Feminisms and Anti-Racism: Intersections and Challenges An interview with Luiza Bairros, Minister, Brazilian Secretariat of Public Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR), 2011–2014

Minister of Racial Equality Luiza Bairros took office as part of President Dilma Rousseff’s administration in January 2011 as the head of the Brazilian Secretariat of Public Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality. She is also a recognized scholar in the areas of Feminist Studies, Race Relations, and Sociology, and has a long history of activism in feminist and Black movements. Her unwavering dedication to the struggle for the rights of women and Afro-Brazilians, and of Black women in particular, has been reflected in her exemplary trajectory through a number of government and inter-governmental agencies. She was at the helm of the State of Bahia Secretariat for the Promotion of Equality (SEPROMI) and has held positions in international institutions, including serving as a consultant for the United Nations System in Brazil for the III World Conference against Racism, also known as the Durban Conference, as well as other projects of interest to the Afro-Brazilian population.

This exceptional intersection of intellectual, political, and governmental paths places Minister Bairros in a singular position to offer an incisive analysis of the complex issues broached in the interview she granted to me in Brasilia on December 14, 2011. Based on her work in government and in light of her long political trajectory in Black and feminist movements, I sought to explore how the Minister understood the points of (mis) encounter between anti-racist struggles and feminisms and women’s movements in Brazil, seeking to map out the paths through which questions relating to race and racism have circulated within the diverse spaces of feminism, and vice versa.

Interviewer (INT.):

I am interested in your understanding of how various feminisms have related to diverse Black movements, and how both kinds of movements are articulated within the state. But first, I would like you to speak about your own political and professional trajectory. Since 2008, you have been working within the state, first in Bahia, and now here in Brasilia since …

Luiza Bairros (LB):

January of 2011.

INT.:

So we can start with your political trajectory and what brought you to where you are now. I know that you have a long trajectory in both movements.

LB:

It is hard to know exactly what has brought me to where I am now, especially because it was not intentional. My whole trajectory as a militant started out in the Black movement. And through the contradictions that we found there, in the relations between male and female militants, we started—at Lélia Gonzalez’s initiative—to get together as a group of Black women.

INT.:

From inside the Black movement?

LB:

Well, that was from within the Unified Black Movement [MNU or Movimento Negro Unificado], at the beginning of the 1980s.1 More specifically, it was through that articulation with the women of the MNU that my relationship to the women’s and feminist movements began. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the issue of Black women was coming increasingly to the forefront as a differentiated way of thinking and acting within the Black movement. I left the MNU in the mid-1990s, but continued my activism along other paths, no longer connected to a specific organization, and closer and closer to women’s concerns. That is, I was involved in the kinds of political organizing for social action central to being a Black woman. In addition to that, these were issues that were always of concern to me, even from the point of view of my academic interests.

INT.:

Did you join the MNU right when that movement began?

LB:

In 1979.

INT.:

And this articulation emerged right from within the MNU?

LB:

Yes, from a group of Black women. I stayed in the MNU until 1994, and then I left when I went back to school. And then I became a professor.

INT.:

So you did an internship in the United States.

LB:

Yes, I lived...