When Marcus Waterson opted to spend a year in the City of Sao Paulo, as part of an exchange program between Howard University and the University of Sao Paulo, he couldn't imagine how much his world would change. The son of an African American father, D.C. Metro Policeman Jasper Waterson, and schoolteacher Isabella Stoica, a white mother from the City of Brasov, Romania, Marcus was destined for greatness from the get go. The brother longed for adventure and wanted to experience life outside of Western society, having traveled extensively in America and Europe with his family.
The people of Sao Paulo were lively and insouciant in a way that Americans and Europeans could never be. The French expression Joie de Vivre most definitely applies in this part of Brazil. Marcus had learned a bit of Portuguese from his mother Isabella Stoica, a linguistics teacher at a Catholic school in Washington D.C. When Marcus landed in Sao Paulo, he was conversational in Portuguese, and could figure things out for himself. This made navigating the country much easier for the ambitious young African American.
Walking the streets of Sao Paulo, Marcus saw Brazilians of all hues, from European types to Afro-Brazilians, Mestizo people of mixed European and Native American descent, and many others. Folks seemed to get along, and everyone seemed to be full of life. Marcus saw a lot of interracial couples, and mixed-race people, and this made him smile. When Marcus walked around the streets of Washington D.C. with his parents, folks used to stare at them. In America, seeing a black man with his white wife and their biracial son will cause both black Americans and white Americans to stare. Sometimes it's a curious stare, but often it's an angry or disapproving stare. The country really does have a race problem.
Marcus wasn't dumb enough to believe that there was no racism in Brazil. Racism varies from place to place, just like cultures do. Marcus saw lots of gorgeous black women and brown women on the streets of Sao Paulo, in malls, salons, churches and the like, but it was European-looking women who graced the covers of Brazilian magazines or appeared in the popular telenovelas. Gorgeous Brazilian women who could pass for Italian or even Irish appeared in the television commercials, even though the majority of Brazilian women looked like Hollywood Garcelle Beauvais or megastar Jennifer Lopez or songstress Shakira. What a strange state of the affairs...
In Marcus humble opinion, and he wasn't a social scientist or demographics expert by any means, people of color were the majority in Brazil. Folks of European descent are the minority in Brazilian society. One would believe otherwise if one looked at who ran Brazil's politics and business world. To Marcus, it seemed that most Brazilians had some Indigenous ancestry and some African ancestry mixed with European ancestry. Where was their representation in Brazilian politics, media and business? There were gorgeous, bronze-skinned and dark-eyed women who might look Latin American from a distance but had curvy bodies, thick butts and kinky hair indicating that someone in their family tree had some African DNA. Put those ladies in the magazines!
Marcus went Rodrigo's Barbershop, a nice spot located on San Miguel Avenue in the west end of Sao Paulo, and found the place to his liking. When Marcus walked in and saw black men and brown men talking animatedly while smoking cigars, he knew he was at home. A music video featuring big-booty video vixens played on the flat screen television. The owner, Rodrigo, was a short, bald-headed, dark-skinned gentleman of Afro-Brazilian descent. He was cool with Marcus and always queried him about African American culture. Marcus laughed when Rodrigo asked him about Jay-Z and Beyonce, who apparently had a cult following even in distant Brazil.
"Senhora Beyonce is a hot lady but in Sao Paulo she'd have competition, the local ladies are hot," Rodrigo said to a smiling Marcus as he cut his hair. Regardless of country, a black man's relationship with his barber is sacred. A black man will keep secrets from his woman, his friends and his family members but he will tell his barber everything. Barbers know it all. That's how things are done among the African Masculinities. Marcus had to find a black man to cut his hair and that was that. No prejudice or nothing. Marcus remembered his father Jasper bringing him to Afro Cuts, a barbershop located in the east end of Washington D.C. when he was younger. Black male traditions are universal and that's just the way it is.
