Um estudo sobre a experiência da política de cotas na Universidade Federal do Amazonas: caminhos para uma política universitária antirracista

Abstract

This thesis was elaborated in the Postgraduate Program in Education (PPGE) and is part of the former line of research 2: Education, Public Policies and Regional Development, currently reworked as Education, State and Society in the Amazon. It thematizes race relations in the field of education, specifically addressing affirmative actions, in this case understood as quota policies, implemented at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM). Thus, it has as central objective: to analyze the process of institutionalization of the UFAM quotas, considering the symbolic and material dimensions. And specific are: 1) to characterize the conflicts and social struggles around the institutionalization of the ufanian quota policies; 2) to map the main policy gaps of the ufanian quotas from their official documents; and 3) to understand the symbolic and material implications in the progress of quotas at UFAM. The research is documental and bibliographic and has a Bourdieusian methodological approach based on his Reflexive Sociology and Materialism of the Symbolic. The first chapter offers the reader a panoramic understanding of the historical, social, and cultural contexts that permeate the debates about racialist theories and racialism, education, and racial inequalities in Brazil. It provides an introduction to the debate over racial classification employed by colonialism and scientific racism, the latter disseminated its influences nationally in the post-abolition period with the Brazilian project of whitening and eugenics and later paved the way for the myth of racial democracy. We end this chapter by showing the effects of racism and racial inequalities evidenced especially in the Covid-19 pandemic. As for the second chapter we discuss the general concepts about what the definitions and approaches on affirmative action are and how they emerged in higher education in the country. We note Law No. 12,711/2012, the Quotas Law, was the result of the political assets of black Brazilian movements substantiated by antiracist and human rights agendas. The third and last chapter brings in a more direct way our analyses about race relations and mixed race in the Amazon and makes a historical rescue about conjunctural and cultural issues in the region, which are directly influenced and influence local debates and tensions, including the institutionalization process of affirmative action at Ufam. As for the results, we elaborate power on the student origin and the performances of these nine years of the Ufam quotas, in which we identified that the entrance and egress of quota-holding students at Ufam is unequal and asymmetric. In this sense, we show the direct relations between access and permanence of UFAM's quota holders and the need for direct linkage with Student Assistance policies. We end this thesis by making some notes for improvements in the quota policies of UFAM, as well as the need for its review, expansion, continuity and strengthening, especially grounded by an incoporation of institutional values with antiracist horizons.