I remember arriving at the Banco do Brasil agency in Ilha do Governador, the working-class neighborhood where I grew up in Rio de Janeiro. I was 13 or 14—the age in Brazil when every Black boy ceases to be a child and, in the eyes of society, becomes a potential Emmett Till.

Holding my father’s big hands, we get stopped at the rolling door by the bank segurança. “Remove everything from your pockets, Sir,” the brown-skin segurança, .38 revolver in his hands, told us. That “Sir” means exactly the opposite of an honorific. Every Black person knows how it sounds: angry and imperative. My father released my hands and placed them in his tethered jeans pockets bringing out a black leather wallet, a metal key chain, and three coins. He also placed his myopia glasses on the check-in table, showing he did not intend to challenge the segurança’s authority. It was then my turn: “Remove everything from your pockets!” I was too young to earn myself the sir badge.

“I have nothing to remove,” I said, opening my arms wide, palms facing up.

He proceeded more harshly this time, speaking through his clenched jaw.

“Lift your t-shirt then.”

I obliged.

I already knew about those rituals of humiliation and how they were part of my Black family’s lives. I also knew that surviving such daily interactions required putting my head down and following the instructions received with no hesitation. Life was just like that.Racism is so ubiquitous in Brazil that I believed it was natural for years. This was my reality. My entire worldview is seen from that prism. Years later, living a somewhat comfortable life in Australia will not alter what I absorbed early in life.

I can only begin to conceive how it is for someone learning precisely the opposite lessons: that they deserve to live hassle-free; that they are destined to be lawyers, accountants, actors, or anything they want; that because they look the way they look, they will be part of the crème de la crème of society; believing that they are genetically and morally superior; most importantly, learning that the ‘other’ (Blacks, Indigenous and other non-whites) deserve their suffering because they (we) are “lazy” or “stupid”; that we placed ourselves in this condition, and believing that inequality is a myth.

In the country that historically kidnapped and forcefully trafficked the most significant number of enslaved peoples during colonialism. In the last country to abolish African slavery, in 1888. In the country, that kills one Black person every 23 minutes. A place where a Machiavellian plan of extermination and eugenics allowed the European population to grow and thrive. In this country, it is not surprising that today the Black population is on one side of the fence and the white on another.

And so it was in the recent national election that the vote was split racially. The majority of Black cities voted for Lula, as high as 90 per cent in some cases, whereas the majority of white cities voted seven-to-one for Bolsonaro. Mirroring the US where African Americans often are the last defense against tyranny, Afro-Brazilians are Brazil’s ultimate defenders of democracy.

Of course, it is not that simple. Nothing is. People make choices or are induced by external or circumstantial forces to make them. There are plenty of Afro-Brazilians voting for Bolsonaro and plenty of whites fighting side by side with me against fascism. However, without understanding the racial roots of Brazilian slavocrat society, it would be impossible to comprehend how we got here.