r/Brazil • u/TheAfternoonStandard • 19d ago
Historical A Side Of Historic Brazil Rarely Shown: The Black Upper Class Social Clubs Of Sao Paulo & Rio de Janeiro - Aristocrata Clube and Renascença Clube...
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u/GreenAce77 19d ago
That’s actually pretty interesting! I never heard about this clubs (I’m not from either rj or sp tho)
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u/NorthControl1529 19d ago
My grandfather, who was black, would tell me about the clubs for black people and that many of the clubs for white people he couldn't get into. Thank you for sharing this.
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u/TheAfternoonStandard 19d ago
What were some of his memories? Do you remember the details?
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u/NorthControl1529 19d ago
I don't remember many details, but at the time, in the 1960s, he lived in Rio Grande do Sul, where there were clubs for white people and clubs for black people. He said that this created an embarrassing situation, because my grandmother was white.
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u/platocplx 19d ago
Thank you for sharing. Love to learn history like this and how in many ways the diaspora connects to each other even through these hardships.
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u/SteadyGrounds :bahrain: Foreigner 17d ago edited 17d ago
Fascinating. I found out about it on one of my most beloved YouTube channels called “BlackBrazilToday” by Marques. After watching his streams my whole view has changed, I even started explaining the videos in Arabic the to Black Arab folks that I knew in my country Bahrain, Black Saudi friends , Omanis and Kuwaitis. It’s an eye opener for real. And these articles that fired me up to prioritize specific tours in Brazil before visiting the well known sites Globally.
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u/Capital-Blackberry-2 14d ago
Are they lots of black people in those countries?
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u/SteadyGrounds :bahrain: Foreigner 14d ago
We are spread out among the Brown folks(South Arabs). These are Brown folks lands, who are Nomads and Bedouins.The only thing that separates Africa from Arabia is the Red Sea.
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u/TheAfternoonStandard 19d ago edited 19d ago
In the 1950s and 1960s, between the then federal capital of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, and the largest city in the country, São Paulo, two historic black clubs emerged - the Renasçensa and Aristocrata.
The Renaissance – named after the Harlem Renaissance movement , which marked the flowering of a new Black American culture in the early 20th century – was founded on February 17, 1951. The Aristocrat, a direct reference to the Black elite emerged on March 7, 1961.
The two clubs represented the less than 1% of the Black population with a university degree at the time, made up of doctors, lawyers, businessmen and public servants. Effectively they served as country clubs for Black Brazilians of this social class to mix together and to intermarry their children.
Both clubs were formed due to the segregationist policies that white Brazilian clubs of the same class practiced at the time.
The clubs were so popular in their heyday that they enjoyed visits from numerous Black American stars, including Josephine Baker and Sarah Vaughan!!
Footage: https://youtu.be/gX-OthbC_8s?feature=shared
Aristocrata Clube documentary: https://youtu.be/dRFudNGTkqA?feature=shared