Race rage in Brazil congress
The format of the Brazilian call-in show “People want to know” is simple. Each episode, celebrities and regular folks put questions to a chosen guest. On the hot seat Monday was Brazilian Congressman Jair Bolsonaro. Among his interlocutors was the black singer Preta Gil, daughter of the Grammy-winning musician Gilberto Gil. At around 3:38 in the above video she asks Bolsonaro, who is white, how he’d react if his son fell in love with a black woman.
“I don’t run that risk,” the Bolsonaro said. “My children were very well educated and they don’t live in the sort of environment that, sadly, you do.”
Needless to say, Preta Gil and plenty of other people are pissed. (Whoever put the episode on YouTube titled the bit "The Brazilian Hitler," for good measure).
After fellow congressmen called for Bolsonaro’s censure, he issued a statement that wasn't exactly an about-face. Bolsonaro said his answer was “due to misunderstanding of the question—perceived, wrongly, as addressing the possibility of my son dating a gay.”
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