Racism and Religious Intolerance: A Critical Analysis of the Coloniality of Brazilian Christianity

This article examines the persistence of religious intolerance experienced by practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Drawing from recent reports and historical resources on religious intolerance, it approaches religious diversity in Brazil from a decolonial perspective, pointing to the contradiction between the image of Brazil as a place where religious change and plurality occurs with minimal conflict and the painful reality experienced by practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Picturing religious intolerance and racism as two faces of the same coin, it argues that both must be resisted. The article concludes with a call for a religious-racial literacy which is intercultural in nature and promises a path to overcome the insidious persistence of racism and religious intolerance. Such a way forward, however, demands a de-centering of Brazilian Christianity, despite its religious majority status, in favor of an epistemic humility which gives full consideration to the knowledge, memories, and lived experience of Afro-Brazilian religious practitioners.

In my skin: racial education and post abyssal thinking of black aesthetics

This work, which is a fragment of a research that has been discussed in lectures and presented separately in other journals and books, examines through the lens of critical racial literacy, the discrimination, tension, and racism experienced by Afro-Brazilian persons due to the aesthetics of their phenotypic traits. The theoretical framework draws on Critical Race Theory (LADSON-BILLINGS, 1998; FERREIRA, 2014) and Epistemologies of the South (SANTOS, 2014) which provided the basis for data analysis. The methodology for data gathering was autobiographical narratives provided by the informants, who were selected due to their experiences of the subject. The primary research instrument was an online questionnaire, voluntarily and anonymously, answered by the participants. The results show that black people in Brazil face issues of race and racism in their own homes, at schools and universities as students, as well as in their working environments. The discussion is pertinent to the field of Applied Linguistics and Education as it highlights the paramount importance of developing a critical racial literacy at schools, which can address these issues and overcome racism from a variety of perspectives.

When Students Rally for Anti-Racism. Engaging with Racial Literacy in Higher Education

Despite a decade of diversity policy plans, a wave of student rallies has ignited debates across western European university campuses. We observe these debates from a situated call for anti-racism in Belgian higher education institutions, and critically reflect on the gap between diversity policy discourse and calls for anti-racism. The students’ initiatives make a plea for racial literacy in the curriculum, to foster a critical awareness on how racial hierarchies have been educated through curricula and institutional processes. Students rethink race as a matter to be (un)learned. This pedagogical question, on racial literacy in the curriculum, is a response to diversity policies often silent about race and institutionalised racisms. Students request a fundamental appeal of knowledgeability in relation to race; diversity policy mostly envisions working on (racial) representation, as doing anti-racist work. This article argues how racial literacy might offer productive ways to bridge the disparities between students’ calls for anti-racism and the institutional (depoliticised) vocabulary of diversity. We implement Stuart Hall’s critical race theory and Jacques Rancière’s subjectification as key concepts to study and theorise these calls for anti-racism as a racial literacy project. This project can be built around engagement as educational concept. We coin possibilities to deploy education as a forum of engagement and dialogue where global asymmetries such as race, gender and citizenship can be critically addressed.

Critical Racial Literacy in Educational and Familial Settings

Racial literacy includes understanding of the ways in which race and racism influences the social, economic, political, and educational experiences of individuals and groups. It includes being able to engage in competent and comfortable discussions about race and racism. Critical racial literacy focuses on understanding how systemic racism works. Systemic racism is embedded in institutions such as education, employment, housing, health services, religion, media, government and laws, and the legal systems. Critical racial literacy involves praxis (reflection and action) in order to interrupt racism in educational and familial contexts. An important premise of critical racial literacy is that racism can be intentional or unintentional. Racism is complex and occurs on different levels including individual, institutional, and societal and cultural forms. Educators who engage in critical racial literacy reject colorblind and race-neutral approaches. Likewise, reflecting on one’s racial identity is an important part of the process of becoming racially literate. In school settings, critical racial literacy can be used to detect and dismantle five types of racial violence in schools (physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricular or instructional, and systemic) as well as ways to interrupt them. A key focus is on developing racial literacy among educators and students at all levels from preschool through college. Critical racial literacy is important in families. Even young children can be engaged in the teaching and learning process about race and racism. African American and other families of color often have to teach children about racism because it is likely that children will encounter it in schools and society in general. A key part of racial literacy that families of color stress is how to straddle two cultures—their own and mainstream culture.