THE BRAZILIAN RACIAL QUESTION AND THE DISPUTES OVER SOCIETAL PROJECTS IN TIMES OF NEOCONSERVATIVE ADVANCEMENT
Racism; Anti-racism; Racial Equality Promotion Policy; Government Action; Societal Projects.
Social relations in Brazil cannot be understood in isolation from the particularities of its social formation, marked by centuries of slavery and by class exploitation relations built on racist and patriarchal ideological foundations. We start from the premise that racism constitutes a fundamental element in the reproduction of inequalities in the country and that confronting it is part of the disputes over the direction of society. In this sense, analyzing conceptions of racism and its forms of confrontation in contemporary times requires considering the historical, political, and economic conditions in which they are constituted. In the period from 2016 to 2026, marked by changes in the political orientation of federal governments and the rise of conservatism, these disputes take on particular relevance for understanding actions to combat racism and reduce racial inequalities, especially within the framework of the Policy for the Promotion of Racial Equality. Therefore, this doctoral qualification project focuses on how different conceptions of racism and its forms of confrontation, in dispute between federal governments and anti-racist civil society organizations, were expressed in the Policy for the Promotion of Racial Equality in Brazil between 2016 and 2026. We propose to analyze how these conceptions are formulated by these political actors and how they are incorporated, remain, are reconfigured, or are not expressed in state actions to promote racial equality. The investigation will be guided by historical-dialectical materialism, in dialogue with the theoretical productions of Black feminism, considering the relationships between race, gender, and class in the analysis of Brazilian reality. To this end, bibliographic and documentary research will be carried out. The aim is to contribute to a critical understanding of the Brazilian racial issue, highlighting how the disputes surrounding its confrontation also express different societal projects and affect the actions of the State.