A journey towards the emancipation of Black and Indigenous people: anti-racist education is not about educating racists

Abstract

This article discusses anti-racist education in the contemporary context, starting from the following question: what is the role of anti-racist education in the anti-racist struggle? The objective was to analyze the role, configuring its limits and possibilities, of anti-racist education in the deconstruction of racism and in the development of racial literacy among Black and Indigenous peoples. It is based on the premise that anti-racist education is a path to the emancipation of Black and Indigenous people, forged in the anti-racist and anti-class struggle. The methodology used is characterized as qualitative exploratory-descriptive research, based on bibliographic and documentary review supported by Laws 10.639/03 and 11.645/08. The results indicate that racism is intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production and that non-Black and non-Indigenous people, whether racist or not, already have a racial education based on the hegemonic paradigm of whiteness – “whitecentric education” – and that anti-racist education is a tool for empowering Black and Indigenous people in the first instance, with a revolutionary role in overcoming the economic and political foundations of the capitalist logic that sustains racism.