Black population health: race and class in academic power-knowledge discourse

Abstract

This article brings partial results of a doctoral research that sought to investigate and analyze the institutional discourse at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) regarding topics related to racial quotas and the health of the black population. With Foucauldian assumptions, we used discourse analysis to understand how the university has addressed issues over the years, through a research of news on the official website, called: “Conexão UFRJ”, over a 20-year time frame. For this article, we focused on the topic: Black Population Health, understanding it as a preponderant dimension for discussing race issues and knowing that it is an affirmative action policy created to reduce racial inequalities with a focus on improving the health conditions of the black population. In the research carried out, we found eight news items on the topic, most of which were about publicizing events, such as lectures, courses and debates. As a result, we realized that despite being an extremely important policy for academic courses in the health field such as medicine and nursing, for example, since most professionals in training will work in contact with the black population, the topic was little discussed. Furthermore, we observed that discourses on the health of the Black population have been circulating in the academic environment since the beginning of the century, and that it is possible to perceive the Racial Dispositif operating in the institutional context through the news.