Patricia Silva Magalhaes
SER CRIANÇA NEGRA NO BRASIL: racismo, resistências e caminhos na educação
Resumo
This research investigates how the colonial, slaveholding, and racist structures of Brazil's socio-historical formation shaped profoundly unequal childhoods, denying Black children the right to care and protection. It stems from a concern rooted in my own trajectory as a Black woman, marked by racism and invisibilization during my education in Social Work, and is guided by the following question: how do the process of enslavement in Brazil and the consolidation of the myth of racial democracy influence identity formation and access to rights among Black children in contemporary education? The general objective is to analyze the historical trajectory of childhood policies in Brazil, highlighting how processes of social and racial exclusion continue to affect educational equity. Specifically, it seeks to investigate the denial of childhood to enslaved children and to problematize the effects of racism on the identity formation of Black children in the school environment. The study is grounded in the historical-dialectical method and the concept of structural racism, in dialogue with Lélia Gonzalez, Clóvis Moura, Beatriz Nascimento, Eliane Cavalleiro, bell hooks, Dennis de Oliveira, and Adilson Moreira. As its methodological and political axis, it adopts Conceição Evaristo's concept of escrevivência (writing-living), rejecting the alleged neutrality of academic knowledge and affirming memory and lived experience as forms of epistemic insurgency. This is a qualitative-quantitative investigation that combines bibliographic research, analysis of statistical data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and documentary analysis of the 1988 Federal Constitution and the Statute of Children and Adolescents (ECA), as well as cultural and artistic sources such as photographs, poems, and songs. The results indicate that racism in the school environment is not an isolated phenomenon but an expression of historical processes that structure Brazilian social relations. It operates in both institutional and everyday ways and is often naturalized under the label of "bullying."