ABSTRACT
The colonial heritage in Brazil imprints its marks on education, such as through curricular Eurocentrism, racial inequalities in school trajectories, and the whitening of professional bodies. On the other hand, subalternized groups have always sought strategies for accessing education and demanded policies from the state. This chapter focuses on the struggles of the Black Brazilian Movement. After the mobilizations and pressures of this social movement in preparation for the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, educational movements gained strength and intensify new agendas and arenas of dispute. Law 10.639/2003, which alters the school curriculum by introducing African and Black history, expands disputes in the school environment and in teacher training. Curriculum disputes also occur in university environments: some universities adopt racial quotas since 2003, and a national law was passed in 2012. With the increasing presence of Black Brazilians in universities, new pressures include quotas in postgraduate courses and faculty competitions, as well as the racialization of research agendas and theoretical and epistemological curricular matrixes. In addition to the creation of the Brazilian Association of Black Researchers, several organized groups of Black students and/or professors constitute new political subjects in universities.
