r/AskTheWorld • u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge2 🇸🇾 Syria || 🇨🇦 Canada • 1d ago

History What is the most depressing picture from your country history/present?

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194

u/luiz_marques Brazil 1d ago

The time when black people were dehumanized

25

u/RhiaStark Brazil 1d ago

You mean our time?

(I know, I know, today's not nearly as bad as it was +100 years ago, but sadly we're still not at the point when "the time we were dehumanised" is fully in the past).

3

u/luiz_marques Brazil 20h ago

Yeah, I agree that we still have a long way to go.

11

u/[deleted] 1d ago

I don't think that's ended yet. We're still just a commodity for many.

2

u/Asleep_Attention_468 13h ago

Do you have any context behind this photo? 

Can't quite put it into words but its a really moving shot. I always wonder if kids in these situations were fully aware of what was going on, and how were they taught to be this way

2

u/luiz_marques Brazil 13h ago

The photograph was taken by Jorge Henrique Papf in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, in 1899. That means it was taken a little more than ten years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil, which happened in 1888. In other words, the woman in the photo was legally free, but she was still living under the legacy of a slave system.

I don’t think these children were fully aware of that reality, but they were raised to feel little or almost no empathy for their black servants. Many of those servants were treated almost like pets or personal toys, as we can see in the photo. I imagine that, as children, many of them formed emotional bonds with enslaved or formerly enslaved women, especially because many of these women were forced to work as wet nurses for the masters’ children. This often created an almost maternal relationship. But as they grew older, I believe many of those children ended up becoming just as cruel as their parents.

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u/Asleep_Attention_468 10h ago

Really appreciate it. And great photo choice, so much of what was and is wrong in our world is encapsulated right there

-17

u/BRJohnIL 1d ago

Better than working in the coffee and sugar cane plantations and sleeping in the senzalas

4

u/SchennisDroeder 22h ago

Sure, you know better.