Education for ethnic-racial relations in Brazilian physical education: reflections on schooling and silencing

ABSTRACT

This study's objective is to present some reflections on Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations (ERER, acronym in Portuguese) and its link with Physical Education in Brazil, considering that Brazilian Physical Education has been greatly influenced by curriculum from both Europe and the United States during most of the twentieth century. To this end, we have used bibliographic research as a tool. Physical Education, as a curricular component of Brazilian basic education, was linked to the interests of medical and military institutions that defined its space and area of knowledge for a prolonged period. In this context, its actions envisioned forming and maintaining disciplined, strong and healthy bodies, created on precepts like, for example, eugenics. In this type of intervention, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous manifestations became invisible and were marginalized and oppressed in favor of reproducing Eurocentric models of corporal expression. In light of this, we argue in support of a Physical Education curriculum based on knowledge originating in the different cultural matrixes of the peoples making up Brazil's populace, above all those who historically have been silenced and who have played a role in shaping our identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Education for ethnic-racial relations
• Brazilian physical education
• body culture
• Afro-Brazilian history
• Afro-Brazilian culture
• ethnicity in education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ERER (Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations, acronym in Portuguese).

2 In Brazil, the term ‘ethnic-racial relations’ (relações étnico-raciais in Portuguese) is commonly used in the area of Social Sciences not only to designate physical traits, but also the cultural and social traits of a population. Thus, ethnic-racial relations are established from the forms of coexistence between groups of the different populations existing in the country. For example, ethnic-racial discrimination is understood as any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, ancestry, color, or national or ethnic origin. Furthermore, it has either the intention or effect of making difficult or impeding recognition and/or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on the basis of equality in the social, political, economic, cultural, or any other area of public life, as specified in law no. 12.288, sustained by Brazil's Federal Constitution. We have thus maintained the expression Ethnic-Racial Relations (ERER) throughout the text, seeing that it is a concept directly related to what this article proposes.

3 The Law of Guidelines and Bases for Brazilian National Education is inserted in Brazil's Constitution. It regulates and guides Education in the country.