Thinking about traveling to Portugal in September, so thanks for sharing this info. Love the energy, enjoy!

I want that you live the best years of your lives here , but here pink black, white or green is just not a theme, the rest just enjoy mine yours country now.

If you walk on the street and are often confused with any other portuguese walking around it's because the essential of being Portuguese it's just that; beeing from all around the wordl with all skin colors humanly possible in all religions and regions of our globe.
Our prime minister is from indian origins, many people born wherever there were portuguese, is part of public administration and private companies. If you want to say that because of the color of your skin you have to be apart, then Portugal is not for you, because being Portuguese is accepting Diversity.

I just hope the Black community in Portugal will not try to do the same that they did in the USA!

In the USA, Black Lives matter movement and the removal of any Confederate monument or reference was a big deal for the African American community but the Portuguese will not tolerate such type of action! The Monument to the Discoveries for example will keep its name because it was the Discovery of new cultures and new routes to other Nations, seas and continents! And yes, all those things were already there but for many Europeans and to the World maps, many weren't!

The Monument to the Discoveries is not a celebration of the slave trade so Y'all will not just come around and question our History because then you may give the Portuguese Nation a good reason to ship you back to the Americas!

Portugal loves our African friends and we are trying to repair the damages but those repairs will not be respecting African History and ignore everything else the Nation achieved!

The Portuguese are not unaware or arrogant about its past relating to slavery and no more than the Italians are unaware of their past towards the treatment of the Christians and slaves by throwing them into their lion pits and their horrible gladiator fights for the entertainment of the Romans or the British and their African and Asian interventions and lets not forget the USA "military" intervention and their heroes coming back home glorified for their civilian casualties around the World!! In fact, if you inform yourselves properly and honestly, you will become aware that in Jamaica there were free black land owners that owned slaves.They ended up receiving compensation from the British government when slavery was abolished!

The new Portuguese generations are quite ashamed of Portugal's slave trade past and that is one of the reasons why we are considered a very welcoming Nation for African immigrants inclusively as part of a honest desire to learn from all cultures and also to show its willingness to make reparations from its dark past.

So let's stop the hypocrisy and cynicism and try to be happy together!

I don't understand the problem some people has with the word "discovery". if you go looking for gold, and you find a nugget, you can't say you discovered it just because it was already there? you are all welcome and we may accept all questions about our past if you do it with an open mind, if you want to understand that past. but if you want to re-write history with prejudgements and clichés, to sell tours, for instance, pls don't bother us. being black or white!

You were in Coimbra🙂? Did you like it?

I would like to thank Naky for his work, I think it opens the eyes to the hidden legacy of slavery inside Portugal, something that all Portuguese should be more aware of and less arrogant about.
Without denying that there is racism at many levels (we do unfortunately see prejudice based on the way you look, speak and behave), and not experiencing it firsthand, I don’t seem to agree with the idea that black children are denied access to good education. All children are entitled to education irrespectively of their status, with most children going to public schools funded by the central government which has applied an egalitarian principle. How well a child progresses in the education system is of course dependent on social-economic factors, though the quality of school staff and local environment does play in. 
What I would say is that governments should have done a much better job at integrating families that came from Africa, because many of them have got stuck in a cycle of low wage jobs, though that is not exclusive to these communities. There is also a lot of stigma because many of these communities live in "Bairros Sociais" (social projects?) with many problems.

As for most not being considered Portuguese citizens, that is an extremely dubious generalisation… Any legal migrant can apply for Portuguese citizenship after living here for 5 years, the same applies for any children born here after 5 years – Portugal has applied Jus sanguinis principle for centuries. In some situations that can even be automatic right when they are born, depending on parent status (not necessary to be Portuguese). The problem is that throughout the years many came here illegally, and so their children got stuck in a limbo. Due to that there have been a few times when the authorities made an effort for people to legalise their situation, without penalty. Now, I cannot speak for those who had to go through that, but it doesn’t seem fair to describe it as if people that came from Africa were denied easy access to citizenship, when every foreigner have had to go through the same process.

About the discoveries; it’s a question of perspective. It doesn’t stop being a discovery for the Portuguese just because there were other people there, so much so that the objective was already defined beforehand, they knew they wanted to go to India and also reach Ethiopia, everyone knew these places existed. The challenge and true discovery was making the journey from Portugal to reach India, in between other lands were discovered (that is, they didn’t know about them before), some of them had actually never been visited before by humans, and new maps were drawn so others could return. So it’s a bit silly to argue about the Portuguese using the word "discovery" to talk about their own history.

I am confused! You are from an African country, (Togo) not even from PALOP's, why should you have a portuguese passport? It's the sane situation as if you were Danish, French, etc. Black children born in Portugal have the same schooling rights as portuguese children (black or white) or did I misunderstand the statement?

Hi Halisi, Ric and Naky, you are very welcome here in Portugal! The type of society we are dreaming, at least since April 25th 1974, is a society where every Portuguese or resident don't need any kind of adjective. Simply Portuguese, or better said: simply human, fellow, friend, neighbor, colleague…
All the best.

As a white Portuguese I'm really glad you talk about how racism is perceived and experienced by black people here.
I don't pretend to know what it is like to be a Black person here and the struggles folks go through, so I'm glad to learn about it.

You're in Coimbra, my hometown, so I would suggest you go to Portugal dos Pequeninos which is a kind of theme park for kids made during the dictatorship to show the Portuguese "Empire" and the description that is written of our African colonies, really makes me uncomfortable.
Been really struggling if those should be rewritten or be left as a testament of an era we can't be pride of.

About this Indigenous Americans vs Christopher Columbus thing – this is another example of how everything is reduced to simple terms in the USA. By that same criteria who are the Portuguese? Are we Lusitanians? Celts? Romans? Suebis? Alans? Vandals? Visigoths? Arabs? Each of these peoples basically massacred the ones that came before them, occupied the land, and were then themselves massacred at some later date by someone else. And obviously most of these peoples came from far away lands before they arrived here. It would be very artificial to claim that any of them were the "native" population. That's what most of History is about, a flux (I didn't even attempt to go beyond the Lusitanians because the sources become ever scarcer). But then some people single out a specific migration or massacre somewhere, and suddenly History is no longer a flux of migrations and massacres but a frozen event in which the rightful owners of the place (chosen arbitrarily, basically) where massacred by the unrightful newcomers to that place (labelled as invaders, as if the ones who were massacred by them had been in that place since Adam and Eve).

In this context, the vision of Portugal in Africa as colonizers is only half-true, but what it mostly is is very simplistic. Italy was a colonizer in Eritrea, they acquired it in 1882 and lost it in 1941 – a grand total of 59 years. The Portuguese established themselves in Angola in the 16th century and were expelled in 1975, around 400 years later. FOUR HUNDRED YEARS! For how long has the USA existed?

So how realistic is this view of Portuguese presence in Africa as a temporary occupation by a foreign colonizer?

Hi, I've been following the video with interest, I hope your plan A goes ahead, and you come to Portugal, you won't find as many Americans as in Mexico. Having said that, I have a few observations to make to what Naky said:

1. Discoveries – The term refers to a set of discoveries made in the 15th and 16th centuries (1400-1580). Discoveries and innovations also scientific and cultural – it is necessary to remember that this period is important throughout Europe, we are in the so-called Renaissance (where Italy is the intellectual center), Europe comes out of the so-called Dark Ages. Portugal has a role in the advancement of nautical techniques (not exclusively Portuguese, of course), which will allow the navigations that lead to territorial expansion – "discovery" of America and in the Portuguese case of Brazil. Yes, it was not a discovery (except in the case of desert islands like Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde), because they were already populated lands. But an important Portuguese discovery was the sea route to India, circumnavigating Africa. Africa or India have NOT been discovered, nor is it claimed to have been discovered! New lands were not put on the map, or rather they were, because before the cartography was rudimentary, incomplete and wrong! It was only discovered how to reach India by sea, and establish a trade route, so that Portugal would become the European point of distribution of trade with India, instead of being done by land, as until then.

Portugal is proud of that time, the 16th century was the time of greatest expansion and wealth in the country, which country would disdain its time of greater power?

2. Golden visa – there is a program that gives a RESIDENCE visa to those who invest more than 500,000 euros (in real estate or job creation). It does not give nationality, we are NOT a Caribbean country that sells passports. This program is partly responsible for the gentrification of Lisbon, many people outside the EU, to have residency in Europe bought a house (rare cases of investment for job creation), mainly Brazilians and Chinese. And there is also another program, I don't know the name, which allows EU pensioners who live here for more than 6 months a year to pay their taxes here, at a lower rate than they would pay in their countries – the result Lisbon was filled with French , expensive houses became even more expensive, and the Algarve already had a good share of British people (with them leaving the EU, I don't know how it is). And the tourism boom has led to many (simpler) homes in the center being converted into Airbnb. And no, we don't give nationality to everyone who is born here, unlike the USA, only if at least one of the parents is Portuguese. I think the law will be changed to allow newborns whose parents have lived here for a few years to acquire nationality.

"do you understand the words coming out of my mouth" lol don't regress because they hate your progress!!! keep going!!! He speaks so many languages!! thats amazing!!

"you're black, I'm black…" – why do Americans see everything in terms of race, and are totally obsessed by it? The guy at passport control couldn't care less whether you're black or not, and you were definitely not his "brothers". His attitude changed according to your nationality, not your race. You keep complaining about racism but you wanted the guy at passport control to see you as black, instead of as Americans.

Want to see an example of how integration gets a lot easier for people who put race aside?

No one is more Portuguese than the Goans, in the space of three generations they twice lost everything they had because they refused to let go of their Portuguese identity.

First in 1961, when India invaded and conquered the last remaining Portuguese territories there; Goa, Damão, and Diu. Many Goans said "no, thank you", and they left (mostly for Mozambique, then still part of Portugal). Obviously they lost most of what they had in the process.

Then in 1975 Mozambique declared independence. Again the Goans said "No, thank you, we're Portuguese". This time they literally lost everything they had, and relocated "en masse" to what was left of Portugal.

Find me a YouTube video of Goans talking about racism, discrimination, feeling divided between Portuguese culture and Goan culture, etc. There must be one or two somewhere (I've never seen one) but they'll be a rarity.

The reward? Goans climbed the PT social pyramid to the very top, presently manage and/or own many of the big PT companies, and even our prime-minister is of Goan origin. The secret formula? They decided long ago that they are Portuguese, final!

So all this talk about how life here is so much more difficult for people of African origin is a bit fragile, and quite subjective in my opinion. Forget about race, decide that you're Portuguese, and climb the social pyramid. The Goans did it and they are dark skinned.

But didn't the Goans suffer any discrimination? A bit yes, but discrimination in Portugal isn't that difficult to overcome if you pay attention to the following:

a) money, and social position trump everything else in Portugal (I'll leave space for a discussion on whether gender should be added to this list) – the 2013 Oprah Winfrey hissy fit in Switzerland while shopping for a $38K purse is almost impossible to understand from a Portuguese perspective. Race in Portugal comes either in third of fourth place in the "judgemental hierarchy"

b) we have a saying here 'Em Portugal não há racismo, só há racismozinho'. Which I would translate as 'In Portugal you'll only find petty racism' (as in petty crime vs serious crime) – it is extremely rare for racism here to be physical or violent. So while racism will be an obstacle, it is a mound here, not a mountain – and the moment you've acquired some money or social status racism gets downgraded from mound to a small irregularity in the terrain, probably no bigger than many of the other irregularities that exist in any terrain

c) the Portuguese feel uncomfortable with people who talk as if they were "half-Portuguese". We'll accept almost anyone as Portuguese and we give our nationality away with an ease that is almost impossible to find anywhere else on the planet, but you're either a foreigner or Portuguese. Both are perfectly acceptable, saying you feel "half-Portuguese" isn't.

So sorry I missed the live but watching the reply now.

Hello from NYC.

Peace be onto all of you/Hello.