Ações afirmativas na pós-graduação: ingresso e permanência de estudantes negras/os no mestrado do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Profissional e Tecnológica IFBAIANO Campus CATU

Abstract

This study investigates affirmative action policies within the scope of the Professional Master's Degree in Professional and Technological Education (ProfEPT) at IF Baiano - Campus Catu. The main goal is to analyze the effects of these policies on the entry and retention of black master's students, in 2021 and 2022, of the program. To this end, we study the production of racism as a driver of racial inequality that has historically kept the black Brazilian population separated from enjoying the country's wealth, in addition to not having access to spaces of power, especially universities, in stricto sensu postgraduate studies. Furthermore, we seek to unveil the historical process of construction of ethnic-racial affirmative action policies in academia, highlighting racial tensions and disputes and the leading role of intellectuals, activists and the Black Movement. The present work is qualitative and quantitative research and an exploratory, descriptive and explanatory study. Regarding technical resources and instruments for data collection, the Methods Triangulation was used, through document analysis, bibliographical survey, questionnaire application and interviews. The aim of the field research was to obtain a socio-economic and cultural characterization of all the research subjects by means of a questionnaire. In the interviews, the aim was to present the perception of the issue, based on the master's students' own narratives. The research strategy is analysis by Methods Triangulation, while the theoretical approach is decoloniality and Southern epistemologies. Therefore, the author places herself in this study, as a black woman, scholarship student and quota holder, a geopolitically located body, aligned with those who think and make the decolonial turn, through theoretical, political and epistemic commitment, towards decoloniality. Thus, the study showed that Brazilian racial inequality was historically produced by a white elite, with Eurocentric values, whose gear was the maintenance of the idea of hierarchization of humanity, under its self-designation of superiority. The results indicate that affirmative actions at universities and postgraduate courses are significant achievements. Although they guarantee the entry of black students, they face socioeconomic and cultural difficulties to ensure their material and symbolic permanence in the academy. Therefore, with this research, it was concluded that guaranteeing effective material conditions and epistemic decoloniality are necessary to transform academia into a truly inclusive and plural space.