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The topic resists the page. It is difficult to write not because the words are elusive, but because the reality they describe is so dense, so historically calcified.
In approaching Black Consciousness Day—a date that in Brazil serves as both a memorial and a fissure in the national psyche—I found myself forced backward before I could move forward.
I had to remember "Mississippi Burning," the visceral historical trauma that Baco Exú do Blues, the Bahian rapper, evokes so potentely in his music. He sings of a fire that is both destructive and purifying, a historical continuity of violence that refuses to be extinguished.
I am by training a systems architect and a software engineer. My mind seeks structures, and elegant solutions to complex problems. I want to draft blueprints for fixes.
But to gain even a glimpse of a structural solution for a problem this deeply embedded, I had to abandon my drafting table and remember people: a former lover, three close friends, one known since childhood. I had to sit with the visceral knowledge of their daily navigation of a world designed to impede them.
I listened to vinyl records I hadn't touched in months, seeking a sonic vibration that could hold the weight of it. And I wept. Not the performative tears of public allyship, but shy, private tears. They were heavier than those shed after a recent romantic breakup, yet significantly less overwhelming than the previous time I had caught a grief.
That first time, the realization of the "fire in Mississippi"—analogous to the slow-motion genocide enacted upon the Black population of Brazil—hit me during work. It was an ERG meeting, a sanitized space for difficult conversations. Yet, listening to a speaker detail historical atrocities, I burst into tears. My camera was mercifully off.
I was confronted with the statistical reality that underpins the emotion: In the United States, according to the Violence Policy Center (VPC) using CDC mortality data for 2023, Black individuals accounted for 53.8% of all homicide victims, despite making up 13.7% of the overall U.S. population
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Image 1: An abstract modern art piece. Muted, deep blues, charcoal grays, and burnt umber tones layered in varying opacities, suggesting sediment or buried history. Jagged, fragmented lines resembling broken architectural blueprints dissolve into washes of watercolor tears. The overall feeling is one of melancholic weight and submerged structure. The style is minimalist and textural.
Socially, speaking of ethnic reparation is a quandary that paralyzes discourse. There is a distinct difference in national psychologies regarding historical atrocity.
Germany, burdened by the Holocaust, engages in a painful, perpetual, institutional remembrance.
Brazil, conversely, was built on a foundational myth of "racial democracy," a comfortable lie that obscures the fact that it was the last nation in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery. Some often deny that a humanitarian crisis still occurs.
Too often, Black existence in the cultural imagination is flattened, reduced to mere sexual kinks or sites of trauma, while their full, multifaceted potential remains hindered by invisible barriers.
It is a profound crossroads. perhaps one that only Exú—the Yoruba orisha of communication, paradox, and the crossroads (also known as Esu, Elegua, or Elegba)—is capable of navigating. Maybe artificial intelligence already knows the answer.
Yet, the technology to resolve social inequalities is often brutally simple: it is the economy.
Economy, stripped of its obfuscating jargon, is about supply and demand, access and restriction.
Reparation could arrive as the ability to access elite education without crippling debt, entry into public offices that have historically excluded certain phenotypes, or jobs in jurisdictions and companies that build generational wealth.
It should also arrive as the simple, radical agency to exist within liberty, supported by a regular paycheck for doing work one loves.
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Image 2: An abstract modern art piece focusing on geometry and imbalance. Large, heavy blocks of raw, brutalist concrete texture hang precariously over thinner, gilded lines meant to represent economic flow. A stark contrast between matte, rough textures and polished gold leaf. Stylized, abstract gears appear jammed or disconnected. The composition is asymmetrical and tense, reflecting structural inequality.
This is not an encore proposal that the state should simply transfer a monthly paycheck to Black citizens solely based on race. The political reality of major democracies in the last two years suggests that such a direct approach would likely trigger revolt.
We have witnessed congresses in both Brasilia and Washington D.C. damaged by uprisings driven largely by a white demographic fearing replacement or status loss. The tolerance for direct, biased redistribution is low.
Perhaps the transaction needs to be a confluence: subtler, frictionless. Reparation could arrive as daily, weekly, or monthly micro-transactions, leveraging crypto rails or on-demand payment structures.
Uber pays its drivers immediately after the ride ends; the technology for instant remuneration exists. Why can the settling of historical debt not be equally immediate?
Ultimately, my architectural brain returns to the human element. I want to cheer someone up if they are crying because the weight of their identity feels crushing.
I love that former lover. I love those friends. If I could invest in drying their tears—not metaphorically, but practically—I would be fully vested in their ability to regain agency.
It is a love investment.
Luckily, they would eventually pay me interest, once the structural barriers are removed and they can sort themselves out, thriving as they were meant to.
"Bite the profit then," as the British rapper Tzusan says.
Or, we must make a feast worthy of Baco's warranty.
We must tend a fire that does not just destroy, but simmers grapes and honey—a fire that cooks our hopes, our dreams, and our sazón, turning raw trauma into sustenance for the future.
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Image 3: An abstract modern art piece that is warmer and more organic than the previous two. Deep ochres, burnt oranges, and vibrant reds dominate, suggesting embers and heat. Amidst the fiery colors, hints of organic green growth and flowing, interconnected lines emerge, forming a new, resilient kind of structure. The style is textural, like oil paint applied thickly with a palette knife, conveying energy and reconstruction.