ANTI-RACIST EDUCATION AS A DECOLONIAL PRACTICE: TENSIONS AND POTENTIALITIES OF A TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION

Abstract

This article analyzes the tensions and limitations of the implementation of Law No. 10,639/03 in the Brazilian curriculum, focusing on the articulation between legal frameworks, the school curriculum, and pedagogical practices aimed at anti-racist education. Its relevance is justified by the persistence of silences and the superficiality with which ethnic-racial relations are still addressed in schools, even two decades after the law's enactment. The research adopts a decolonial perspective to understand the curriculum as a knowledge-power device that regulates legitimized knowledge and perpetuates racial inequalities when its epistemological foundations are not challenged. The study is organized into four parts: the first discusses Law No. 10,639/03 and the BNCC as discursive events; the second explores the curriculum as a technology of power, in light of the coloniality of knowledge and epistemicide; the third analyzes the lesson on Machado de Assis’s short story Pai contra Mãe, offered by the São Paulo Department of Education, highlighting the so-called “illusion of inclusion” in addressing diversity. Finally, it proposes a set of decolonial pedagogical practices that conceive teaching materials as a space of political struggle and possibility of insurgency.