“Não vamos esquecer”: reflections on anti-racism in organizations based on the Carrefour case

Abstract

Carrefour, a French chain created in 1959, is present in more than 30 countries. In Brazil, the hypermarket chain arrived in 1975 and was already considered the second largest retail company in the country, according to a ranking by Ibevar - Brazilian Institute of Retail & Consumer Market Executives, in 2012. From 2007 onwards, the chain suffered due to least five cases with accusations of violence, racism and/or homophobia. In one of the cases, a black man who owned an EcoSport was mistaken for a thief and was taken by outsourced security guards into the network, suffering physical and psychological torture for more than 15 minutes. In 2009, another case of beatings followed by death occurred at the Supermercado Dia e Noite store, a subsidiary of the Carrefour group, in São Carlos-SP. The theft of two cheese loaves, some drumsticks and hair cream, committed by bricklayer Ademir Peraro, aged 43 at the time, led to his beating by the store supervisor and a security guard. After the torture ended, the victim was locked in the bathroom until the store closed, when he was thrown into the street. Rescued by family members, he was taken to the hospital and, before dying, the bricklayer managed to report the torture he was subjected to. In December 2018, a branch in Osasco-SP made the news after a stray dog was killed by one of the establishment's security guards. In October 2020, one of the network's suppliers died of a heart attack in Recife-PE. His body was covered by an umbrella and the establishment continued to operate normally. Still in 2020, on the eve of Black Awareness Day, two white security guards beat João Alberto Silveira Freitas, a black man, to death on charges of arguing and shouting at an employee, at a company unit in Porto Alegre-RS. That same year, the “Black Lives Matter” movement gained global prominence after the death of Jorge Floyd by North American police officers. Society began to condemn this type of behavior and a series of boycotts began to occur. After João Alberto's death, a wave of protests in repudiation of his death was registered in six Brazilian capitals. The anti-racist demonstrations were marked by direct actions against the chain's stores, with high engagement on social media. In São Paulo, for example, more than a thousand protesters joined the 17th March of Black Consciousness in SP, which was concentrated in the space of Masp (São Paulo Art Museum) and went to a hypermarket unit, located on Pamplona Street , and which was completely destroyed. In Porto Alegre-RS, thousands of people gathered in front of the unit where the crime occurred. The murder of João Alberto Silveira Freitas had wide national repercussions and the organization, which found itself immersed in a serious crisis, was forced to respond to society. Among the actions developed by the organization to manage this crisis is the website “Não Vamos Esquecer”, which proposed to establish anti-racist commitments. Furthermore, the organization signed several agreements with the public ministry and has been trying, since then, to rebuild its image. We understand organizations as social actors in interaction, producing and disputing meanings with their different interlocutors (Baldissera, 2010; Lima & Oliveira, 2014). Based on the notion of anti-racist advertising (Leite, 2014; 2019), this work reflects on anti-racist actions in organizations, taking as a starting point the actions of the supermarket chain after the 2020 episode. We conclude that Carrefour's actions are still compromised the maintenance of racism as a social structure in the country, due to the results of the organization after the crisis.