Brazil Has 109 Million Black People. Not One Runs a Big Bank

[Judi Lynn]

By Cristiane Lucchesi and Felipe Marques
July 17, 2020, 4:00 AM CDT

Last month, when much of the world was focused on anti-racism demonstrations in the U.S., Brazil’s biggest cable news channel held a prime-time discussion on them with six commentators. Many watching were struck by one thing -- in a country that is more than half Black and Brown, all of the panelists were White.

Many nations are seeing their own racial disparity reflected in the U.S. reckoning. But with the second-largest Black population in the world (after Nigeria), Brazil is unlike any other. Its power structure is almost entirely White -- not a single Black government minister -- with limited public attention to racial inequality.

It’s an imbalance fully evident in the financial sector. No big bank in Latin America’s largest economy, a nation of almost 210 million, has a Black chief executive officer or board member. The percentage of Black upper management in major banking is similar to that in the U.S. (whose Black population is 13%) -- 3%.

“We’re definitely a racist nation,” lamented Vanessa Lobato, vice president for human resources at Banco Santander Brasil SA.

You won’t hear otherwise from Haroldo Nascimento, 36, who’s a manager for retail strategy at Banco Bradesco SA, one of Latin America’s biggest banks. Nascimento, who is Black, arrived at a management conference in Sao Paulo when a White man pulled up in a car and handed him the keys.

Nascimento threw them to the ground.

“Don’t you work here?” the man asked.

“No, do you?” Nascimento replied, and walked away.

More:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-17/brazil-has-109-million-black-people-not-one-runs-a-big-bank