Talking Racial Inclusion in Niter贸i: Converging Ideas, Concepts, and Strategies through a Bi-National Dialogue.
If racially conscious remedies are to flourish in Brazil and are to be kept in the U.S., effective and quick intervention is urgently needed. The Niter贸i retreat started and finished with this spirit: academics and activists looking for answers, for strategies in how to reframe the discourse and retool the actors who can advocate for the implementation of racially conscious remedies amidst national ideologies and identity politics that are hostile to the idea of racial consciousness. Brazil has claimed racial harmony through the myth of racial democracy since the early thirties with the work of Gilberto Freyre. The U.S.
Supreme Court has claimed an interpretation of colorblindness that reaches back to the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Currently, these two ideologies are responsible for constant attacks on affirmative action policies.
There are many arguments that are universally used by affirmative action opponents in Brazil and in the U.S. These arguments were widely articulated and deconstructed during the four days scholars and activists were united in Niter贸i. Taking advantage of 9 different sections, experts at and advocates for affirmative action analyzed discourses such as meritocracy, miscegenation, multi-culturalism, reverse-discrimination, and non-racialism. They also focused on the institutionalization of racism, unpacking racial dogmas, and determining pragmatic strategies to demonstrate the existence of pervasive, somewhat similar, American and Brazilian systems of exclusion, which are delimited by racial (or color) lines.
Specific debates surrounded the controversies on race-conscious affirmative action and education. More than simply a bi-national dialogue between intellectuals of the
One of the main products of this 4-day, bi-national immersion was the will to investigate mechanisms to educate the population on the real meaning and objective of affirmative action. Awareness permits us to claim and to work for the construction of public policy that takes into consideration the meaning of being Black and the meaning of being white in
A complete Memo of the debates and discussions facilitated by the Niter贸i Event will be posted at www.aapf.org shortly. We anticipate that this meeting will generate new opportunities of interaction as well as innovative educational materials about the real meaning of affirmative action and its role in forming a society with less exclusion and more racially equity.
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