Affirmative Action Policies and the Decolonization of the Brazilian University
摘要
In Brazil, affirmative action policies have significantly increased the admission of Black students and other marginalized groups to prestigious public universities. Providing these groups with access to the university is the first step toward achieving social justice and supporting any Brazilian university decolonization project. However, their presence has made racial, gender, sexual orientation, and class discrimination explicit. This chapter discusses how racism affected the academic experiences of Black undergraduate students at a Brazilian state university. It examines quantitative data collected in an observational cross-sectional study conducted from 2017 to 2018 at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), focusing on the intersections between race and gender. The results indicated that while both Black male and female students experienced racism on campus, Black women faced even greater discrimination and disrespect mainly because of their appearance. The Black students’ experiences offer insights into combating institutional and gender-based racism, which is essential to decolonizing the Brazilian university. Advancing anti-racist and gender equality agendas is vital for increasing the representation of excluded groups as postgraduate students and faculty members and for integrating new subjects, knowledge, and epistemologies into undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, teaching methods, and research programs.