Education for Racial Equality: Confronting Epistemicide and Genocide of Black and Indigenous People in Brazil

Abstract

Education has historically been a battleground for Brazilian social movements, especially the Black Movement, which for decades has argued that racial inequality imposes direct and indirect barriers to the access and permanence of the Black population in formal education spaces. This text aims to reflect on these dynamics of resistance within Brazilian higher education, considering that the right to education, despite being inalienable, is susceptible to the political actions of sectors that view the university as a producer and reproducer of epistemic, economic, and social privileges. By understanding the workings of Brazilian racism and the current reverberations of the myth of racial democracy, the goal is to highlight initiatives that break with epistemicide, uncover the official premises regarding who the university space and education are intended for, and propose a broader understanding of education for racial equality. This is seen as an investment in transforming not only the university and modes of knowledge production but also, and necessarily, Brazilian society and its mechanisms of annihilation of Black and Indigenous people.