Contemporary Issues: Race and Education in Brazil

This presentation aims at discussing how Brazilian education has approached issues of race and racism. Firstly, we contextualize race relations in Brazil, a country that only in the last decade has institutionally denied the belief on the myth of a racial democracy. Through the analysis of some data of the Brazilian census, we focus on the challenges of defining Blackness in Brazilian society, especially when compared to the American contexts and, at the same time, we discuss evidences that dismantle the myth of a Brazilian racial democracy. The focus, then, shifts to affirmative action measures that have taken place in higher education (quotas for Black students) and in basic education (primary and secondary schools). Since the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture have become mandatory in Brazilian primary and secondary schools, various actions took place in order to prepare teachers to approach these subjects in many content areas. However, we understand that this is a moment of a “dynamic tension” (Praxedes, 2011) that is both creating new ways of confronting racism as well as placing new challenges for school communities. Finally, we conclude our presentation by stating that even considering all the challenges and discourses against any sort of affirmative action measures the scene in Brazil is much more favorable since the country has started to face racism at the governmental level.