Cabá’s story

My name is Cabá Sanhá, I’m 21 years old and I’m part of Benfica Foundation’s Adapted Football Project.

Racism for me it’s not accepting the other person because he’s from a different race, regardless of what he is as a person, putting the race before that. It doesn’t matter if the person has talent, if he is good at his job, there will always be a race issue to prevent the person from advancing.

I’ve experienced this in some companies I worked for, where I saw other people of different races going up in the company, who didn’t have as much capacity as I did, who didn’t give as much, but who managed to move forward while I was left behind, myself and other colleagues who also had been with the company for years. They had much more capabilities but were unable to advance to another level because of their race.

Over time and as I grew up, I tried to ignore when I felt that I was being a target of racism, because there are racist people, yes, but less and less. They manifest themselves more, but they are fewer, so I will not be reacting a violent way and descend to the same level as them.

In my opinion, to be able to fight racism and discrimination, we need to start acting during childhood, since Education is the basis of everything. I think you can start mixing cultures from an early age, so children start to understand and accept differences. Because, for example, in a classroom where there are only people of the same ethnicity, these children never lived with people “different” from them, so when they grow up they don’t know how to live with other people, which will never be acceptable for them. We should mix ethnicities right from children in schools so that we can learn to accept people that are different from ourselves.

The world is evolving and doesn’t stop, there is a new learning every day, so we must adapt to that evolution, otherwise we are always living in the same context.