RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Professors, researchers, and students from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) and black movements launched, on Wednesday, November 6th, the Observatory on Racism.
The initiative aims to research racial issues with scientific rigor and contribute with studies and actions to fight racism that lies not only in individuals but in the organization of Brazilian society, according to a report by Jô Miyagui from TVT.
“Our goal is precisely this, to provide a proposal, guidelines, studies, also offer courses, supporting materials for people and universities in need of educational and scientific support,” said Almunita dos Santos, a member of the Observatory on Racism.
Student Carolina Dutra Pereira, who is also part of the Observatory and part of the NegraSô collective, adds that the initiative encompasses several national and international areas and activities. “In order for us to know where we are heading, we have to know where we came from. The Observatory is precisely that”, she explains. “It is to establish public policies that can minimally fight racism.”
To this day, racial prejudice in Brazil is reflected in different data, as in the study published this Wednesday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), pointing out that the black population, the majority in the country, earns up to 31 percent less than the white population and, among the poorest, 75 percent are black.
Fighting this discrimination involves, therefore, the acknowledgment of this racist society, but also the government, as the journalist, teacher, and writer Bianca Santana alerts.
“We need black people to hold positions of power, who have the anti-racist struggle as their motivator. And when, naturally, we have white candidates, because this needs to be representative of society, these people also need to understand the racial issue as the structuring of our greatest injustices and inequalities”, says the journalist.