Higher Education as a space to break “the silences of home and school”: the process of identity construction and belonging of brown students

Abstract

This article is the result of research projects we have been developing that focus on the process of implementing affirmative action policies in Higher Education with attention to changes in organizational and epistemological culture, essential so that affirmative action policies are not limited to the access of students previously excluded or with unequal opportunities and possibilities of entering this level of education. In this article, we analyze the processes of identity construction and ethno-racial belonging of people of mixed race, from interracial families, who are currently students in Higher Education at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). For this dialogue, we require references in the fields of sociology, psychology and education (Carneiro, 2003; Devulsky, 2021; Fanon, 2008; Gomes, 2003, 2018; Gonzalez, 1984; Guimarães, 2003, 2009; Hall, 2006, 2008; Munanga 1999; Schucman, 2014, 2018). The interviews with self-declared brown students allowed us to understand the dilemmas experienced in the construction of an ethnic-racial belonging defined in part by phenotypic characteristics, by the pigmentation of skin and hair, but also by a pact of silence that is broken in Higher Education. The speeches demonstrate that the university impacts the construction of identity and ethno-racial belonging, breaking the cycles of silencing operationalized in family and school experiences prior to higher education. Even with the limits imposed by the sample, located in a single campus of a university, the data constructed in this research signals the importance of strengthening in Higher Education the access to formative spaces on ethnic-racial relations, identity, and ethnic-racial belonging.