Pedagogy professor publishes his doctorate thesis as a book

Professor Dr. Bruno de Oliveira Ribeiro, from the Faculty of Pedagogy of the University of Rio Verde – UniRV, published, as a book, his doctorate thesis titled “Who is black in Brazil? Affirmative action and the government of differences”. The book presents the research done by the professor between 2016 and 2020 in the Júlio de Mesquita Filho University of the State of São Paulo (UNESP – Marília Campus).

The object of study in the project is the criteria that define what a black individual is regards to affirmative action policies in Brazilian public universities. Norms starting in 2012 standardize most models for affirmative action in public universities and, by doing so, altered the definition criteria for what a black person is. This made hegemonic the self-phenotypical identification as the selection process, with the creation of racial self-declaration validation boards, as a form of selecting affirmative action students in these universities.

The professor points out that these procedures reinforce an essentialization and depoliticization of racial identities, because they base themselves only in phenotype. Concepts as racial identity, race, racism and cultural differences, all of them central to the understanding of contemporary racial relations, are reduced to a technicality and judicialization.

Bruno is a doctor in Social Sciences from UNESP, master in Social Sciences from the State University of Londrina (UEL) and graduated in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS). He works as a university professor since 2014.