The denunciation of racism and the contestation of racial democracy by the black press in the beginnings of São Paulo football

Abstract

The Black Press emerged in São Paulo in the early years of the 20th century as a collective that addressed the racial issue in its economic, political and cultural context. They provoke debate through discussions about the structure of power, models of social and cultural organization, and forms of recognition and status by revealing attempts to deny these social inequities. Given this finding, the objective of this article is to analyze the denunciation of episodes of racial discrimination and the contestation of the identity myth of racial democracy in São Paulo football at the beginning of the 20th century through the publications of the Black Press. As a source, we used the newspapers available in the microfilms of the National Library. After reading the articles that thematized the sport, we selected two that dealt with the repercussion of prejudice and racial discrimination in São Paulo football in that context. In the analyzed period, we can observe that in São Paulo football there was the inclusion in certain spaces and exclusion in others, which prevented the realization of democratized relationships and provided the reproduction of the contradictions of racism in society. It was concluded that there was tension between the coexistence of the denunciation of racism and the praise of racial democracy in the early days of football in São Paulo.