Alfabetização em contexto de racismo: escrevivências de “uma menina que amava e não gostava do cabelo dela”

Abstract

Recent data from PNAID (2023) show that illiteracy rates among individuals aged 15 and older are significantly higher among Black and Brown populations. According to INEP (2024), age–grade distortion rates are also higher for Black and Brown students compared to White students, particularly in the early years of schooling. These alarming figures motivated this doctoral research, whose general objective is to understand the literacy process of a Black girl living in poverty, experiencing age–grade distortion, and residing in an administrative region of the Federal District (Brazil), within a context deeply marked by structural racism. The research focuses on her acts of re-existence—ways of resisting and asserting her existence—and on the school-based interventions that influenced her educational trajectory. The specific objectives were to analyze how racism, along with class and gender prejudice, affected the student’s literacy process, based on the narratives of the school’s technical staff (teachers, administrators, coordinators, among others), her support network, family members, and the student herself; understand the strategies of resistance and re-existence present in her schooling experience when facing racism and social inequalities; and identify and analyze the pedagogical interventions that contributed to changes in her educational path and literacy development. This is an intervention-based qualitative study centered on a single case. The fieldwork was structured around three methodological approaches: document analysis; semi-structured interviews with school staff, support network members, and family; and self-expressive activities with the student through “testimonial writing”. The research is grounded in the enunciative–discursive perspective and dialogues with theoretical frameworks related to anti-racist education, ethnic–racial relations, literacy from a discursive and emancipatory perspective, and the critique of medicalization in education. The findings revealed that the student experienced multiple instances of racism, classism, and gender bias throughout her schooling, grounded in pervasive stereotypes about Black and impoverished populations. The intervention, carried out collectively, involved sensitive listening, shifting the educational gaze toward the student, implementing more dialogic conflict mediation, organizing consistent and purposeful pedagogical practices, and offering diversified learning strategies focused on her development. Interventions also included the facilitation of authorial writing, the use of literature, audiovisual resources, and images as tools for representation, and the nurturing of peer relationships, particularly a meaningful friendship with another student—all of which played a pivotal role in supporting her literacy process. These collective efforts enabled the creation of differentiated strategies that respected and incorporated the multiple ways the student expressed her lived experiences. Throughout her educational journey, she protested, denounced injustices, wrote about her discomforts, and exposed the contradictions inherent in living within a racially oppressive society. This research highlights the urgent need to not medicalize schooling difficulties—particularly in literacy acquisition—by considering the intersecting impacts of race, gender, class, and other social markers that unequally structure students' lives. Finally, it underscores the vital importance of anti-racist education and literacy practices as foundational to fostering meaningful ethnic–racial relations and ensuring equitable educational outcomes for all students.