Under the Veil: Pedagogy of Mestizaje and the Silencing of Afro-Brazilian History in the Americas

• In Event: Who's Telling the Story? Interrogating Narratives of Latinidad Across Geopolitical Educational Contexts

Abstract

Although AfroBrazilians “occupy a crucial place in contemporary racial and ethnic relations” (Flores & Román, 2009, p. 319) because their identity complicates the relationship between Blackness and Latinindad, their stories are omitted from the historical memory and their lived experiences are erased from educational research and practices across educational contexts. In education, the lack of nuanced metrics and ethno-racial awareness renders ethnic and racial diversity invisible and masks the unique educational needs of AfroBrazilian students. Hence, this study employs data from a two-year-long qualitative study to critically examine the role of education in shaping AfroBrazilians’ experiences of racialization transnationally. Anchored by the conceptual framework of AfroLatinidades (Laó-Montes, 2005b, 2007) and methodologically situated in the realm of qualitative research, I draw from oral history interviews to articulate education as a key site of examination. I put forth the notion of a pedagogy of mestizaje to articulate the deracialized approaches to the teaching and learning of race and the erasure of Blackness, Black history, and Black identities AfroBrazilians encountered in educational spaces. Heightened by the absence of Black teachers and the lack of preparation of white teachers, the pedagogical manifestations of mestizaje masked racial issues while emphasizing utopic ideas of racial equality and advancing master narratives of European superiority. This approach created a disconnect between participants’ lived experiences as Black subjects and the mestizo-centric historical narratives adopted by schools, negatively impacting the educational experiences, sense of identity, belonging, and agency of AfroBrazilians. The onto-epistemological insights that surfaced from this study offer the possibility of understanding how experiences of racialization are imagined, enacted, and connected across geo-cultural contexts by racialized educational practices, such as the pedagogy of mestizaje, that “move and take root in various parts of the Americas” (Rivera-Rideau et al., 2016, p. 13).

Author

• Carolyn Silva, University of Nevada - Reno
  Presenting Author