This article analyzes how Black Consciousness and Citizenship (CCN), a curriculum produced at the Steve Biko Cultural Institute (Biko) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, is influential to the production of a Black identity. In addition, I assess “the relationship between Black identity and education” at Biko through the lens of Zirkel and Johnson’s strengths-based narratives as a counternarrative to anti-Blackness and Afrophobia in Brazilian society. CCN is elevated in analysis as a culturally representative model of education for Afro-Brazilian youth in Salvador and the city’s periphery. Culturally representative education here refers to a racially, culturally, and socially inclusive educational mode. Zirkel and Johnson’s recommended approaches are parallel to those employed through CCN to produce a positive identification with Black racial identity which counters anti-Black and Afrophobic sentiment.
BaileyS. (2009a). Group dominance and the myth of racial democracy: Antiracism attitudes in Brazil. American Sociological Review, 69(5), 728–747.
2.
BaileyS. (2009b). Legacies of race: Identities, attitudes, and politics in Brazil. Stanford University Press.
3.
BashiV. (2004). Globalized anti-blackness: Transnationalizing western immigration law, policy, and practice. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(4), 584–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/01491987042000216726
4.
BledsoeA.WrightW. J. (2019). The anti-Blackness of global capital. Environment and Panning D: Society and Space, 37(1), 8–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818805102
5.
BourdieuP. (1986). The forms of capital. In RichardsonJ. G. (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–260). Greenwood Press.
6.
BourdieuP. (1998). Practical reason: On the theory of action. Stanford University Press.
7.
dos SantosS. A. (2002). Historical roots of the “whitening” of Brazil. Latin American Perspectives, 29(1), 61–82.
8.
DubeG. (2018). Afrophobia in Mzansi? Evidence from the 2013 South African Social Attitudes Survey. Journal of Southern African Studies, 44(6), 1005–1021. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2018.1533300
GillamR. (2016). Learning to transgress: Law 10.639 and teacher training classrooms in São Paulo, Brazil. Transforming Anthropology, 24(1), 70–79.
11.
GomesN. L. (2015). Making the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African history and culture compulsory: Tensions and contradictions for anti-racist education in Brazil. In AraújoM.MaesoS. R. (Eds.), Eurocentrism, racism and knowledge (pp. 192–208). Palgrave Macmillan.
12.
GusmãoN. M. M. (2006). Trajetos identitários e Negritude: jovens africanos no Brasil e em Portugal. Impulso, 17(43), 45–57.
13.
HarperB. E. (2007). The relationship between Black racial identity and academic achievement in urban settings. Theory into Practice, 46(3), 230–238.
14.
HernandezT. K. (2013). Racial subordination in Latin America: The role of the state, customary law, and the new civil rights response. Cambridge University Press.
15.
Hordge-FreemanE. (2015). The color of love: Racial features, stigma and socialization in Black Brazilian families. University of Texas Press.
OliveiraM. G.SilvaP. V. B. (2017). Educação Étnico-Racial e Formação Inicial de Professores: a recepção da Lei 10.639/03. Educação & Realidade, 42(1), 183–196.
25.
PerryK. Y. (2016). Geographies of power: Black women mobilizing intersectionality in Brazil. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 14(1), 94–120.
26.
PinhoP. (2006). Afro-esthetics in Brazil. In NutallS. (Ed.), Beautiful/ugly: African and diaspora aesthetics (pp. 266–289). Duke University Press.
27.
RiessmanC. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. SAGE.
28.
SeigelM. (2009). Uneven encounters: Making race and nation in Brazil and the United States. Duke University Press.
StepanN. L. (1990). Eugenics in Brazil, 1917-1940. In AdamsM. B. (Ed.), The wellborn science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (pp. 110–152). Oxford University Press.
31.
TellesE. E. (2004). Race in another America: The significance of skin color in Brazil. Princeton University Press.
32.
TwineF. W. (1998). Racism in a racial democracy: The maintenance of white supremacy in Brazil. Rutgers University Press.
33.
WaiganjoA. G. (2018). Coping mechanisms in navigating xenophobia-Afrophobia-related challenges within the transnational space: Case of Somali refugee women in Gauteng, South Africa. Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l’integration et de La Migration Internationale, 19(3), 649–666. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-018-0537-5
34.
WarikooN.SinclairS.FeiJ.Jacoby-SenghorD. (2016). Examining racial bias in education: A new approach. Educational Researcher, 45(9), 508–514.
35.
YossoT. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.
36.
ZirkelS.JohnsonT. (2016). Mirror, mirror on the wall: A critical examination of the conceptualization of the study of Black racial identity in education. Educational Researcher, 45(5), 301–311.
