The Bahian journalist Lilia de Souza, 34, had a routine obligation scheduled for Tuesday: renewing her passport that would expire in August. Even after waiting 7 hours in the unit of the Polícia Federal (PF or Federal Police) of Salvador Shopping in Bahia’s capital city, the time to take the picture for the document was not a relief, but a “huge embarrassment”: agents of the PF asked Lilia asked if she could tie down her “black power” (afro) hair style since the image system did not accept the generated image, because of the shape of her hair. “They said: ‘the problem is your hair.’ I thought it was strange to hear this, but I didn’t consider not doing the passport. I was upset, but said ‘if there’s no other way, okay.’ Then I took a rubber band to tie down my hair. I have a very strong relationship with my black identity. I like my hair and in that photo, I was terrible,” she says coming to tears outside the department. The police said I should not feel that way and it had nothing to do with racism. One of them, however, revealed that the system really is problematic, including being complicated at times of taking pictures of very black people, when it’s necessary to lighten the image a bit.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:49:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015