Blank boards: of the mechanisms that attempt to prevent the formation of a critical and collective Brazilian black racial consciousness

Abstract

This work aims to debate how whiteness, as an ideological structure, acts to erase and empty black contributions to the history of Brazil, making it difficult to build a critical black racial consciousness. The research begins by carrying out a critical study of the post-abolition period, on the situation of the black subject as a former slave in a still slave-owning society that denies him wage labor, creating ideological discourses to marginalize and discriminate against him. Afterwards, an analysis is carried out of whiteness as a structure that serves to ensure the privileges of white people, which uses mechanisms such as racial democracy and meritocracy to invalidate the Brazilian socio-historical process and cultural plurality. Finally, it will be discussed how black subjects who are subjected to this ideological discourse of whiteness accept the structures that make them deny their black ancestry and identity, thus hindering the formation of a collective and critical black racial consciousness.