Banca de DEFESA: BEATRIZ TEIXEIRA DE SOUZA

BLACK PATHS: intersection of race, gender and educarion in the Postgraduate Program in Geography - UFRRJ

 black women, educational trajectories, graduate studies.

The research focuses on reflecting on the presence of black women in the Graduate Program in Geography at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Through the educational and life narratives of six black women enrolled in the master's program (I include myself in this group), we analyzed the issues that permeate our bodies and identities. Historically, it has been observed that the situation of black women in society, especially in Brazil, is marked by exploitation, domination, and inferiority. In this research, we resort to intersectionality as a method of epistemological disobedience. The resistance and liberation that accompany the reflections of black feminism will support the analyses. When analyzing the axes of oppression suffered by black women from the period of slavery to the present day, we observed that the intersections occur in life and educational trajectories at different moments and in different social spaces, including the school and academic spaces where our interlocutors spent most of their lives, which are also impacted by structural racism and sexism, promoting erasure, underrepresentation, and undervaluation, which contributes to delegitimizing black knowledge and experiences. As the data analyzed in this study show, it is clear that the number of black women applying to the graduate program in Geography (Master's) is still lower when compared to the number of white men and women. Therefore, this research observed that structural racism and sexism permeate the lives of black women in higher education, subjecting them to “double or triple oppression” (Anzaldúa, 2000; Gonzalez, 2020) throughout their entire trajectory, as revealed by the narratives of black women in this study, causing damage, psychological harm, and difficulty in gaining recognition within the academic space. At the same time, it reveals a path of overcoming and resistance throughout the course of racist violence experienced by these women. The research sought to break with univocal, crystallized methodologies that neglect the subjectivities of black life experiences, guided by an intersectional perspective to analyze the axes of oppression that involve the lives of our interviewees, black women enrolled in the master's program. Thus, the work demonstrates the trajectory of black women to graduate school, portraying their experiences and expectations for change through education. The narratives reveal the effects of structural racism and sexism in everyday life. As well as the need to build public policies for permanence, anti-racism, and emancipation within the university.