she might be ready to go. But
her face, lit by the blue glow of the screen, was set in a wistful gaze. At that
moment, I felt as if I were being given a window into her heart, the unre-
flective heart of her youth. I suddenly realized that the depiction of child-
like blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad’s
dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those
years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to
a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life, warm,
sensual, exotic, different.
I turned away, embarrassed for her, irritated with the people around
me. … I left the movie theater with my mother and sister. The emo-
tions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by
the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves.
Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always
remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart. (127–128, emphasis mine)
[Uma noite enquanto folheava o jornal The Village Voice, os olhos de

minha mãe se iluminaram com o anúncio de um filme, Orfeu Negro, que
estava em cartaz no centro da cidade. Minha mãe insistiu para que fôsse-
mos vê-lo naquela noite: ela disse que esse foi o primeiro filme estrangeiro
que ela já tinha visto na vida.
— Eu só tinha 16 anos na ocasião – ela nos contou ao entrarmos no eleva-

dor—Havia acabado de ser aceita para a Universidade de Chicago (vovô
não tinha me falado ainda que não me deixaria ir) e estava lá durante o
verão, trabalhando na casa de uma família. Foi a primeira vez que estive
realmente sozinha, por minha conta. Nossa, eu me senti adulta. E quando
assisti a esse filme, pensei que era a coisa mais bonita que eu já tinha visto.
Tomamos um táxi para o cinema. O filme, inovador com seu elenco prin-
cipalmente de negros brasileiros, havia sido produzido na década de 1950.
O enredo era simples: o mito grego dos amantes desventurados, Orfeu e
Eurídice, ambientado nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro durante o Carnaval.
Em tecnicolor esplendoroso, e tendo como fundo morros cênicos verdes,
os brasileiros negros e mulatos cantavam, dançavam e tocavam violão,
como pássaros despreocupados de plumagem colorida. No meio do filme,
resolvi que já tinha visto o bastante e virei para a minha mãe para saber se
ela gostaria de ir embora. Mas seu rosto, iluminado pelo brilho azul da
tela, estava tomado por um ar nostálgico. Naquele momento, senti como
se uma janela tivesse sido aberta para o seu coração, o coração irrefletido
da sua juventude. Subitamente percebi que a representação dos jovens
negros, que eu via agora na tela, a imagem inversa dos sombrios selvagens
de Joseph Conrad, era o que minha mãe havia levado com ela para o Havaí
muitos anos antes, uma reflexão das fantasias simples que haviam sido
proibidas a uma garota de classe média branca do Kansas, a promessa de

uma outra vida: quente, sensual, exótica, diferente.
Eu me virei, envergonhado por ela, irritado com as pessoas ao meu redor.
… Ao deixar o cinema com a minha mãe e irmã (eu carregava um pen-
samento): as emoções entre as raças nunca poderiam ser puras; mesmo o
amor era maculado pelo desejo de encontrar no outro algum elemento que
estava perdido em nós mesmos. Não importa se procuramos nossos demônios
ou nossa salvação, a outra raça sempre será apenas isso: ameaçadora, estra-
nha e distante.] (141–142, emphasis mine)
Obama has an epiphany when observing his mother, who seemed to be

hypnotized by the cheerful and colorful images: the heart of her youth,
naïve and yet full of stereotypes, equates to the heart of darkness of
Joseph Conrad’s novel. The negative vision of the primitive and savage
is replaced by a more affable, but still stereotyped, portrayal of blacks as
infantile and untroubled. Conrad is mentioned three times in the auto-
biography. The first time is when Obama’s grandfather says he has read
the famous author, becoming fascinated by the descriptions of lands of
great mystery and enchantment (curiously, emulating the same sentiment
that Ann Dunham displays when watching the movie) (Dreams from My
Father 45). The second mention is by Obama himself, when he tells a
female colleague at Occidental College that Heart of Darkness is “a rac-
ist book,” but he reads the novel because it is a course assignment and
it teaches him “about white people” and “their demons” (109), which
parallels the reflection on Camus’s movie and his mother’s reaction. The
third time concludes Obama’s thoughts, as the abovementioned passage
demonstrates: “Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other
race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart” (128,
emphasis mine).8 Therefore, a circularity underlines Obama’s reflections
on Joseph Conrad, his familial experiences, and white people’s percep-
tions of the “other.”
This episode, although brief, is also crucial to understanding that
Obama’s critical perspective of a vision that celebrates an exotic and
tropical nation, where race relations are purportedly harmonized by
Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions: his critical assessment sharply opposes
the notion of racial democracy. Paradoxically, some Brazilian readers used
the same passage as an example of Brazil’s harmonious race relations.
Clearly, Obama was not impressed with Black Orpheus, and he even
felt uncomfortable with the manner in which blacks were portrayed: he
thought the movie was boring and presented a series of racial stereo-
types. Nonetheless, the Brazilian Portuguese translation seeks to mini-
mize Obama’s critical perception of the movie and, consequently, to
preserve Brazil as a positive site of race relations. The focus here is mainly
on the phrases “wistful gaze” and “depiction of childlike blacks,” which
were (mis)translated as “ar nostálgico” [nostalgic air] and “representação
dos jovens negros” [representation of young blacks].
The word “gaze” has strong social and political implications, as it sug-
gests the unidirectional and “exoticized” manner in which the Western
spectator looks at the cultural “others.” In his classic article “The Other
Question,” Homi Bhabha examines the matrixes of colonial discourse
and its ideological construction of “otherness.” To Bhabha, understand-
ing “the productivity of colonial power” is crucial to recognizing that
“otherness” entails, at the same time, “an object of desire and derision,
an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and
identity,” because “the body is always simultaneously inscribed in both
the economy of pleasure and desire and the economy of discourse, domi-
nation and power” (19).
Placing the stereotype at the core of colonial discourse construction,
the philosopher sets out not to solely focus on ideological misrepresenta-
tions, but to emphasize the “stereotype as an ambivalent mode of knowl-
edge and power,” of which the convergence of discourse and politics
sets “the meaning of oppression and discrimination” (18). To Bhabha,
the stereotype is, at the same time, a fixity and repeatability, construct-
ing a regimen of “truth” that naturalizes the subject “other.” Repetition
helps to affix the unfamiliar to normative categories, in a process that
concomitantly provokes delight and fear. In this sense, the stereotype is
also fetish and phobia; in other words, a desire for the original moment
of “wholeness”/similarity—“All humans have the same skin/race/cul-
ture”—(fetish), and the horror caused by “the return of the oppressed,”
which contains “stereotypes of savagery, cannibalism, lust, and anarchy,”
(phobia) (25–27). In establishing a link between the stereotype and the
fetish, Bhabha is drawing from Freud’s theory of castration—fetish is the
desire for the original moment prior to the penis loss, and phobia is the
fear of castration: “For the scene of fetishism is also the scene of the reac-
tivation and repetition of primal fantasy—the subject’s desire for a pure
origin that is always threatened by its division, for the subject must be
gendered to be engendered, to be spoken” (Bhabha 27). The racial ste-
reotype of colonial discourse longs for an original moment of wholeness
(“All humans have the same skin/race/culture”), while, at the same

time, reproducing lack and difference (“Some humans do not have the
same skin/race/culture”).
Bhabha also notes that the stereotype entails a fantasy; that is, a fan-
tasy of the original wholesome moment that becomes threatened by dif-
ference. By disavowal and fixation, the colonial subject seeks to return
“to the narcissism of the Imaginary and its identification of an ideal ego
that is white and whole” (28). Here Bhabha is drawing from Lacan’s
“imaginary order”; that is, the mirror stage when the child has a coher-
ent image of him/herself through a specular image in the mirror and
recognizes the self as “I,” but is still the same unity as the world and
the mother. The child misrecognizes the image as a whole self, as the
image does not correspond to the real child; it is thus a mere fantasy. As
the child acquires language, he/she starts to develop the ego, dissociat-
ing from the mother and the world and losing the sense of unity, which
causes lack and anxiety, a sense of a primary unity forever lost. Seeking to
restore his/her totality, the individual searches for that fantasy of a com-
plete image, which entails a narcissistic impulse.9
Furthermore, to Bhabha, when examining the processes of the pro-
duction of colonial discourses and the ideological construction of oth-
erness, it is of utmost importance to consider the act of seeing/being
seen, as the colonial power’s regime entails a scopic drive, the pleasure
of seeing the object of desire (28), which in turn is also an abject. In
this sense, regimes of visibility and discursivity (visual and textual nar-
ratives)—which are fetishistic, scopic, imaginary—emerge as essential
to the exercise of colonial power (and, consequently, the production of
“otherness”).
No other narrative economy, however, promotes more voyeurism
and fetishism than classic cinema, as in the dark space of the theater the
“act of seeing” cannot be answered with the “act of looking back.” In
her famous essay on cinema, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”
Laura Mulvey observes that the act of seeing is also an act of subjuga-
tion, as cinema remains marked by visual pleasures and projections of
one’s repressed desires (59). The screen promotes an extreme scopo-
philia (pleasure in looking) that transforms people into objects, subject-
ing them to a controlling and curious gaze (60). Mulvey also emphasizes
that cinema develops the scopophilia into a narcissistic impulse, as the
spectator’s fascination with image includes “a love affair between image
and self-image” and “a recognition of his like” (61). This powerful gaze
has no possible answer, encapsulating the images/objects into the realm

of the spectator’s wishes and anxieties.
Taking into consideration Bhabha’s and Mulvey’s reflections, the
episode of Black Orpheus as retold by Obama exposes an interesting
dynamic: Obama “looks at” his mother, who in turn “looks at” the
screen. His critical gaze exposes Ann Dunham’s fascinated, exoticized,
and unilateral gaze, a white, civilized woman’s stare at the “infantile”
and “primitive” (and yet “colorful” and “cheery”) blacks. Obama is
well aware of the power relations embedded in the reproduction of ste-
reotypes and the act of looking, being also conscious that his mother’s
gaze reinforces dominant Western structures of seeing. Nevertheless, by
translating “wistful gaze” as “nostalgic air,” the Brazilian Portuguese
translation of Dreams from My Father undermines the power relations
embedded in colonial visual discourses. Furthermore, when Obama
refers to “wistful” and finding “in the other some element that was miss-
ing in ourselves,” one can recall a lost, imaginary past, a moment when
the individual was immersed in totality and not divided by Western dis-
cursive dualities (e.g. black/white; civilized/barbarian; cultured/primi-
tive), as Bhabha describes.
Obama also has a critical perception of Black Orpheus’s stereotyped
black characters, condemning the movie’s “depiction of childlike blacks.”
Still, A origem dos meus sonhos underplays Obama’s critique by translat-
ing the phrase as “representation of young blacks.” In this sense, the
Brazilian translation tones down Obama’s assessment of Camus’ cel-
ebratory and racially harmonic image of Brazil. By erasing the father fig-
ure related to Africa and seeking to preserve Brazil as a privileged site
of race relations, the Brazilian edition of Dreams from My Father focuses
on the personal achievements of the individual mulatto and keeps the
notion of racial democracy unchallenged. Thus, it is not a mere coinci-
dence that the autobiography’s short passage on Black Orpheus captured
the hearts and minds of Brazilians. In this sense, this episode was of
utmost importance to creating an ideal Obama, an Obama who is more
a “superlative” Brazilian than a “relative” American. The episode of Ann
Dunham’s fascination with Black Orpheus would be exhaustively retold
by the Brazilian media. The next section, “Marcel Camus, the Creator
of Barack Obama,” explores how this idea would take shape in a peculiar
book, Fernando Jorge’s Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria
nascido [If it were not for Brazil, Barack Obama would have never been
born]. As the title indicates, Jorge intriguingly argues that Barack Obama
would not have existed if not for Brazil, a proposition that reveals more
about how Brazilians think of themselves than about how Obama has
constructed his biography.
Marcel Camus, the Creator of Barack Obama

In 2009, journalist Fernando Jorge’s Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack
Obama teria nascido [If it were not for Brazil, Barack Obama would
have never been born] was released in Brazil. The book’s proposition,
as the title indicates, is as original as it is bizarre: Brazil—and not the
United States or Nigeria—was the real reason Obama ever existed.
Jorge’s starting point is the opposition between the pervasive and viru-
lent American racism, which had created official segregation and the Ku
Klux Klan, and the “Brazilian spirit,” the essence of a racially and socially
inclusive nation forged by an African matrix. Fernando Jorge postulates
that Ann Dunham had perfectly apprehended this Afro-Brazilian essence
when she watched Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus and, consequently, felt
“compelled” to reenact the film’s multiracial perspective in her own life
story. Divided into eight chapters, Jorge’s book emphasizes two main
arguments: Brazilian society as an all-embracing nation, and the United
States—a racially and exclusionary country—as a nemesis of Brazil. In
this sense, because of his unique multiracial origin and multicultural
upbringing, Obama would be more attuned with Brazilian ideals. Se não
fosse o Brazil’s cover (Fig. 2.3) perfectly places the U.S. president in this
picturesque universe: a smiling Obama appears driving a yellow Brasília, a
popular Volkswagen car named after Brazil’s capital, and happily waving
to the (imagined) population. In the background, symbols of national
identity emerge: the Sugarloaf; Christ the Redeemer; and the famous
Copacabana promenade’s pavement, designed by renowned architect
Robert Burle Marx, encompass the lively landscape. The title appears in
large white, bold letters, surrounded by the colors of the Brazilian flag:
yellow, green, and blue.
Obama appears very comfortable and cheery surrounded by this
Brazilian-themed scenario. In fact, Jorge’s book reframes Obama’s per-
sonal story according to an imaginary connection with Brazil and its
culture. Five out of the eight chapters directly associate the president’s
birth with Brazil’s history, art, music, and literature; (1) “Orfeu negro,
o filme que maravilhou a mãe de Obama e o fez nascer” [Black Orpheus,
the movie that amazed Obama’s mother and made him be born]; (2)
Fig. 2.3 Cover of Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido.
Source: Novo Século
“Barack Obama compreende porque sua mãe ficou deslumbrada com o

filme Orfeu negro” [Barack Obama understands why his mother was daz-
zled by the movie Black Orpheus]; (3) “Vinicius de Moraes, o poeta bra-
sileiro que também fez Obama nascer” [Vinicius de Moraes, the Brazilian
poet who also made Obama be born]; (4) “A peça Orfeu da Conceição,
outra causa do nascimento de Obama” [The play Orfeu da Conceição,
another reason for Obama’s birth]; and (5) “O relacionamento dos
Estados Unidos com o Brasil, país que fez Obama nascer” [The United
States’ relationship with Brazil, the country that made Obama be born].
In the chapter “Black Orpheus, the movie that amazed Obama’s
mother and made him be born,” the author delineates his thesis that “se
não fosse o Brasil, se não fosse o poeta brasileiro Vinicius de Moraes,
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Barack Obama Is Brazilian Resignifying Race Relations in Contemporary Brazil 1St Edition Emanuelle K F Oliveira Monte Auth Full Chapter

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Barack Obama Is Brazilian Resignifying Race Relations in Contemporary Brazil 1St Edition Emanuelle K F Oliveira Monte Auth Full Chapter

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Barack Obama is Brazilian:

(Re)Signifying Race Relations in

ISBN 978-1-137-59480-8 ISBN 978-1-137-58353-6 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950708

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover credit: © Danil Trapeznikov/Alamy Stock Vector

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

book Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in

2 Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land

3 Barack Obama Is Brazilian 53

4 Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender

5 “Our” Candidate Obama: Barack Obama

Fig. 2.1 Cover of Dreams from My Father23

Fig. 4.6 “Obama!!” by Iotti 99

Barack Obama’s election to the American presidency in 2008 sparked a

© The Author(s) 2018 1

the dangers of post-raciality; in other words, post-raciality is about new

actively resist our dehumanization, … a call to action and a response to the

When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation

Os africanos rejubilaram com a vitória de Obama. Eu fui um deles. Depois

de 5 de Novembro, o novo presidente norte-americano não era apenas um

Despite rejoicing this “happy surprise,” the Mozambican writer, much

own racial register. This investigation analyzes an ever-changing Obama,

vehicles of political humor, the charges políticas [political cartoons].

one of the founders of the Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Party],

reappropriated the U.S. president as Brazilian, linking him to symbols of

as the dominant face of imperialism, threatening to exploit Brazil’s

1960s military dictatorship and as President Lula’s chief of staff created

mimeme and the French word même [memory]), is continuously repli-

tailored the 2014 presidential campaign to attract important segments of

Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto

Dreams from My Father Revisited: From U.S. Black

© The Author(s) 2018 17

market: the combination of universal themes (the search for identity,

In his review, Maurício Santoro emphasizes Obama’s search for iden-

narrative, causing the narrator’s identity crisis, Obama seems to carve a

upbringing—did not blind him to racist violence; on the contrary, to

The title, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,

of family stories, a few pictures, and personal speculation.5 Moreover, the

celebration, Moraes retains the myth’s tragic ending: in trying to escape

the overexposure of celebratory images, where carnaval festivities per-

One evening, while thumbing through The Village Voice, my mother’s

[Uma noite enquanto folheava o jornal The Village Voice, os olhos de

— Eu só tinha 16 anos na ocasião – ela nos contou ao entrarmos no eleva-

proibidas a uma garota de classe média branca do Kansas, a promessa de

Obama has an epiphany when observing his mother, who seemed to be

(“All humans have the same skin/race/culture”), while, at the same

has no possible answer, encapsulating the images/objects into the realm

Marcel Camus, the Creator of Barack Obama

“Barack Obama compreende porque sua mãe ficou deslumbrada com o

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

Section 3. Information about the Project

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,

Section 4. Information about Donations to

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

3 Barack Obama Is Brazilian 53

Fig. 2.1 Cover of Dreams from My Father23

Fig. 4.6 “Obama!!” by Iotti 99