Black Issues Emerge in the Election : Brazil: Racism is endemic in this much-touted ‘racial democracy,’ yet only one candidate fully addressed it in campaigning for today’s presidential election.

At rallies and cultural events last November for Zumbi (the holiday commemorating an anti-slavery resistance fighter of the 16th Century), organizers endorsed no candidate for the 1989 presidential election. But they expressed overwhelming personal preference for Leonel Brizola, the ex-governor of Rio de Janiero state; of more than two dozen candidates, all of them white, he had been the only one to condemn racism.

Today, Brazilians are casting presidential ballots for the first time in 29 years, and concerns about the denial of basic opportunities due to skin color are uppermost in the minds of Afro-Brazilians, who are almost half of the electorate.

Brazil’s much-touted “racial democracy” is regarded by growing numbers of blacks as a romantic notion that does not hold up under scrutiny. Most Brazilian blacks live in favelas, or slums. Although they make up 40% of the work force, they are grossly under-represented in higher-paying and professional jobs. A newspaper ad placed by a temporary employment agency in Belo Horizonte last year explicitly stated that only whites or fair-skinned blacks should apply. Although the ad created a minor uproar, discrimination is the rule and not the exception.

When President Jose Sarney designated May 13, 1988, as the official commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, most black organizations refused to participate, denouncing the observance as hypocritical. Instead, thousands of blacks marched in the streets of Rio de Janiero to protest systematic racism. Leaders of the march conceded that they did not yet have the political organization or national strength to mount an effective campaign in support of a presidential candidate of their own, but they believed that the black voting population could sway the outcome of the election.

With national and world attention drawn to Brazil’s small but burgeoning black political community, led by the United Black Movement Against Racial Discrimination, white politicians were forced to pay attention.

In Brazil, racism is rarely discussed in public forums, so the black population has not been separately treated in election opinion polls, which to the end showed a very high percentage of undecided voters. Yet it is widely accepted that Brizola’s strongest following is among black voters. The reasons are not difficult to understand.

In a society where government, like most public and private institutions, is dominated by white males, Brizola took the unprecedented step of announcing that if he were elected president, he would appoint blacks and women to his cabinet. That statement took on greater force because Brizola’s record backed up his promise. As governor of Rio de Janiero from 1982 to 1986, Brizola appointed blacks to high and middle levels of state government. The Brizola administration also built housing for the poor, established medical programs to deal with the devastating infant mortality rate and funded black cultural programs.

Despite his apparent strength among black voters, Brizola, who was in second place nationally in the polls, still had to compete for votes with two other leading contenders. There would have been a third major opponent, but Brazilian courts ruled that the last-minute candidacy of television personality and government supporter Silvio Santos was illegal.

A considerable number of Afro-Brazilians are expected to give their votes to Workers Party candidate Ignacio da Silva, better-known as Lula, in third place in the latest Gallup poll. The party’s anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform has appeal to many blacks, but Lula has not been outspoken on racial issues.

Front-runner Fernando Collor de Mello is a traditional conservative who soared to popularity with heavy exposure on TV Globo, the nation’s largest television network, in which his family has business interests. Given the appeal of his anti-corruption, reformist message and his domination of television, Collor is likely to win a sizable number of black votes.

But if black voters in Brazil concentrate, as political leaders say they will, on electing a candidate who acknowledges the need to establish the racial democracy that Brazil professes, their overwhelming choice is all but certain to be Leonel Brizola, because he is the only one who has directly addressed their racial concerns.