Os desdobramentos políticos e acadêmicos da Ação Afirmativa em Programas de Pós-Graduação stricto sensu da Uneb

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the political and academic developments of the affirmative action policy arising from the implementation of quotas for Afro-descendant students in stricto sensu Graduate Programs at the State University of Bahia (Uneb), a pioneer in the field of said policy and the first to institute the vacancy reservation mechanism, both in undergraduate and postgraduate courses. To this end, anchored in research with a qualitative social approach, with a political, positioned, activist and engaged bias, based on the decolonial epistemological perspective, in addition to the selection and analysis of documents that deal with affirmative action in the investigated institution, three coordinators and seven professors from four postgraduate programs that offer master's and doctoral courses and seven students who have reserved vacancies. As a result, the research revealed that the racial quotas at Uneb, initially adopted for blacks, over these 20 years, unfolded, both in the political and academic fields, in several other affirmative action measures aimed at monitoring, evaluating , improvement and permanence of the referred students; important advances and innovations, such as the expansion of ethnic-racial and social groups contemplated with the reservation of vacancies: indigenous people, quilombolas, gypsies, people with disabilities, autism spectrum disorder and high skills, transsexuals, transvestites and transgenders; the creation of the Dean of Affirmative Actions; master's programs; nuclei, centers and study and research groups; degree and specialization courses, among other measures that put into practice the Affirmative Action Policy at Uneb and enhance the gradual occupation of the university by subjects historically excluded from Higher Education, positively impacting and expressive in the production of scientific knowledge. The study also showed the obstacles and obstacles encountered by these students, with regard to access and permanence in the postgraduate academic space, as well as some existing gaps, the need and possibilities for the university and the postgraduate students to implement new affirmative action measures that complement the existing ones, in order to guarantee the access, permanence and success of the referred students, in offering them the conditions that meet their academic demands and social.