Overview of Affirmative Actions in the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Santa Catarina: between conflicts and achievements

Abstract

Affirmative Actions (AA) are a set of policies, actions and strategies to repair inequalities reproduced in groups historically discriminated against by race, gender, disability, ethnicity, class, etc. Twenty years after the first AA initiative in Higher Education, these have been consolidating as a State policy in direct consonance with the claims of Black Social Movements. In this context, this paper aims to present an overview of the AA policy in the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, presenting a brief history of its implementation and its conflicts. To carry out the study, we read and analyzed notices of the selection processes, minutes of the Collegium meetings as well as the enrollment data. The analysis criteria included the target audience for the reservation of vacancies, use of a validation jury, cutoff score defined for reserved and general vacancies, offer and priority of scholarships and other permanence policies for the AA public. The results indicate that the AA implementing process is permeated by tensions, disputes and negotiations made explicit in the academic culture, based on epistemological definitions, socio-racial relations and structural racism. We also highlight the decrease in the number of self-declared black students in relation to the years prior to the policy, as a result of the grouping of blacks and browns not only as a category of racial belonging, but also as a claim for rights of access by reservation of vacancies.