Generally, my dispatches from the Atlantic Archives have focused on my observations as an African-American living in Brazil, the significant parts of the culture here experienced by African descendants, these African descendants being the largest group of Black people in the diaspora outside of Nigeria. Since my group of fellows has been traveling throughout the U.S. for this historic project, I’ve become aware of lots of other questions that my people in the United States have about Black Brazilian life and I want to begin to respond to some of those questions.
A very interesting question was posted to me by our very own professor, Karen Hunter, CEO of Karen Hunter, Media, the news and the creator of the Knubia educational platform.
Who do you have in your crew (historians, sports experts) who can speak to the validity of dribbling in soccer coming from Brazil?
So I checked with my crew here to find out has anyone had heard of this rumor of dribbling being invented by Black Brazilians in response to white players racially targeting Black players to injure them. The idea, of course, not being a new one for Black in the U.S. as we have a long history of integrating sports, both recreational and professional and generations of Black athletes having to endure racial violence in order to have rules and culture of sports be more accepting of non-white athletes. And in spite of inequity, Black people have continued to innovate and dominate nearly all areas of sports.
We tracked down a professor of sports history named Henrique Sena. Sena is an assistant professor at the Federal Univeristy of Reconcovao. He works in the area of contemporary history, the history of sports, as well as the history of the Brazilian press. He reviewed the social media post and found some insights in his research. Then we that I thought might help us get to the bottom of this rumor. We can break it out into three parts.
First, let’s learn about Brazil’s own issues with documenting the true history of Black contributions to the countries, nation, sport, and the most popular sport in our world, soccer, as Americans call it in futebol known to the rest of the world.
Professor Sena explained that although the history of the sport began in England when it arrived in South America around the turn of the 20th century, Brazil immediately made their mark. In the history of the sport, Brazil has won nine COPA American Cups and five World Cup championships. Football was brought to Brazil in the 1890s by British patriots and was first only played by the elites of the society. During these first moments, the social impact of the game was barely noticeable. Like Basketball in the U.S., when the sport began to spread out into the streets of the country in popular neighborhoods, the sport began to be singing as a national pastime. Football being played by common people and by the Black population was a fundamental factor in the inclusion of African descendent people into mainstream Brazilian society.
During the turn of the century, Black players began to emerge into football on a mainstream level and were immediately seen as fierce competition, even becoming superstars in the sport, only a few years after the abolishment of slavery. Several of these players do, however, choose to compromise their Blackness by straightening their hair and using skin lightener in an effort to be better accepted by the public.
It wasn’t until the sport was professionalized in 1933 that a greater influx of Afro-Brazilian athletes were allowed to play in and advance in the game. Naturally, as the sport began to improve and become more exciting, fans began to care less about who was the whitest player and began to care more about who was the best player.
Here is Professor Sena on the emergence of Black players in Brazilian soccer:
Next week, we will discover the stories of a few early, notable Afro-Brazilian futebol stars. Stay tuned.
If you have a question or curiosity about Brazil, hit me up!
