Tornando-se ativistas,

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnography of black children who live in a territory of black women's activism in Salvador. The aim of the research is to analyze the process of becoming an activist in the context of the children's experiences and perceptions of ethnic-racial relations, intersected by gender, class, and religion. The thesis argues that, when black children have their racial identity as positive, they affirm their “blackness”, learn and teach how to combat other forms of violence that are also intersected. These children become little activists and are called “child educators,” in the terms used by the group of women who welcome them into political-pedagogical projects, based on the methodologies of popular art and education in Afro-centered perspectives. The research was conducted in the Alto das Pombas neighborhood, a community with characteristics of black peripherality, located near the center of city of Salvador, Bahia. The study took as references some anthropological and educational approaches to race relations, personhood, agency, and activism of black women, and black feminism. The ethnography included direct field observations, informal conversations with groups of children and women, interviews with the children's family members, and interactive methodologies, such as drawings, paintings, and games, made by the children spontaneously and sometimes oriented. The results showed that black children who actively live in territories of black resistance are aware of the conflicts and tensions involving racial relations and other social markers which intersect these relations. And the activism they experience in daily life makes these children subjects with a different attitude as they live, in a playful and playful way, the ongoing and long-lasting processes of becoming activists from an early age.