Policies to promote racial equality and programs for textbook free distribution

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the complex relationship between policies intended to promote racial equality and programs aimed at free distribution of textbooks. The study is based on a critical educational perspective that analyzes textbooks and the literature for the children and the young as curriculum artifacts. We discuss the articulation between black social movements and government apparatuses and their possible relation with changes in the calls for bids set forth by the National Textbook Program. Such calls for bids utilize prescriptions of generic and negative character, but they also contain specific propositional formulations, which require that textbooks have to promote the appreciation of the several ethnic/racial segments existing in the Brazilian society. We discuss the results of research on the relations between black and white people in textbooks used in subjects such as Portuguese, history, geography and science. Results are considered preliminary and point more to permanence than to change in the discourses of textbooks which establish a hierarchy between whites and blacks; and changes are more remarkable in science textbooks. We also analyze the results of drawings and interviews about the recollection of images of black people appearing in textbooks by black students in 5th through the 7th grade. Black students are aware of the racist discourses contained in textbooks and they cause embarrassment and malaise, that is, such contents serve as a sort of institutional racism present in the schools and may have a share in the worse academic achievement that affect black students in education. Since the changes in the textbooks are subtle, black students vehemently claimed for significant changes.