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Tauá Pires is co-director of Alziras Institute, an organization that seeks to increase women's participation in the public sector and politics.

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  • Tauá Lourenço Pires

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Q&A with Tauá Lourenço Pires: “For a Young Black Person From The Margins, They Need to Be Able to Advance From Focusing on the Basics of Their Survival to Living a Full Existence in Order for Pursuing Their Dreams and Opportunity to Feel Like A Right”

This post is also available in: Português

The following is part of a series of interviews produced by the Inter-American Dialogue’s Education Program that features Brazil’s Black population’s educational trajectory, challenges, and future opportunities.

In Brazil, efforts to build a legitimate and lasting democratic project must respond to the historical challenges and realities of a majority Afro-descendant population (55.5 percent, according to the 2022 census). While Brazil often projects an image of racial harmony abroad, its Black population faces severe economic, social, and political disadvantages at home. This disconnect limits Brazil’s potential for development, preventing it from leveraging its diverse society to address regional challenges in a hemisphere that yearns for innovative responses to inequality, social cohesion, and citizenship safeguards.

The context for this interview series could not be more appropriate. Recently, discussions over Brazilian inequalities, especially ethnoracial ones, have regained visibility at home and abroad. In 2023, the federal government re-established the Ministry of Racial Equality and the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, bodies responsible for implementing public policies to combat racism and promote the rights of Black and Indigenous populations, respectively. In addition, the country is reforming the national curriculum frameworks for secondary education, which could present a window of opportunity to address educational deficits and consider the demands of historically marginalized populations.

At the international level, while participating in the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Brazil voluntarily adopted the 18th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) related to racial equality (in addition to the current 17 SDGs of the 2030 Agenda). In addition, the Lula and Biden administrations resumed the Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and Promote Equality (JAPER), an initiative focused on education, healthcare, violence reduction, justice, and preserving the culture and memory of marginalized racial and ethnic populations. Similarly, Brazil has established cooperation channels with countries such as Colombia and Spain, providing exchange activities and sharing experiences of overcoming racism in scientific research, education, history, and culture. Also, during Brazil’s presidency of the G20, the country focused on inequality as the central theme of its four priorities at last year’s summit in Rio: sustainable development, social inclusion, the fight against hunger and poverty, and global governance reforms.

Considering the context and seeking to understand how the Brazilian education system produces unequal educational development trajectories, we spoke to Tauá Lourenço Pires, co-director of the Alziras Institute, an organization that seeks to expand and strengthen the participation of women in Brazilian politics. At the time of the interview, Tauá Pires was coordinator of racial and gender justice at Oxfam Brazil.

Lucas Martins Carvalho (LMC): How do you see the Brazilian education system and its shortfalls with Black populations?

Tauá Pires (TP): The education system and the public policies that support it must recognize young people between 15 and 29 years old as subjects with rights. This is a necessary starting point. Unfortunately, in Brazilian society, the concept of youth varies according to skin color, ZIP code, and social status. When a White young person commits an offense, they are usually portrayed in the newspapers as being a youth or a student. A young Black person is often described as a suspect or an outcast, thus losing their status as an equal subject before the law.

Although public education in Brazil is a constitutional right, Black youth have always faced challenges such as higher dropout rates, higher failure rates, fewer years of study (compared to White counterparts), and a higher illiteracy rate, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) data1.

It is also essential to discuss the mortality rates of Black youth. Every 23 minutes, a young Black person is murdered in Brazil. In 2018, 75.7 percent of homicide victims in Brazil were Black. The mortality rate for Black youth in Brazil is 2.88 times higher than that of Whites, according to the 5th edition of the Adolescent Homicide Index (IHA), released in 2019. On the verge of death, survival becomes a basic challenge, and that reduces the horizon of possibilities for Black youth, including in terms of their personal development.

LMC: What were the educational challenges for Black populations during the COVID-19 pandemic? What is the magnitude of the impact on the educational trajectory of these populations?

TP: In Brazil, school closures were the longest of any country in the world (around 40 weeks in the 2020 school year, compared to 20 weeks on average in Latin America and 10 weeks in Europe). By the beginning of 2021, 91.9 percent of the public school system operated only through remote learning. Therefore, the extended school closures only highlighted problems already known by students, teachers, and other education professionals, from lack of water to maintaining basic hygiene to lack of school meals.

According to the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, in 2022, 24 out of every 100 young Brazilians were neither studying nor working. The question is whether this percentage is, in fact, a “neither-nor” (seen as a matter of choice) rather than a more structural limitation reflecting almost non-existent educational or professional opportunities due to the lack of public policies, adequate conditions for study, social mobility, and accompanying resources. Additionally, many young people, especially Black women, give up work and study to assume the role of caregivers for children, the elderly, and the home.

Another challenge is the failure to properly enforce Law 10.639, which establishes national guidelines for education and includes the subject of “Afro-Brazilian History and Culture” in the official school curriculum. This law is fundamental in tackling institutional racism, promoting self-esteem, a sense of belonging so that young Black people can be part of diverse social spaces. The curriculum is still based on a European model that stems from the colonization process to the present day. Such a worldview does not highlight the knowledge of Native peoples or the history of Black people in building the country, whether in the fight against slavery or the various social contributions made by Black and Indigenous populations in recent centuries.

LMC: Can you give an example of the day-to-day intensification of the educational exclusion of the Black population in the post-pandemic period?

TP: Black youth living in the peripheries and favelas of the country often assume a great deal of responsibility for the sustainability of the family and can rarely devote themselves exclusively to studies and leisure.

During the pandemic, Oxfam Brazil made a documentary in partnership with TV Doc Capão entitled A Conta Fica para a Juventude (The Youth Pays the Bill). The documentary collected testimonies from young people from São Paulo’s low-income areas, reporting their worries and expectations about the COVID-19 pandemic. The documentary revealed a generation concerned about the return of hunger, the increase in deaths and illnesses, unemployment, the lack of adequate conditions for studies, mental health issues, and uncertainty about the future. At the same time, these young people were engaged in community-led initiatives, supporting people with information about the pandemic and how to access social benefits.

While young White students from upscale areas of the cities were able to take advantage of remote learning, with all the adequate resources to continue studying while in social isolation, Black youth were looking for ways to survive by making deliveries on apps, working in the service sector, and without basic resources, such as the internet. According to the IBGE, 4.3 million students entered the pandemic without internet access.

In 2021, the federal government (under the Bolsonaro administration) vetoed financial aid for internet access for public schools. The measure could have benefited around 18 million students and 1.5 million teachers. Studies already show that the acceleration of digitalization in the world of work, coupled with remote education, has increased inequality gaps in Brazil.

LMC: What should be the post-pandemic priorities to guarantee the right to a quality education for the Black population?

TP: The decade before the pandemic outbreak was marked by some milestones that increased access to school and higher education for Blacks. The country adopted a quota system in public universities’ admissions and developed programs such as ProUni, granting scholarships for access to higher education in private universities, and ProJovem, offering adapted education, including professional qualifications, to young people who had not yet completed primary education.

The inclusion of Black youth in the education system is fundamental in the fight against racism. School is still a public space that promotes social mobility and improves lives. On the other hand, inequalities in access and learning, as well as other forms of discrimination and prejudice, also manifest themselves in schools and universities.

The priorities for guaranteeing the right to quality education for the Black population must consider a plan to repair the effects of the pandemic, especially for Black youth, which considers technological access as well as providing mechanisms for access to public policies holistically.

Asking a young Black person in Brazil what their plans are for the next five years can be difficult. For a young black person from the margins, they need to be able to advance from focusing on the basics of their survival to living a full existence in order for pursuing their dreams and opportunity to feel like a right.”

 


1. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) is a federal public administration entity and the country’s main geographic and statistical information provider. The IBGE’s National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostras de Domicílios – PNAD) aims to monitor fluctuations and the short-, medium- and long-term evolution of the labor force, as well as other information necessary for the study of Brazil’s socio-economic development.

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¿Qué tan válido ves tú — o legítimo — el temor que reporta la Casa Blanca de que aumente la migración haitiana?

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“Una política de seguridad que funcione debe tener dos pilares: una visión punitivista donde quien comete un delito vaya preso, pero con debido proceso y bajo investigaciones por un poder judicial independiente y, por otro lado, una serie de políticas que sean más sociales y preventivas que eviten la comisión del delito.” 

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