The anti-racism theme in the debate on Brazilian social formation and social classes: a challenge to contemporary Social Work

Abstract

The world is undergoing a civilizational crisis that, aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, has
made historical contradictions striking. We are experiencing the crisis – and fighting for the overthrow
– of the Western civilization invented by whiteness, a model that in the past five centuries has used
everything and everyone as merchandise and excluded from the human condition those who are not
within its scope.
Race and the social relations derived from it, while being developed as a modern idea, shaped
the racial hierarchy worldwide, altogether with the contemporary structural and structuring racism of
capitalism. In Brazil, it is at the base of inequities in access to rights when comparing the living conditions
of white populations with black and indigenous ones. Race refers to racism, slavery, colonialism and
historically constructed images of “being black”, “being indigenous” and “being white”. It has a
political and ideological meaning that creates and perpetuates social inequalities and privileges linked
to racialization of social groups.