Black intellectuals networks
The formal spaces for knowledge production in Brazil have changed, thanks to a lot of struggle by black movements. “The quota policy was the great revolution implemented in Brazil and it benefits the whole society,” said Frei David Santos of Educafro to Agência Brasil, informing that the number of blacks at the university increased by 400%.
Not only the affirmative action policies, but also initiatives such as the Program to Support Federal University Restructuring and Expansion Plans (Reuni), the incorporation of the student financing program (Fundo de Financiamento Estudantil — Fies) and the creation of the Program University for All (ProUni) allowed the expansion of higher education in the recent period, but many inequalities still persist. (On the subject, access the report Affirmative Action and the Black population in higher education: access and student profile, by Tatiana Dias Silva, from Ipea)
+ Steps that don’t come from now: many, many have been building this path for a long time. Listen to this speech by the sociologist Eduardo de Oliveira e Oliveira, who organized the “Quinzena do Negro da USP” in 1977. He says: “We are entitled to this institution, especially this one [São Paulo University], which is public. And we are doing the Quinzena do Negro [Black Fortnight] within the university so that the university assumes its responsibility to educate more blacks. So that, like Beatriz [Nascimento], who passed through a university, they can go to the quilombo, to the favela, wherever they go, and give their teachings there. Without a university, without a title, it would be impossible for me to organize this event here, because I would be just a black man. Today, after twelve years of work, I am told to come in and sit down, because I am Eduardo de Oliveira and Oliveira, who has a title, who does not intend to be a doctor, who has not turned white, but who uses it as an instrument of work to be able to affirm myself as black and help other blacks affirm themselves as such”. Images of this event and of several other important moments of the Brazilian Black Movements between 1977 and 1988, stitched by the history of the historian and activist Beatriz Nascimento, are in the documentary Orí (1989), by Raquel Gerber.
The path towards the expansion and democratization of higher education is still long. (Last week, on March 25, 2021, the first black rector of an university in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the chemical engineer Drª Luanda Silva de Moraes, took office at the rectory of Uezo, State University center of the West Zone.)
“Gradually, researchers from different social and ethnic-racial groups and/or committed to these social sectors begin to insert themselves more significantly in the country’s universities, especially public ones, and unleash another type of knowledge production. A knowledge realized ‘by’ these subjects who, when developing their research, privilege the partnership ‘with’ social movements and extrapolate the still hegemonic tendency in the field of Human and Social Sciences to produce knowledge ‘about’ the movement and its subjects ” (Nilma Lino Gomes, in ‘O Movimento Negro Educador’, p.421).
As we have already talked about here, all of this is not “just” about racial justice. Science that is produced by a small portion of the population is a flawed science.
All practices that exclude or deny non-white people as producers of culture, knowledge and science produce “a reduction in the horizon of possible knowledge for humanity”, says Sueli Carneiro.
Practices that lead to the so-called epistemicide, to the death of the knowledge of the other. Epistemicide is “any attempt to silence, cancel, subalternize and make non-hegemonic knowledge invisible”, as Vinícius da Silva explains. Listen directly to Sueli Carneiro in this 2-minute video:
Yes, we can do it differently, and there are several researchers working together to build networks and collectives that are reframing and transforming spaces of knowledge and power. Places where “conducting research can only be successful when we recover our memories of resistance and when we understand the processes carried out in collaborative networks”, as Ana Beatriz da Silva says in the text “Insurgent praxis in black women’s organizations: anti-racist education as centrality”.
I am writing this text to celebrate and share about the existence of three collective initiatives in Rio de Janeiro:
Rede Carioca de Etnoeducadoras Negras (RECEN) [Carioca Network of Black Women Ethnoeducators]
Created in 2015, the Rede Carioca de Etnoeducadoras Negras is a space for exchanging anti-racist education experiences (visit their website and Facebook).
As a proposal for“ unlearning ”and “re-learning”, we assume counter-hegemonic paths that involve cosmo-perceptions arising from Afro-descendant and African cultures, and therefore, it is important to include the multiple education spaces, going beyond the walls of schools. This is because other educations take place in neighborhood associations, in the territories of communities on the peripherals, in Casas de Santo [Afro-religious communities], in carnival groups, in Black Women Organizations, in black student groups, in political training and identity affirmation groups”.
The Rede Carioca de Etnoeducadoras Negras is the result of the inspirations and dialogue established with the Red de Maestros y Maestras Hilos de Ananse, from Bogotá, Colombia. They are also connected with initiatives such as the Tertúlia de Mujeres Afrolatinoamericanas (Buenos Aires), and the Red Barrial Afrodescendiente de Cuba (Havana).
“The dialogue with Latin America, especially with the Afro-Colombian experience, is a milestone for the creation of different collective spaces and the contact with these groups and their cooperation dynamics provided a different understanding of what it is like to face silences about power asymmetries in the educational spheres and, above all, those managed by networks of popular educators”, say Claudia Miranda, Danielle Galvão and Fanny Quiñones in the article “Redes de Etnoeducadoras in Brazil and Colombia: movements from home to home and home afuera”.
This article opens the book “Pesquisa em rede de mulheres negras”, [Black women networked research”, launched by this network of researchers, which brings together researches on school trajectories of black women domestic workers, sex workers, incarcerated women, etc.
“We can affirm that researching in black women’s networks has meant recomposing the possibilities of crossing political-epistemic borders, possibilities of unlearning about the invented narratives about black social movements and black women”, says Claudia Miranda (p.44).
Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas Intelectuais Negras na UFRJ [Black Intellectual Women Studies and Research Group at UFRJ]
Led by Profª Drª Giovana Xavier, the Black Intellectual Studies and Research Group at UFRJ emerged in 2014 “from the desire to bring together black women from different areas to build a black feminist network engaged in the production of knowledge and the promotion of actions focused on black women communities, their experiences and stories”. In 2015, Giovana Xavier began offering the course “Black Intellectuals: writings of herself, transgressive knowledge and educational practices for women”, which later unfolded in other courses, events and extension projects.
One of the group’s actions was the production of the Visible Black Women Intellectuals catalog, which brings together 181 black professionals working in different areas in the five regions of the country.
“Anchored in the theoretical-methodological contributions of Afro-Brazilian civilizing values such as ancestry, affectivity, body, playfulness (TRINDADE, 2006), the presence of the Intelectuais Negras Group at UFRJ generates a multitude of content on racial and gender relations, important for the study of history of the present time. Identification, recognition, empathy. Curiosity, strangeness, suspicion, in front of an instigating landscape. A classroom on the south side of Rio de Janeiro full of young black girls. University students from different states, countries and corners of the city, mixing journals, poems, colored pencils and scientific texts, experience unique academic training”, writes Giovana in this article.
Coletivo de Docentes Negras/os da UFRJ [Collective of Black Professors from Rio de Janeiro Federal University]
Rio de Janeiro has yet to celebrate the launch of the Collective of Black Professors from UFRJ, a newly created movement that, on March 22, 2021, delivered to the rectory a manifesto with a series of demands to reduce racism at the university and expand black participation in academic life.
The Collective is composed of professors from different career levels, from all UFRJ Centers and areas of knowledge, the Science and Culture Forum and the Macaé Campus, from 20 University units.
Initially signed by 59 professors, the manifesto lists 10 proposals, including making it mandatory to reserve vacancies for black and indigenous people in the selection processes for the entry of students in all UFRJ graduate programs, and to build and make possible actions of visibility, recognition and appreciation of the memory of the academic and technological production of black and indigenous teachers at UFRJ. Access the manifest here,
+ The book “Black Encyclopedia: Afro-Brazilian Biographies” has also just been released by Flávio Gomes, Jaime Lauriano and Lilia Schwarcz, with 416 biographical entries that recover the silenced memory of several black people for the Brazilian public. “The Encyclopedia Negra does a historical repair work by identifying figures unknown to most Brazilians”, wrote Jefferson Barbosa. Check here an online conversation by the authors mediated by the philosopher Djamila Ribeiro (who coordinates the collection Feminismos Plurais, which disseminates critical content produced by black people, especially women, the affordable price and accessible language)
The road is long, but there are many, many pointing the way and moving forward.
