Brazilians see themselves in mixed-race Obama

By Stephanie Beasley

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Barack Obama's campaign for the U.S. presidency has generated huge interest in Brazil, a country whose African heritage is a key part of its identity but where many blacks still struggle to progress in society.

Democrat contender Obama would be the United States' first African-American president should he defeat Republican John McCain in November's election.

Obama's progress has been avidly debated in Brazil, from student refectories to newspaper columns. His portrait was on the front cover of this week's Veja magazine, a leading Brazilian news weekly, along with a 10-page report.

"Obama looks like my father," singer Caetano Veloso said in an interview with Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. "He's a mulatto that's looks like someone from Santo Amaro (Veloso's hometown). I've heard he's said he looks like a Brazilian."

The interest in Obama highlights different notions of race in Brazil and the United States -- who have a shared history of slavery -- and also Brazil's own racial fault lines.

Brazil boasts of being a racial democracy. Many people have African blood, including internationally famed musicians and athletes, and African elements are ingrained in the national culture from samba to cooking.

But in reality, few Afro-Brazilians are in the top ranks of politics and business. Blacks count for many of the poor in this country of 185 million people, which has one world's biggest income disparities. Police harassment of young black men is common.

"There are few racists in Brazil but there is racism," said Andre Jenszky, a lawyer at the Sao Paulo office of a Wall Street firm. "Racism is sort of casual and everyday."

To many Brazilians, Obama, the son of a white American woman and a black Kenyan, is not quite black anyway.

Historically, segregation and the "one drop" of blood rule left little room for racial ambiguity in the United States, where one is either black or white.

In Brazil, where slavery was finally abolished only in 1888, questions of race and racism are more complex.

Many people here refer to Obama as a mulatto -- a term used to describe people of mixed ancestry. It is uncommon to call someone mulatto in post-slavery United States but the description is popular in Brazil's melting pot.

CHANGE IN IDENTITY

Obama, who often speaks about his multicultural background, is perhaps the first U.S. political figure to adhere to a similar idea of race.

"Obama symbolizes a change in the construction of black identity," John Stanfield, a professor of African-American Studies at the University of Indiana, said at a recent talk on "The Barack Obama Phenomenon" at a Sao Paulo cultural foundation.