Racism and Human Development 3030835448, 9783030835446

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Luciana Dutra-Thomé Dóris Firmino Rabelo Dandara Ramos Emanuelle Freitas Góes   Editors

Racism and Human Development

Racism and Human Development

Luciana Dutra-Thomé Dóris Firmino Rabelo Dandara Ramos  •  Emanuelle Freitas Góes Editors

Racism and Human Development

Editors Luciana Dutra-Thomé Department of Psychology Federal University of Bahia Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Dóris Firmino Rabelo Health Sciences Center Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahi Santo Antônio de Jesus, Bahia, Brazil

Dandara Ramos Collective Health Institute Federal University of Bahia Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Emanuelle Freitas Góes Center Data Integ. & Health Knowledge Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

ISBN 978-3-030-83544-6    ISBN 978-3-030-83545-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83545-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword: Antiracist Developmental Research in Brazil

What could happen if an antiracist research agenda guided the study of developmental processes in Brazil and elsewhere? Can such a research agenda strengthen the contributions of developmental science to an antiracist society? This book brings practical answers from researchers engaged in an antiracist research agenda. The issues of representativeness are at the forefront of the challenges for a developmental science that makes meaningful contributions to society. The non-diverse and privileged conditions of American psychological research were highlighted by Arnett (2008), who demonstrated how 95% of the scholarship in top-tier journals published by the American Psychological Association came from American samples, although the United States represents less than 5% of the world’s population. In other words, most of these studies represented a minority of the world’s population (the North Americans), increasing to only 11% more than 10  years later by expansions in European-American collaborations (Thalmayer et al., 2021). As the Turkish scholar Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı puts it, most people are living in majority-­ world contexts (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996). Yet, developmental science seems to use such minority and privileged populations as the norm. This broader debate brings us to within-country variations, more specifically to how developmental research in Brazil is handling the inequities in Brazilian society. Racism is a system of oppression (Ribeiro, 2019) that hinders the development of black populations throughout their lifespan. Most of the Brazilian population is not white, with more than 50% of the population is self-reported as black (preto) or brown (pardo) (IBGE, 2019). Brazil has a racialized society, where access to basic rights in education and health are denied to black and indigenous populations, an urgent matter for Brazil. Unfortunately, an analysis similar to those conducted on US psychological journals to examine the diversity of samples (Arnett, 2008; Thalmayer et al., 2021) cannot be easily performed in leading Brazilian outlets to examine racial asymmetries in developmental research in Brazil. Even in 2021, most papers published in Trends in Psychology or Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica do not include sufficient information on the racial composition of samples in published articles. This silence regarding issues about race and ethnicity is just a tip in the

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iceberg of coldness with which developmental research has approached the development of black and other ethnic minoritized Brazilians. This silence in Brazilian scholarship makes the present book even more relevant and powerful, with chapters that resonate in the silence of the field to highlight the harmful effects of racism over the life course. In addition to exemplars of antiracist developmental research in other countries (Chaps. 9 and 10), most of this volume focuses on reports about racism and human development in Brazil by Brazilian scholars. This includes the impacts of racism on health (Chaps. 5 and 7) and racial socialization (Chaps. 4, 6 and 8), and also articulating how race relations intersect with age and gender (Chaps. 2 and 12). We need more scholarship like this. To dismantle structural racism as a system of oppression, developmental researchers need to acknowledge that the field is not exempt from the impact of structural racism. Developmental research can make a meaningful contribution by interrogating how structural racism is embedded in the individual context relations on which much of the scholarship in developmental science is focused. To align a broader developmental research agenda with the urgent needs of Brazil, studies such as the ones presented in this book looking at how racial discrimination impacts the lives of black populations should be conducted, published, and taught much more frequently. All stakeholders in the field can reflect and act. This antiracist research agenda needs to be embraced by leading institutions in the field. Editors and publishers can stop publishing color-blind articles, which do not include any information on the race or ethnicity of the participants. Such high caliber publication outlets can set the tone, contributing to the generation of a wealth of data on the particular impacts of race relations in developmental processes. This response needs to go beyond including race and ethnicity as covariates but perform the careful theory-oriented work required to understand how such racialized relations influence development, making our theoretical foundations more robust and representative of the experiences of Brazilians. And to enable more scholars that feel at ease approaching these issues, the training regarding racial relations and racism needs to be strengthened at all levels to accelerate discovery in such an antiracist agenda. Of course, black and indigenous students need opportunities for training so that the field can also become more representative of the Brazilian population. I am encouraged to read these chapters and hope other developmental researchers can pivot their work and contribute to the broader antiracist research agenda urgently needed to tackle racism in Brazil and elsewhere. And as our scholarship continues to inform programs and policies, developmental science can contribute to an antiracist society. As a black researcher who feels, sees, and hears, day after day, stories of black youth, black adults, and black elderly having their rights denied, I cry that it’s past the time for the field to acknowledge that black development

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matters. We also need to act upon such antiracist scholarship, from within the field of developmental science. Universidade Federal do Paraná Curitiba, PR, Brazil

Josafá da Cunha

References Arnett, J.  J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, 63(7), 602–614. https://doi.org/1 0.1037/0003-­066X.63.7.602 Kağıtçıbaşı, C. (1996). Family and human development across cultures: A view from the other side. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers, 10 Industrial Avenue, Mahwah, NJ 07430-2262. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). (2019). Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua (PNAD) – Boletim Informativo Educação 2018. IBGE. https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv101657_ informativo.pdf. Ribeiro, D. (2019). Pequeno manual antirracista. Companhia das Letras. Thalmayer, A. G., Toscanelli, C., & Arnett, J. J. (2021). The neglected 95% revisited: Is American psychology becoming less American? American Psychologist, 76(1), 116–129. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000622

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the many students who inspired us and opened our eyes to the urgency and need for a racialized perspective on Developmental Psychology and Human Development. We thank the Springer editorial board, especially Bruno Fiuza and Pradheepa Virjay for their help throughout the process. We also thank our universities and institutions, UFBA, UFRB, and CIDACS-Fiocruz Bahia for their support. Our gratitude to our families for their love and understanding of the long office hours necessary so this work could come to be. This book is the result of a collective effort of the editors and one great team of authors and ad hoc reviewers to whom we would like to express our deepest gratitude. They are: Dr. Alexandre da Silva – Faculdade de Medicina de Jundiaí (FMJ), Brazil Dr. Ana Carolina Monnerat Fioravanti – Fluminense Federal University, Brazil MsC. Diogo Sousa – Federal University of Bahia, Brazil Dr. Élder Cerqueira-Santos – Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil Dr. Érica Atem Gonçalves de Araújo Costa- Federal University of Ceará, Brazil MsC. Gabriela Silva – Federal University of Bahia, Brazil Dr. Ilana Lemos de Paiva – Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil Dr. Rachel Ripardo – Federal University of Pará, Brazil Dr. Sonia Chaves Costa – State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Dra. Patrícia Alvarenga – Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Finally, we thank all the people who are dedicating their lives to the cause of racial equity – the activists, the NGOs, the quilombos, and social workers. We pay homage to and dedicate this work to Kathleen Romeu and her baby, Ágatha Felix, João Pedro Pinto, Railan Santos da Silva, and so many others taken away from the world by the hands of a racist, violent system. May we all march together to fight the mechanisms that are unrelently working to divide and oppress us.

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Contents

1 Opening Chapter��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Luciana Dutra-Thomé, Dóris Firmino Rabelo, Dandara Ramos, and Emanuelle Freitas Góes 2 Race and Gender Relations in Developmental Psychology������������������    9 Elisabete Figueroa dos Santos and Clélia Rosane dos Santos Prestes 3 “It Is Repulsive: There Is Swearing Because of the Color of the Skin and Hair”: Experiences, Psychosocial Effects, and Confronting Racism by Children and Adolescents in a Capital in Northeastern Brazil����������������������������   21 Sandra Assis Brasil, Leny Alves Bomfim Trad, and João Batista de Brito Braga Alves 4 Emotion Socialization and Developmental Outcomes in Black Children: Relations with Ethnic-Racial Socialization����������   41 Patrícia Alvarenga, Nilton Correia dos Anjos Filho, Paula Kleize Costa Sales, and Antonio Carlos Santos da Silva 5 Violence, Structural Racism, and Their Relation to Health Outcomes of Black Brazilian Youth��������������������������������������   53 Dandara Ramos, Emanuelle Góes, Joilda Nery, and Osiyallê Rodrigues 6 Racism in the Family and Constitution of the Subject ������������������������   67 Lia Vainer Schucman 7 Structural Racism and the Transition to Adulthood of Black and White Brazilians����������������������������������������������������������������   83 Luciana Dutra-Thomé, Jeanice da Cunha Ozorio, and Anderson Siqueira Pereira

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8 The Relationship Between Racism and the Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Black People����������������������������������������������������������������������������  101 Cintia Santo de Brito and Susana Inés Núñez Rodriguez 9 The Cost of Looking Different: Racism, Mental Health and Human Development of Migrants of African Descent������������������  113 Erhabor Idemudia and Tosin Tunrayo Olonisakin 10 Character, Diversity Values, and Civic Engagement Among Norwegian Youth������������������������������������������������������������������������  133 Nora Wiium 11 Racism and Stressful Events Among Black Elderly People ����������������  151 Naylana Rute da Paixão Santos and Dóris Firmino Rabelo 12 Intersectionalities and Old Age: Ageism in the Crossroads of Race, Gender, and Age�����������������������������������������  163 Nara Maria Forte Diogo Rocha, Rodrigo da Silva Maia, Gilsiane Maria Vasconcelos Marques, and Rodrigo Lima Bandeira Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  173

About the Editors and Contributors

Editors Luciana  Dutra-Thomé   is a professor at the Psychology Department of the Federal University of Bahia. She has a PhD in Psychology (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and is a member of the Board of the Brazilian Association of Human Psychology. She has international collaborations with Richard Young (University of British Columbia), Nora Wiium (University of Bergen – Norway) and Jean-Luc Bernaud (Institut National d’Étude du travail et d’orientation professionnelle/CNAM – France). Her research themes are transition to adulthood; ­emerging adulthood; youth and work; life and work meaning; Action Theory; Positive Youth Development. Dóris Firmino Rabelo  is a professor at the Health Sciences Center of the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia – UFRB, at the Post-Graduate Program in Psychology at the Federal University of Bahia – UFBA, and at the Professional Master’s in Family Health – ProfSaúde/UFRB. She is a Psychologist, with a Master in Gerontology, and a PhD in Education. Her main research area is Psychology of Aging. Dandara  Ramos  is Professor at the Collective Health Institute of Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology (2009), a master degree in Social Psychology (2012), and a PhD in Epidemiology (2017), all from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (UERJ). She is Associate Researcher at the Center for Data Integration and Health Knowledge (CIDACS  – Fiocruz Bahia) and at the research group Social Interaction and Development (UERJ). Her main research topics are social epidemiology, evolutionary developmental psychology, and methodological advances in health research.

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About the Editors and Contributors

Emanuelle  Freitas  Góes  is currently enrolled as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Data Integration and Health Knowledge (CIDACS – Fiocruz Bahia). She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Nursing and a PhD in Public Health from the Institute of Collective Health at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil. She is Associate Researcher at the Studies program in Gender and Health (MUSA-ISC/UFBA) and at the Studies program in Noncommunicable Diseases, Life Course and Aging (ELSA Brasil). She is also a member of the Working Group on Racism and Health at the Brazilian Association of Collective Health (ABRASCO). She is creator and blogger at População Negra e Saúde (Health and Black populations) website. Her main areas of research are health inequities in access to healthcare, reproductive rights, racism, and health information.

Contributors Patrícia Alvarenga  Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil João  Batista  de  Brito  Braga  Alves  Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Rodrigo Lima Bandeira  Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil Sandra  Assis  Brasil  Department of Life Sciences, State University of Bahia (UNEB), Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Josafá da Cunha  Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil Antonio  Carlos  Santos  da Silva  Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Cintia  Santo  de Brito  Salgado de Oliveira University, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Elisabete Figueroa dos Santos  Centro Universitário Central Paulista – UNICEP, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil Luciana Dutra-Thomé  Department of Psychology, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil Nilton  Correia  dos  Anjos  Filho  Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Emanuelle  Freitas  Góes  Center for Data and Knowledge Integration, Fiocruz Bahia, Salvador, Brazil Erhabor Idemudia  Faculty of Humanities, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Rodrigo da Silva Maia  Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil

About the Editors and Contributors

Gilsiane  Maria  Vasconcelos  Marques  Federal Fortaleza, Brazil

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Joilda Nery  Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Tosin  Tunrayo  Olonisakin  Faculty of Humanities, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Jeanice  da  Cunha  Ozorio  Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil Anderson Siqueira Pereira  Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, Brazil Clélia  Rosane  dos  Santos  Prestes  AMMA Psyche and Negritude Institute, São Paulo, Brazil Dóris Firmino Rabelo  Health Sciences Center, Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, Santo Antônio de Jesus, Brazil Dandara  Ramos  Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Nara Maria Forte Diogo Rocha  Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil Osiyallê  Rodrigues  Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil Susana  Inés  Núñez  Rodriguez  Salgado de Oliveira University, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Naylana  Rute  da  Paixão  Santos  Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Lia  Vainer  Schucman  Department of Psychology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil Paula Kleize Costa Soares  Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Leny  Alves  Bomfim  Trad  Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil Nora  Wiium  Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Chapter 1

Opening Chapter Luciana Dutra-Thomé, Dóris Firmino Rabelo, Dandara Ramos, and Emanuelle Freitas Góes

This book is the result of our teaching and research experiences. We are four Brazilian women, two black and two white, located in the international scenario as Latin American, professors, and researchers with different experiences in the field of psychology and public health. Over the previous three decades, there has been an effort by Brazilian research groups to produce academic material based on our reality. However, in the field of developmental psychology, work aimed at one of the most striking ailments in Brazilian history is still incipient: racism. What are the impacts of the exposure to racism on the developmental trajectories of children, young people, adults, and older adults in Brazil? The main reference manuals in developmental psychology present in our university curricula are still North Americans and do not fully reflect our reality. Constantly required by undergraduate students, mostly black, and considering the realities experienced in our research and professional practices, the need for this material has become urgent. In the context of increasing social tensions that have emerged in recent years in Brazil, the psychosocial effects of racism have increasingly become a concern for Brazilian psychology (CFP, 2017); however, the production of more critical and contextualized developmental psychology is still a challenge. Addressing racism in the context of developmental psychology is particularly important, as it makes it explicit as a structural condition in Brazilian society, imbricated in the interactions between individuals, families, communities, and institutions. Therefore, in this book, we face the challenge of identifying inter- and L. Dutra-Thomé (*) · D. Ramos Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, BA, Brazil D. F. Rabelo Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, Santo Antônio de Jesus, BA, Brazil E. F. Góes Center for Data Integration and Health Knowledge (CIDACS- Fiocruz Bahia), Salvador, BA, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 L. Dutra-Thomé et al. (eds.), Racism and Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83545-3_1

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intraindividual aspects in a movement of continuity and change, located contextually and temporally, capable of providing us with comprehension about this scenario. Race/skin color, class, and gender should not be chosen by convenience in studies of development, as these are not elective categories (Tavares & Jesus Filho, 2020). Not considering these dimensions means prioritizing only a part of the developmental experience and fragmenting it. It is also necessary to question whether in studies of different race groups, it is necessary to make comparisons between them, as this practice often consolidates the idea of non-normality, with the oppressed groups being presented only based on their vulnerabilities. In this book, we have tried to highlight racism as a problem from an eminently social source, present in the current socio-historical moment. As it is structural, racism expresses itself explicitly and/or subtly, in the language expressions we use; in the naturalization of the invisibility of black representations and black people in academia, both in person and epistemologically; in urban violence; and in socioeconomic inequality in the Brazilian context. Although there is a process of change in the current scenario, higher-quality schools and universities have a low presence of black men and women. Black boys and girls are rarely represented in the media and in children’s toys. Black men and women are rarely placed in positions of power in soap operas, movies, and magazines. Even today, the prison population is mostly black. Black youth are prime targets for persecution and homicides. Older black adults and older adult women carry the mark of this scenario in their histories, characterized by losses and accumulation of exposure to risk factors, which makes their aging process even more vulnerable. The social and health crisis that emerged in 2020 highlights the urgency and relevance of scientific manuals that discuss how human development is shaped by structural social conditions. This scenario reinforces the need for evidence-based scientific discussions about structural racism and antiracist movements. This book addresses the lifelong effects of racism, covering its social, psychological, family, community, and health impacts. We discuss experiences of discrimination, prejudice, and exclusion experienced by children, young people, adults, older adults, and their families; the processes of socialization, emotional regulation, and construction of ethnic-racial identities; and urban violence and stress-producing events associated with racism. Racism emerges, therefore, as a crucial element that intersects the development of individuals, with consequences for their self-esteem, self-efficacy, physical and mental health, perspective of the future, etc. Despite this, discussions on racism are mainly limited to academic productions in social psychology. In order to expand the psychological disciplines that think of racism as a social problem to be overcome, we present this work, which uses studies with different methods and theoretical perspectives to understand this phenomenon. For this purpose, it is important to highlight the specific historical context of racism in Brazil, the bases of which were constructed through enslavement, colonialism, population whitening policies of miscegenation and favoring European immigrants, and the myth of racial democracy. This anti-black racism is different from the specific history of the United States, for example, that happened through

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more segregation-based mechanisms. Gonzáles (2020) describes this disguised racism in Brazil as racism by denial, in which the ideology of the superiority of white people as a dominant group was so effectively absorbed that open forms of segregation were not even necessary. For the author, while the explicit segregation in the United States ended up strengthening the racial identity of the black population, Brazilian denied racism promoted its shattering, through the denial of their own race and the desire to whiten. The differential impact of these types of racism can be seen, for example, in the ethnic-racial socialization process. The forms and strategies are different, as are the most affirmative and positive possibilities of intergenerational transmission of values, behaviors, beliefs, cultural heritage contents, and the meaning of belonging to a racial group, of the personal and group identity, and of the intragroup and intergroup interactions, as well as the ways of coping with discriminatory situations.

Racism and the Brazilian Experience Racism has, over time, defined the places, territories, and social positions of people, ranking population groups based on racial belonging. This, therefore, defines birth, growing up, falling ill, and dying (Carneiro, 2005; Lopes, 2005). Racism is a historical process that changes throughout the process (Moore, 2007). According to Lugones (2014), the indigenous peoples of the Americas and enslaved Africans were classified as non-human species – as animals, uncontrollably sexual, and wild. Modern European, bourgeois, colonial man became a subject/agent, able to decide for public life and government, a civilized, heterosexual, Christian individual, a person of mind and reason. The belief in the existence of hierarchical “races” within the human species is a fundamental postulate of racism, defining superior and inferior races. From this, countless atrocities have been committed through various genocides (Munanga, 2019). Racism is a fact that gives race its political and social reality. Biological race, although a vastly contested concept, holds heavy political and ideological significance, as it functions as a category of domination and exclusion in observable contemporary multiracial societies (Munanga, 2019; Ianni, 2004). Lopes and Werneck (2009) argue that the concept of race is based on racism, in which the social mechanism of exclusion that influences everyone involved affects each person differently. Racism “encompasses” the production of pejorative meanings given to particular characteristics of certain patterns of human diversity and negative social meanings applied to the groups that have them, therefore justifying unequal treatment, exclusion, and genocide. Racism, considered an ideology that structures social relations and attributes superiority to one race over the others, appeared in Brazil as a social construction, from slavery, being strengthened and reproduced mainly after abolition, when it started to structure itself into a form of discourse, “based on the thesis of biological

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inferiority of the black people, and spreading across the country as the matrix for the interpretation of the national development,” as Jaccoud stated (2008, p. 49). Since the sixteenth century, the inequalities imposed by the slave regime in Brazil have continued through the development of a system based on capitalism, which preserved racism as a legitimizer of social exclusion. In the nineteenth century, even without having organized a system of legal discrimination or a racist ideology, the Brazilian elite supported its hierarchical vision of society in a set of negative stereotypes in relation to black people, while white people were endowed with a positivity which was accentuated the closer they were to the European culture (Jaccoud et al., 2009). At that time, the national whitening project emerged, which cultivated stereotypes linked to race and was based on the thesis that reconciles the belief in white superiority with the search for the progressive erasure of black people, whose presence was interpreted as negative for the country. Later, from the 1930s, the ideology of racial democracy was constructed, which had the aim of valuing miscegenation, therefore forming a mestizo nation (Jaccoud et al., 2009). A large portion of society shares this ideology under the confidence of having formed a peaceful, affectionate, and sensual nation, anchored in the idea of racial mixing and that there are possibilities for everyone, on an equal basis, different from the United States and South Africa, in relation to racial segregation. Accordingly, it was understood that, since the country did not legalize racial segregation and make it official, the Brazilian reality would be different from the other two countries. According to Paixão (2003): the strength of the myth of racial democracy, in addition to the intrinsic characteristics of the way Brazilian society works, largely drew its energy from the lack of statistical and demographic information on the reality of racial inequalities in Brazil. (p.68)

Since the 1990s, there has been a considerable setback in terms of the dissemination of the myth of racial democracy. This was partly due to the struggle of the black movement, which demanded that Brazil recognize itself as a racist country, resulting in racial inequalities, and partly to the production and dissemination of social indicators, which served as support for this discussion (Paixão, 2003). Currently, it is understood that social inequalities have a strong component of discrimination, based on race, therefore dismantling the idea of reducing the problem of social disparities as exclusively caused by poverty. Based on the observation that racism and racial discrimination expose men and women to more vulnerable situations of illness and death, the Brazilian black movement made its demands explicit and insisted on the implementation of public health policies for the black population in order to fulfill the specificities of this population.

Contexts of Development and Their Relationship with Racism Studies on racism or racially informed approaches to general topics in developmental psychology are still incipient in the Brazilian literature, a reality that has been verified through systematic reviews (Martins et al., 2013; Sacco et al., 2016). In a

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country in which non-white people amount to more than half of the population (Pinheiro et  al., 2009) and where economic inequalities explicitly intersect with race (Blacks Make up Majority of Brazil’s Unemployed and Informal Workers, 2019; Social Inequalities due to Color or Race in Brazil, n.d.), this should serve to academia as both an alert and a call to action. Even among the few studies that do focus on racism, a considerable proportion still fail to properly collect data on the race/skin color of its participants or lack an appropriate description of their methods (Sacco et al., 2016), making the knowledge on the developmental implications of racism one that is read through foggy lenses. Particularly regarding the study of the role of context and of topics such as violence, poverty, and segregation, the current color-blind approach of developmental psych in Brazil acts in an inequity promoting manner, since it masks the reality of racism and hinders the possibilities of change. No data, no problem. As we reflect on the main topics of interest for developmental psychology, the magnitude of this issue becomes clearer. Approaches focused on contextual factors and how they relate to development will look for environmental conditions in several settings and levels, such as the effects of family niches, neighborhoods, schools, cities, and even countries. If we recognize that race is a structural factor that encompasses peoples’ experiences in any developmental stage and wherever they are, how is it possible to construct conceptual models for these studies without including race (and racism) in the equation? More than offering a collection of studies that delve deeply into a racially informed approach in developmental psychology, this book aims to present a possible pathway for the field as a whole and to motivate change in the current scenario. To give a few practical examples, to understand how violence affects child and youth development, we must understand how racism is at the basis of the processes of lethal and non-lethal events in most urban and rural contexts. To understand developmental changes related to family composition and changes in the family environment, we must take into account the realities of racially diverse families and how teenage motherhood, for example, is distributed across racial groups. This should be carried out not only in the measurement stage (including a race/skin color field in the questionnaire and statistical analysis) but throughout the entire process. Placing race within the conceptualization of our logic models and understanding how developmental psychology, and all fields interested in ontogenetic aspects of human life, is as much a methodological matter as it is a theoretical and ethical one require a change of our practices, however, first and foremost, a change in (or at the very least a reflection about) our belief systems and views of the world. How do we understand human development? Is this constructed knowledge of ontogeny one that equips us to properly discuss the racial aspects of our data? As masterfully put by Tukufu Zuberi (2008): Data do not tell us a story. We use data to craft a story that comports with our understanding of the world. If we begin with a racially biased view of the world, then we will end with a racially biased view of what the data have to say. (p. 7)

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Final Thoughts We need to comprehend the production of scientific knowledge as part of the political, economic, and social conflicts that affect this production. Accordingly, the publishers of this work, together with the authors who challenged themselves to propose chapters for it, understand that this production makes a contribution to discussions about racism, with enriching theoretical and empirical bases, however, with limitations. Since the beginning of this project, some invitees resisted participating in it. On the one hand, they feared that the work would be directed toward a certain view of human development of black individuals with an air of “exoticism,” while, on the other, authors in the field of developmental psychology considered themselves unprepared for the task, since discussions on racism are not traditionally integrated into the psychology curricula or they understood that racism is a discussion belonging to social psychology and/or sociology and associated fields. Despite this, we decided to pursue the challenge of carrying out this project, as we understand that we will never be ready and that we can improve ourselves as researchers and professionals by challenging ourselves to talk about an issue that is still taboo in academic fields – even though it is an urgent one. Changes in this scenario can be seen in a movement from North American developmental psychologists who are progressively starting to focus on an antiracist agenda. This can be observed in academic societies, such as the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), and the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA). In 2020, some actions of the SRCD were to organize a special issue in the scientific journal Child Development, one of the journals with the greatest impact in the area, entitled “Advancing Scholarship on Anti-Racism within Developmental Science.” In addition, they promoted the webinar “Becoming an antiracist Society: Setting a Developmental Research Agenda,” which situated antiracism not as the opposite of racism, but as an institutional (family, educational institutions, and communities) movement, in the media, means of communication and social norms directed toward overcoming racial hierarchies. In the same year, the SRA recorded the organization’s practices in committing to an antiracist stance, promoting racial equity, and eliminating all forms of racism. In this direction, the SRA currently has an Anti-Racism Task Force, which addresses this work. The SSEA has, among its different working groups called the “Topic Networks,” one entitled “Anti-racism and Social Justice,” which aims to increase awareness, knowledge, and ways of dealing with racism. In Latin America and Brazil, movements in this direction are incipient. The present work intends to serve as a starting point and reflection on the theme, in order to encourage this discussion to be explicitly incorporated in the productions in developmental psychology in our context. This is important because the manifestations of racism are heterogeneous and express the history of different countries and societies. Therefore, North American or European productions can provide important contributions, but cannot account for the social processes and structures of the Brazilian and Latin American context. In addition to this problem, we face another challenge: we are aware that the work is part of a body of academic training that still originates exclusively from white epistemologies, which, in itself, leads to

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limitations in terms of comprehending such a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Despite the limitations, we did not give up on taking a first step, full of weaknesses and potential contributions. The work is actually part of a group of Springer publications on racism. There is an effort to integrate sociological, psychoanalytic, social psychological, historical, philosophical, anthropological, political, and even neurobiological knowledge into the comprehension of racism (Clarke, 2003; Hall, 2008; Katz, 1988; Moreland-­ Capuia, 2021), as well as its elimination and antiracist directions (Abdulle & Obeyesekere, 2017; Hervik, 2019). There are books, as well as the present work, directed toward considering the manifestation of racism in specific regions, so that contextual particularities such as Northern Europe can be accounted for (Hervik, 2019). To contribute to this scenario, this work provides a developmental view and contemplates racism and its impacts in different moments of life, focusing mainly on the Brazilian context, however, with contributions related to the subject in other countries, such as Germany and Norway. As we presented in this opening chapter, our goals with this book have scientific and political implications. We place this work as another step toward racial equity and toward a developmental science that leaves no one behind. Furthermore, we hope this book serves as an inspiration to students, scholars, and practitioners who are seeking tools and examples of studies of race and racism from a developmental perspective. These goals for the book are part of our broader, more ambitious aspirations for the field of development psychology and for science in general. As we reflect on the process of organizing this body of work and all the experiences this has provided us, the most important message is that the establishment of an antiracist agenda in developmental psychology will never be possible without a commitment to the study of race as an indispensable social marker of human ontogeny in any society. To be antiracist, one must first educate themself on the meaning of racialized experiences of development and do so through sound theoretical and methodological grounds. We hope this book will be a useful tool for those who are willing to take this first step. Of course, such changes will never take place without a series of transformations in the curriculum, in the agenda of our major academic societies, in what is deemed to be important in our scientific conferences, and in the way our general field is yet to formally recognize that the study of race and racism is not a special, optional topic but a central one. As far as our ambition allows us, we see this book as a small crack in the tough shell of a field with centuries of history. This is in honor of the many who have come before us and of those for whom racism took away the very chance of living to see these changes take place.

References Abdulle, A., & Obeyesekere, A.  N. (2017). New framings on anti-racism and resistance: Anti-­ racism and transgressive pedagogies (Vol. 1). Sense. Blacks make up majority of Brazil’s unemployed and informal workers. (2019, November 13). https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/economia/noticia/2019-­11/ blacks-­make-­majority-­brazils-­unemployed-­and-­informal-­workers

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Bonilla-Silva, E., & Zuberi, T. (2008). Toward a definition of white logic and white methods. In T.  Zuberi & E.  Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White logic, white methods: Racism and methodology (pp. 3–27). Rowman & Littlefield. Carneiro, A. S. (2005). A construção do outro como não-ser como fundamento do ser (Doctoral dissertation). University of São Paulo. São Paulo. Clarke, S. (2003). Social theory, psychoanalysis, and racism. Palgrave Macmillan. Conselho Federal de Psicologia – CFP. (2017). Relações raciais: Referências técnicas para atuação de psicólogas/os. Brasília, DF. Gonzalez, L. (2020). Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano: ensaios, intervenções e diálogos. Zahar. Hall, R. E. (2008). Racism in the 21st Century: An empirical analysis of skin color. Springer. Hervik, P. (2019). Racialization, racism, and anti-racism in the Nordic countries. Palgrave Macmillan. Ianni, O. (2004). Dialética das relações raciais. Estudos avançados, 18(50), 21–30. https://doi. org/10.1590/S0103-­40142004000100003 Jaccoud, L. (2008). Racismo e República: o debate sobre o branqueamento e a discriminação racial no Brasil. In M. Theodoro (Ed.), As políticas públicas e a desigualdade racial no Brasil: 120 anos após a abolição (pp. 45–65). IPEA. Jaccoud, L. D. B., Silva, A., Rosa, W., & Luiz, C. (2009). Entre o racismo e a desigualdade: da constituição à promoção de uma política de igualdade racial (1988–2008). In L. Jaccoud (Ed.), A construção de uma política de Promoção da Igualdade Racial: uma análise dos últimos 20 anos (pp. 261–328). Brasília. Katz, P. A. (1988). Eliminating racism: Profiles in controversy. Lopes, F. (2005). Experiências desiguais ao nascer, viver, adoecer e morrer: Tópicos em saúde da população negra no Brasil. In L. Batista & S. Kalckmann (Eds.), Seminário saúde da população negra Estado de São Paulo, 2004 (pp. 53–101). Instituto de Saúde. Lopes, F., & Werneck, J. (2009). Mulheres jovens negras e vulnerabilidade ao HIV/ Aids: O lugar do Racismo. In S.  R. Taquette (Ed.), Aids e juventude: gênero, classe e raça (pp. 247–266). EdUERJ. Lugones, M. (2014). Rumo a um feminismo descolonial. Revista Estudos Feministas, 22(3), 935–952. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-­026X2014000300013 Martins, E., Santos, A. O., & Colosso, M. (2013). Relações étnico-raciais e psicologia: publicações em periódicos da SciELO e Lilacs. Psicologia: Teoria E Prática, 15(3), 118–133. Moore, C. (2007). Racismo e Sociedade: novas bases epistemológicas para entender o racismo. Belo Horizonte: Mazza Edições. Moreland-Capuia, A. (2021). The trauma of racism: Exploring the systems and people fear built. Springer. Munanga, K. (2019). Negritude-Nova Edição: Usos e sentidos. Autêntica Editora. Paixão, M. J. (2003). Desenvolvimento humano e relações raciais. DP&A. Pinheiro, L. S., Fontoura, N. O., Querino, A. C., Bonetti, A. L., & Rosa, W. (2009). Retrato das desigualdades de gênero e raça. http://repositorio.ipea.gov.br/handle/11058/3223 Sacco, A. M., Couto, M. C. P., & Koller, S. H. (2016). Revisão sistemática de estudos da psicologia brasileira sobre preconceito racial. Temas Em Psicologia, 24(1), 233–250. Social Inequalities due to Color or Race in Brazil. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2021, from https:// www.ibge.gov.br/en/statistics/social/population/26017-­social-­inequalities-­due-­to-­color-­or-­ race-­in-­brazil.html?=&t=sobre Tavares, J. S. C., & Jesus Filho, C. A. A. (2020). Saúde mental, vulnerabilidades e suicídio nas populações negra e indígena. In R. C. Cordeiro, W. L. G. Oliveira, & F. Vicentini (Eds.), Saúde da população negra e indígena (pp. 261–276). EDUFRB.

Chapter 2

Race and Gender Relations in Developmental Psychology Elisabete Figueroa dos Santos and Clélia Rosane dos Santos Prestes

Introduction The objective of this chapter is to discuss the view that has been cast by developmental psychology on the processes experienced by adolescents and children, based on race and gender relations, which are structural aspects in current societies, as well as in psychological theories and practices. The socialization of children and adolescents, over the generations, is guided by the ideologies of racism and sexism, which attribute different meanings and values to different social groups. For one group, power, privileges, political domination, and being a reference are reserved, while for another, stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination associated with social humiliation remain, and differences are reconfigured into inequalities, as pointed out by Brah (2006). These ideologies are addressed by Lorde (2019, p. 240), who defines them as follows: Racism, the belief in the innate superiority of one race over all others and, thus, the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the innate superiority of one sex over the other and, thus, the right to predominance. Age discrimination. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.

According to Bento (2001), Instituto AMMA Psique e Negritude (2007), Munanga (2005), and Werneck (2010), stereotypes permeate socialization, that is, collective representations and pre-judgments, which are the basis of prejudices, which are pre-­conceived thoughts and feelings, in the form of a political and psychological phenomenon. Prejudices, in turn, become discrimination, in which conducts and behaviors are deemed inferior, and restriction or disenfranchisement E. F. dos Santos (*) Centro Universitário Central Paulista – UNICEP, São Carlos, SP, Brazil C. R. d. S. Prestes AMMA Psyche and Negritude Institute, São Paulo, SP, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 L. Dutra-Thomé et al. (eds.), Racism and Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83545-3_2

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ensues. The structural character of racism in society is expressed within personal, interpersonal, and institutional dimensions. The same is true of sexism. Psychology has a history of discussing race, sometimes having assumed the function of offering content for scientific racism, attesting to the false inferiority of the Black population to justify political domination, capitalist exploitation, and Eurocentric hegemony, among other oppressions, as demonstrated in a publication of the Federal Council of Psychology (2017). In a society with gender relations guided by another axis of oppression, institutional sexism is observed in the interactions established in different sectors of society and in the production of knowledge. The interconnection between racism and sexism, as well as its harm to scientific content and educational processes, has already been discussed by Black feminists in 1974, as in the Combahee River Collective Statement (2015). In the specific case of developmental psychology, how is structural violence influenced? Since this aspect of psychology is produced in societies where racism and sexism are structural, these ideologies shape the definitions of what will be considered normal throughout life. It starts from a reference that is intended to be universalist, but, as is to be expected in universalisms, in fact, it adopts specific parameters, which are imposed as hegemonic. What are the damages of a hegemonic vision of humanity for the psychological understanding of the different phases of life? What are the specificities of human developments in contexts with psychosocial effects of race and gender relations? How do these aspects socially determine different conditions of development? How do we critically discuss the race and gender dimensions present in the understandings and projects of psychological care? These are guiding questions for the chapter. One last question is, in principle, conceived in its most automatic formulation: What are the contributions of human development psychology to the understanding of the psychosocial effects of racism and sexism throughout life? But, reformulated, it presents itself as: What are the contributions of studies on race and gender relations to the psychology of human development?

Growing Hand in Hand with Structural Inequality Berger and Luckmann (1976), on the social construction of the subject in their interaction with the world, defined a conceptual model for the interiorization of reality and differentiated two basic socialization processes: that of primary socialization and that of secondary socialization. The first is a process carried out basically by the family, which occurs from the person’s birth and without a choice as to the socializing sources. Thus, in the primary socialization phase, the person learns, with others closest to them, about society and culture while starting to become a member of society based on these parameters. In secondary socialization, the family becomes a privileged space for more intimate relationships and is essential for the construction of personal identity, but there

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may also be several other socialization processes, based on the social institutions to which the subject connects throughout life. Through these socializations, the individual gradually integrates with a gender, a socioeconomic class, social groups, a neighborhood, a religion, a country, etc. (Berger & Luckmann, 1976; Gomes, 1995; Silva, 1987). Therefore, according to Berger and Luckmann (1976), from the family context, the new member of society internalizes a world already set and meaningful, which is presented to them in a pre-defined way, that is, built before their existence. The learning of different ideologies, including racism and sexism, begins at an early age, through interaction with family, friends, church, school, and clubs, among other people, groups, and institutions. Both oppressions are very present in Brazilian society, matching the socialization patterns of children from a very early age (de Brito, 2013). We build processes of identification and styles of interpersonal relationships that are signified from ideological discourses that teach us to establish differences in value for diversity. We learn, from an early age, to guarantee political domination, through privileges, for social groups considered to be superiors, such as men and Whites, at the expense of social humiliation and exploitation of the other groups, as stated by Gonçalves Filho (2008). From the first moments of life, or even before conception, symbolisms have been established, stereotypes and prejudices have been absorbed, self-esteem has been built, and elements have been formatted to enhance discrimination. It has been noted that, in general, families do not educate children to recognize or deal with the cunning nature of oppression. It is an important item to be included in the educational process and thus, at different ages, to position them in the face of situations of racial adversity, depending on a greater or lesser degree of racial awareness (de Brito, 2013). From this question, we can ponder the importance of understanding the socio-historical context for any family or situation of social interaction, as the dimensions of race and gender outline interpersonal relationships for all people in various phases and life situations. Many gains would be made, in family contexts and in other institutions, if the dynamics of racism and sexism were commonly recognized, faced, and elaborated. Cavalleiro’s work (2000), whose objective was to analyze the socialization of Black children in the arenas of preschool and the family with regard to the constitution of the identity of these children, made it possible to visualize a context intersected by racism, since Black children, as they are surrounded by certain dynamics, are exposed to gaps, reticence, or even the absence of representation, in addition to being victimized by children’s games in which violence is expressed as if it lacks the potential to harm. Such contents and circumstances contribute negatively to the construction of identity. The research reveals a silence involving the racial issue at school and also in the family, which ends up not offering a repertoire for the child to face the prejudices present in society and also in the school space, as the issue is hidden in both institutions. Reflecting on the social panorama, and on the similarity of gender dynamics, we can consider that this silence, or silencing, begins even before home. Structuring

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society, racial and gender violence is produced, naturalized, and then widely reproduced in each institution and social group, becoming internalized by each person, and reproduced even by those who do not receive any privileges from it. At the family and school level, the naturalization of violence silences them and allows its perpetuation, thereby, in addition to dismissing complaints and withholding the acknowledgement of suffering, re-victimizing victims. In the school arena, two frequent practices deserve attention in relation to the differential treatment of children: pampering and aggression between peers perpetrated from biases marked by race and gender. de Oliveira and Abramowicz (2010) found that the racial issue was evidenced in the pedagogical practices that took place in preschool education in situations where there was a direction of certain “affection,” which the authors called “pampering,” by the teachers in relation to certain children, with Black children being mostly excluded as recipients of these investments. Ariès (1981), in a study on the same theme, identified that “pampering” was a form of conduct that “originally was associated with women, in charge of taking care of children,” and that it appeared when “the child, for their naivete, kindness and grace, became a source of distraction and relaxation for the adult” (Ariès, 1981, p. 158). Thus, as the author points out, this circumstance referred to “a superficial feeling” on the part of the adult and that it occurred in relation to children in their first years of life. The findings by de Oliveira and Abramowicz (2010), regarding how the “pampering” was dynamized, confirm the notes of Ariès (1981), demonstrating the superficiality of adult investments in the act of pampering children. In the context of school, it corresponded to a differentiated practice or treatment precisely because some children gain this pampering, while others do not (de Oliveira & Abramowicz, 2010). According to the authors, Black children were, for the most part, left out of these practices, assuming that they received affection with less pampering. Among the acts they did not receive, we can mention sitting in the teacher’s lap, getting a kiss, receiving praise, cuddling, and being called “princess,” among others. On the other hand, the practices of persecution, teasing, mockery, and even physical aggression – which often focus on racialized physical markings and gender – directly affect Black children and their Afro-textured hair, and, among those attacked, the incidence is higher in Black girls. The aggressions against Black girls are mistakenly considered harmless, but they expose them to early-onset situations of violence. The consequences of this are many: impairment in the learning process, in guaranteeing opportunities, in experiencing safe relationships, and in difficulties in building positive identity characteristics and self-esteem. All of this makes children, and specifically Black girls, often feel inferior (Santos, 2019). White children grow up, in turn, also affected by an identification with an idealized Whiteness and the tendency to practice oppression. This context leads to the scenario, analyzed in studies, in which Black students face difficulties staying in school, with higher dropout and repetition rates. The conclusion is that the Black child’s school performance is also conditioned by intra-­ school processes, because, even when the socioeconomic level of the families is

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equivalent, Black students often have a different school trajectory, that is, the success of Black children is lower than that of Whites (Rosemberg, 1987; Hasenbalg, 1987; Hasenbalg & Silva, 1990). A survey on the profile of children from 0 to 6 years old who attended daycare centers, preschools, and elementary schools, based on the results of the survey on the standard of living by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), concluded that, when it comes to color, the access of White children to early childhood education was higher than that of Black/Brown children, which, according to the researchers, “sets up a context in which discrimination is present, confirming results of other studies” (Kappel et al., 2001, p. 46). Rosemberg (2002, p. 2) reinforces these findings, stating that “the school access of white children is greater than the access of non-white children (Black, mixed-race and Indigenous children), if the children are of the correct age to attend pre-school.” As demonstrated in this first section of the chapter, Black children experience several events that lead them to constitute a negative self-image, which, in turn, reverberates in self-concepts and weakened self-esteem. It is clear, therefore, that racism imposes a very adverse context on Black children, which is intensified for Black girls, given the intersection with gender bias.

Adolescent Experiences in Contexts of Racism and Sexism As an important stage of human development, adolescence has been considered by specialized literature as a period characterized by moments of readaptation and changes resulting from biological, socio-emotional, and psychosocial interaction. Among these changes, there is puberty, which indicates the end of childhood through maturation manifested in physical changes, such as reproductive capacity. During this period, sexuality develops significantly, and love relationships can begin, as an “experiment,” together with the initiation of sexual life, which is associated with the continuity of the identification process (Matos et al., 2005; Papalia et al., 2010; Saito et al., 2014). This is a period characterized by new experiences, new relationships, and exploration of other perspectives about oneself and about other people, still without broad commitments and responsibilities, and a period of experimentation, also called a moratorium. Attention should be paid to the fact that historical and cultural aspects play a substantial role in psychosocial and identification processes, constructed through adolescent relationships with themselves, with each other and with their historical, social, and cultural environment (Domingues & de Alvarenga, 1997). It is importante to reflect: upon whom the idea of a moratorium usually is applied or allowed? Permissiveness? Experimentation? It can be said that it is not usually applied to Black adolescents, especially not to Black girls. In 2017, 75.5% of homicide victims were Black, with the homicide rate per 100,000 Blacks being 43.1, while the rate among non-Blacks (Whites, Asians, and Indigenous) was 16.0 (IPEA; FBSP, 2019). Among the most striking and unequal

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characteristics of homicides of Brazilian adolescents and youth is the fact that there is a tendency toward victimization of Black people, by homicide, and in a dimension almost three times greater than that of Whites. It has been verified that it is an increasingly frequent phenomenon in urban areas, since high rates of homicide in adolescence appear proportional to higher population densities in the cities (Melo & Cano, 2012). Regarding the dynamics of school failure production, de Carvalho (2004) warns that adolescent Black males are those who have the most hindrances to their educational pathways and are also those who most evade the School. Among the variables that account for the probability of this evasion from the school and educational context is the need for Black adolescents and youth to have to enter the labor market early in order to generate material contributions to the family. However, also in the world of work, they find adversities to be overcome or circumvented. The racial inequalities that exist in the labor market are a reflection of a history of exclusion and absence of public policies, which has been going on since the post-­abolition period, if not even earlier (Santos & Scopinho, 2011). In the midst of the discussion of adolescence and its specificities, it is extremely important to point out and problematize the characteristics of social construction linked to race and the female gender. It is important to reflect on the challenges for Black adolescent girls to build healthy identities and self-esteem. The strangeness with which their racial inscription is read socially, as well as their gender specificities, creates the ways in which the representations and expectations attributed to these adolescents will be dynamized, as well as the places reserved for them in social interactions, elementary in this stage of life, along with the probability of being accepted and validated in various social spaces and processes. Their corporeality has been marked, historically, by difference turned pejorative, by the damage arising from hegemonic, socially imposed, and elevated standards. A point strongly affected by this template is kinky hair, associated with a supposed ugliness, which leads Black women, in different stages of life, to seek to mitigate discrimination through the attenuation of tightly coiled hair, employing harmful chemical methods in an attempt to approach the White benchmark. In other positions, guided by political awareness, Afro-textured hair starts to be affirmed as a positive sign of Blackness and re-existence. Aesthetic and political experiences will determine particular aspects in the psychic dimension, involving certain configurations of meaning that characterize the subjective condition. Given the disqualifying representation of the Black and female body, subjective experiences – which pass through the body – are redirected, if not truncated, by the experience of racism and sexism. Therefore, talking about the Black woman’s body implies, a priori, that we think of the body as a sign that, based on a certain social structure, reproduces meanings and ideals, in order to give it a particular sense, as theorized by Nogueira (1998) and Souza (1990). The existence of a dynamic of deprecation of Black girls and adolescents with regard to affective-sexual relationships is secular. Collins (2001) and Hooks (2006) point out that under slavery, the experiences of affective or amorous involvement

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were obstructed and prevented, as slavery is a system of oppression that seeks to control desires and feelings, in addition to objectifying Black girls and women. Intellectuality is another compromised experience, and one that demands political resistance to be developed, as discussed by Hooks (1995). And it is the Black adolescent girls who most often assume motherhood (often singly) in their life projects, whether through imposition, choice, and/or the influence of a horizon that projects, in advance, characteristics of adulthood (Pacheco, 2008; Silva, 2010) and of maternity or even of caregiver. Gibbs (1985) indicates that, by evaluating different studies on Black adolescent girls, it is possible to highlight three main trends in the way they are treated. In this chapter, it is worth mentioning two of those trends. The first refers to the establishment of a meta-theory or assumptions that act as guides for the hypotheses of researchers about Black adolescent girls. Such assumptions determine the high frequency of hypotheses associated with deficits, implying the stereotype that Black girls would be the five Ds: “deprived, disadvantaged, deviant, disturbed, and dumb” (p.28). Studies on behavioral problems, such as delinquency and school failure, are overrepresented in the literature on Black adolescent girls, while studies focusing on other psychological dimensions, such as self-esteem, educational/professional aspirations, and locus control, are more scarce. This research approach tends to reinforce the notion that being Black results, inevitably, in lower levels of these kinds of attributes and attitudes. The second trend mentioned by the author concerns the limited amount of research on Black adolescent girls, which can be attributed to several factors. For example, it may reflect a broader problem of the paucity of research on women and girls in general. It may also reflect the underrepresentation of academics from subaltern social groups, who would be, precisely, those more likely to be interested in these themes. Gibbs (1985) further discusses the experience of Erik Erikson when applying his concept of identity to Black adolescents, arguing that they were more likely to experience situations such as identity diffusion or premature identity problems, since such adolescents would assume a negative identity through the internalization of devaluative attitudes disseminated by society. As the author clearly points out, such conclusions by Erikson echoed existing literature, which proposed that such problems of identity (and also those of self-­ esteem, self-concept, etc.) would culminate in social maladjustment, giving rise to processes referred to in these studies as delinquency, unwanted pregnancies, and involvement with drugs, among other phenomena. The fact is, as the author points out, in relation to Black adolescent girls, that most of them do not confirm such projections, despite the marginalization present in this so-called scientific literature. Moving forward from the problematization of traditional deficiencies in research and theories on human development, with regard to gender and race, it is pertinent to underline the propositions of Swanson et al. (2003). They suggest establishing a focus not only on problematic behavior but also on resilience processes and on obtaining positive results.

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Furthermore, Swanson et  al. (2003) point out that the complexity of race and ethnicity (also important to include gender) must be recognized and the phenomena must be viewed from multiple perspectives, that is, in terms of cultural differences, structural racism (and sexism), normative aspects in development, identification processes, and their correlates. An integrative approach, combining different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, including gender and race ethnicity, is essential for understanding issues related to the development of different social groups. Continuing to focus on the studies, and considering the specificity of social figures that reconcile being women and Black, Prestes (Prestes & Paiva, 2016; Prestes et al., 2018) discussed the prevalence of works that, when they include or focus on Black women, are restricted to their illnesses. The enormous demand for new forms of analysis of the experiences of Black women was evaluated, with spins that include intersectionality as a method of analysis and action, that is, studies that consider different approaches to the themes, as well as a crossroads of axes of theoretical perspectives, sources of knowledge, styles of theories and practices, axes of specificities, and dimensions of the context. In her researches on Black women, Prestes dedicated herself to topics such as resilience, health promotion strategies, and well-being, dialoguing with productions from the academic world, from the field of the Black movement, and from Black women who have been educated in a politicized manner attentive to race and gender relations as one of the strategies for promoting comprehensive health. It is worth recognizing that, on the one hand, there are development processes and experiences common to all people and, on the other, meanings attributed to these experiences which may vary according to historical, social, and cultural configurations. Audre Lorde observes that, in racist and sexist contexts, “racial difference creates a constant distortion of vision, albeit tacit, [in which] Black women have always been, on the one hand, highly visible and, on the other hand, rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism” (Lorde, 1984, p. 42). Lorde also points out that, in certain circumstances, the “visibility that makes us more vulnerable” – that which accompanies being Black in a society that discriminates against us – “is also the source of our greatest strength” (p. 42). Collins (2013) goes against this statement, by postulating that images of control categorize Black women, being especially visible and open to objectification. This group treatment brings a potential invisibility of Black women as human beings in their entirety. Paradoxically, however, the resignification of this invisibility, in a position of outsider within, stimulates creativity and a critical position based on precisely these characteristics. It is the racist and sexist socio-historical context focused on the particularities of the social place reserved for Black women, and favored in the social imaginary, that brings representations as anti-subjects, according to Carneiro (1995). However, as Collins (2013) cautions, it is in the micro-spaces and also in the intricacies of paths, sometimes lonely, that Black women, faced with intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, and sexuality, have designed conscious articulations and propositions that allow for resistance and, in many cases, in the face of attempts at confinement and transcendence.

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Final Considerations In the process of finalizing this work, it should be noted that it was necessary to affirm the weight of the structural expression of racism and sexism. Weights that, obviously, are still active traits in the experiences of Black people and women today. As they are themselves the trigger for the need to discuss the dynamics of intersecting experiences based on issues of gender and race, they are also the engine that makes counter-representation imperative. That said, it is worth noting that the mention of racism and sexism was necessary to locate the needs for (re)construction in time and space and to bring to the psychology agenda the need to consider the interferences of social constructions of gender and race both in different moments and processes of socialization and in psychosocial processes. The data and reflections presented are the basis for the defense that there is an urgent need for psychology to rethink the universality affirmed in theories considered to be classical. Analyzes of psychic dynamics, at different times in life, need to consider issues specific to gender and race particularities. These considerations are also essential in planning care and self-care. It is important, therefore, to point out how individual and collective actions change the conjuncture in which discriminatory mentalities and practices merely survive and reproduce to one in which emancipation, empowerment, and agency are favored, among others, allowing everyday life to be seen as a process of construction, and, therefore, subject to change, and to be occupied by each person as a subject of rights. In this sense, affirming oneself politically as a woman and/or Black person requires challenging the place of subordination, approaching the active place of contesting hierarchical frameworks that seek to position certain subjects on an inferiority-superiority scale. It also requires rewriting history.

References Ariès, P. (1981). História social da criança e da família. (2nd ed.) Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara. Bento, M. A. S. (2001). Cidadania em preto e branco (3rd ed.). Ática. Berger, P. L. & Luckman, T. (1976). The social construction of reality. Brah, A. (2006). Diferença, diversidade, diferenciação. Cadernos Pagu, 26, 329–376. Carneiro, S. (1995). Gênero, raça e ascensão social. In: Revista de Estudos Feministas, v. 3, n.2, 544–552, Rio de Janeiro, IFCS/UFRJ; PPCI/SUERJ. Cavalleiro, E. d. S. (2000). Do silêncio do lar ao silêncio escolar: racismo, preconceito e discriminação na educação infantil. Contexto. Conselho Federal de Psicologia. (2017). Relações Raciais: Referências Técnicas para atuação de psicólogas/os. CFP. Collins, P. H. (2001). What’s in a name? Womanism, Black Feminism, and beyond. The Black Scholar, 26(1), 9–17. Collins, P.  H. (2013). Pensamento feminista negro: conhecimento, consciência e a política do empoderamento. Trad. Natália Luchini. Seminário “Teoria Feminista”, Cebrap.

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de Brito, A.  E. C. (2013). Lares negros olhares negros: identidade e socialização em famílias negras e inter-raciais. Serv Soc Rev Londrina, 15(2), 74–102. de Carvalho, M. P. (2004). Quem são os meninos que fracassam na escola? Cadernos de Pesquisa São Paulo, 34(21). de Oliveira, F., & Abramowicz, A. (2010). Infância, raça e “paparicação”. Educação em Revista, 26(2), 209–226. Domingues, M. A. S., & de Alvarenga, A. T. (1997). Identidade e Sexualidade no discurso adolescente. Revista Brasileira de Crescimento e Desenvolvimento Humano, São Paulo, 32–68. Gibbs, J. T. (1985). City girls: Psychosocial adjustment of urban Black adolescent females. Sage: A Scholarly Journal of Black Women, II(2). Gomes, N. L. (1995). A mulher negra que eu vi de perto. Belo Horizonte: Mazza Edições. Gonçalves Filho, J. M. (2008). A Dominação humana política: dominação e angústia. In Instituto AMMA Psique e Negritude & F. Pompeu (Eds.), Os efeitos psicossociais do racismo. Imprensa Oficial. Hasenbalg, C. A. (1987). Desigualdades sociais e oportunidade educacional: a produção do fracasso. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 63, 24–26. Hasenbalg, C. A., & Silva, N. d. V. (1990). Raça e oportunidades educacionais no Brasil. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 73, 5–12. Hooks, B. (1995). Intelectuais Negras. Revista Estudos Feministas, 3(2), 464. Hooks, B. (2006). Vivendo de amor. In J. Werneck (Ed.), O Livro da saúde das mulheres negras: nossos passos vêm de longe (2nd ed.). Pallas/Criola. Instituto AMMA Psique e Negritude. [2007?]. Identificação e abordagem do racismo institucional. Brasília: Ministério do Governo Britânico para o Desenvolvimento Internacional, Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento, Articulação para o Combate ao Racismo Internacional. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA); Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (FBSP). (2019). Atlas da violência 2019. Brasília: Rio de Janeiro: São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada; Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. Kappel, M. D. B., Carvalho, M. C., & Kramer, S. (2001). Perfil das crianças de 0 a 6 anos que frequentam creches, pré-escolas e escolas: uma análise dos resultados da Pesquisa sobre Padrões de Vida/IBGE. Revista Brasileira de Educação, 16, 35–47. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press. Lorde, A. (2019). Idade, raça, classe e gênero: mulheres redefinindo a diferença. In H.  B. de Hollanda (Ed.), Pensamento feminista: conceitos fundamentais. Bazar do Tempo. Matos, M., Féres-Carneiro, T., & Jablonski, B. (2005). Adolescência e relações amorosas: um estudo sobre jovens das camadas populares cariocas. Interação em Psicologia, 21–33. Melo, D. L. B. & Cano, I. (2012). Homicídios na Adolescência no Brasil. IHA2009/2010, Rio de Janeiro. Munanga, K. (Ed.). (2005). Superando o racismo na escola. Ministério da Educação, Secretaria de Educação Continuada, Alfabetização e Diversidade. Nogueira, I.  B. (1998). Significações do corpo negro. São Paulo: USP, 1998. Tese (Doutorado em Psicologia) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Escolar e do Desenvolvimento Humano, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. Pacheco, A. C. L. (2008). Branca para casar, mulata para f…, negra para trabalha: escolhas afetivas e significados de solidão entre mulheres negras em Salvador. Tese de Doutorado, Ciências Sociais, Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Papalia, D. E., Olds, S. W., & Feldman, R. D. (2010). Desenvolvimento humano (10ª ed.). AMGH. Prestes, C. R. d. S., & Paiva, V. S. F. (2016). Abordagem psicossocial e saúde de mulheres negras: vulnerabilidades, direitos e resiliência. Saúde e Sociedade, 25(3), 673–688. Prestes, C. R. d. S., Fachim, F. L., & Paiva, V. S. F. (2018). Estratégias de saúde realizadas por/para mulheres negras nas Américas: revisão de escopo. Revista Interfaces Brasil-Canadá, 18(3), 126–160. Rosemberg, F. (1987). Relações raciais e rendimento escolar. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 63, 19–23.

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Rosemberg, F. (2002). Dilemas da educação infantil brasileira contemporânea. Palestra apresentada no 14° Congresso Brasileiro de Educação Infantil, 1–10. Saito, M. I., da Silva, L. E. V., & Leal, M. M. (2014). Adolescência prevenção e risco. Editora Atheneu. Santos, A. C. N. dos. (2019). Meninas negras em mulheres negras: identidade étnico-racial na escola. 166f. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Programa de Mestrado em Gestão e Práticas Educacionais, Universidade Nove de Julho. Santos, E. F. d., & Scopinho, R. A. (2011). Fora do jogo?: jovens negros no mercado de trabalho. Arquivos Brasileiros de Psicologia, 63(spe), 26–37. Silva, P. B. G. e. (1987). Educação e identidade dos negros trabalhadores rurais do limoeiro. Porto Alegre: FACED/UFRGS. Silva, D. de L. (2010). Diáspora, escravidão e maternidade em amada e compaixão de Toni Morrison. Anais do fazendo gênero, diásporas, diversidades e deslocamentos, Paraíba, 1–8. Souza, N. S. (1990). Tornar-se negro: as vicissitudes da identidade do negro brasileiro em ascensão social (2nd ed.). Graal. Swanson, D.  P., Spencer, M.  B., Harpalani, V., Dupree, D., Noll, E., Ginzburg, S., & Seaton, G. (2003). Psychosocial development in racially and ethnically diverse youth: Conceptual and methodological challenges in the 21st century. The Combahee River Collective. A Black Feminist Statement. (2015). In A. Hull (T. Gloria), Bell-­ Scott, B. Smith (Eds.), All the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave: Black women’s studies. (2nd ed). : The Feminist Press. Werneck, J. (org.). (2010). Políticas públicas para negras e negros. Criola, Fundação Heinrich Boll.

Chapter 3

“It Is Repulsive: There Is Swearing Because of the Color of the Skin and Hair”: Experiences, Psychosocial Effects, and Confronting Racism by Children and Adolescents in a Capital in Northeastern Brazil Sandra Assis Brasil, Leny Alves Bomfim Trad, and João Batista de Brito Braga Alves

Introduction This chapter discusses the experiences of black children and adolescents in a Brazilian northeastern capital, based on their perceptions and narratives about discrimination and racial prejudice and possible ways of confronting them. This is an excerpt from a broader study, a doctoral thesis, which aimed to understand socialization and the construction of identities of children and their families, using benchmarks from the socio-anthropological and psychological fields. In this chapter, we seek an approach to human development, articulating the findings of the broader study and the complex discussion of racism and childhood. We start from the perspective that views racism as an essential determinant of Brazilian socio-affective relationships and, therefore, a crucial element for understanding children’s interaction and upbringing in the country. This structural racism produces significant differences in the self-constitution, care production, and social relationships, directly affecting the full development of black children and adolescents. Racial inequalities directly impact the living and health conditions of the population. Therefore, Brazilian racism can be understood as a socio-historical phenomenon that marks the foundations of socialization in the country and an essential social determinant of health. Structural racism (Almeida, 2019) operates in all dimensions of social relationships, such as the state, politics, economy, culture, and the production of ideologies and subjectivities. It is a complex phenomenon and, as such, S. A. Brasil (*) Universidade do Estado da Bahia (UNEB), Salvador, BA, Brazil L. A. B. Trad · J. B. de B. B. Alves Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), Salvador, BA, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 L. Dutra-Thomé et al. (eds.), Racism and Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83545-3_3

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diluted in different walks of life and socialization, especially in the Brazilian context, where such experiences take place in a very subtle, veiled, and significantly silenced way, however, very effective in its purposes (Munanga, 2017). Childhood racism can have several consequences for the education of black children and adolescents. Feelings of inferiority, devaluation of their identities and customs, and relationships of discrimination and violence are possible and striking examples for forming a part of childhood in this country (Soares, 2011; United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 2010; Santos, 2002). Therefore, the impacts of racism on children’s development must be described and analyzed to offer a better support and care to subjects who often do not have the tools to identify the origins of their suffering and the main ways to face it. Furthermore, as they represent physical or symbolic violence events, they can interfere differently and sometimes perversely in shaping these children’s identities. Such identity processes have been discussed and analyzed, particularly among education studies, in which themes such as stereotypes; representations of the black child’s body, hair, and aesthetics; or the absence of black figures in children’s books are addressed (Gomes, 2002, 2003; Silva, 2005; Lima, 2005; Gouvêa, 2005; Soares, 2011). A strategic venue in the first socialization and coexistence interactions among children, schools have occupied a prominent place in this debate, revealing themselves as a problematic context for the construction of black identity, with a notable lack of good examples with which the child can look up to, identify, and develop in a relatively “healthy” way. Soares (2011) recalls that childhood is a fundamental stage for human development, in which children can experience, know, relate, and express several possibilities for their lives, acquiring important values and references. However, what is heard at this stage, through the statements by teachers, colleagues, and even relatives, may or may not allow for a good upbringing and appreciation of different identities. If the daily experiences that build and train these infants are marked by discriminatory practices, a setting marked by inequalities and a producer of suffering, pain, and silencing is outlined, especially among those whose discursive abilities are still limited by their developmental stages. Thus, racism affects individuals in their most subjective aspect, compromising identity construction and self-esteem of black people from childhood, attributing to them social exclusion, suffering, and intense social malaise, which will inevitably have repercussions on their health status and quality of life. Such events impact subjects’ health and produce violence that can cause irreparable damage in many cases. Zamora (2012) already warned about the few studies on racism in Psychology, highlighting the need to escalate productions in this field to understand better and face the psychosocial consequences of this suffering. Damasceno and Zanello (2018) analyzed papers on the racial theme and its relationship with mental health. They observed that, while incipient, Psychology is one of the disciplines that produced the most studies in this area compared to other disciplines. They point to an “urgent need for investigative emphasis on the effects of racism on the mental health of black people” (p. 460), reflecting on how the experience of racism can be a stressor and cause of suffering, besides acting in an

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“invisible” way in mental health services, whose function should be to receive “individuals targeted by racism” (Damasceno &Zanello, 2018, p. 460). Also noteworthy is that this review did not identify works discussing this aspect in childhood or adolescence. This chapter1 analyzes experiences of racial discrimination and prejudice against children and adolescents in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, identifying repercussions for their life contexts and the construction of identities. Perspectives, voices, and even silence of children and young people about episodes of violence, suffering, and pain stand out, besides their possibilities of coping with and overcoming them. The complex conformation of contemporary racism is also recognized (Williams & Priest, 2015), especially racism in Salvador/Bahia and the limits of access and its understanding among children. We should emphasize the relevance of this work in exploring the child’s statements and experiences, to the detriment of other studies that attempt to understand the child and youth universe from the perspective of adults, parents, caregivers, and professionals who directly address this audience.

What Some Studies on Childhood Racism Say Psychological distress, from the ethnic-racial dimension, can produce severe symptoms and changes in a child’s psycho-affective development. Santos (2002) reports the case of a 9-year-old child with severe emotional difficulties, her relationship with conflicts related to her ethnic origin, and the consequent search for the constitution of her subjectivity. The author highlights the child’s difficulties perceiving herself as a black girl, trapped in a “delusional idea” of being a blonde girl and suffering several interdictions during her parents’ short and tense relationship. Her identity was possibly forged under the ideal of beauty of her blond father, who abused the one who could not be beautiful, her black mother, resulting in a “brown” subject (p.126) with difficulties settling down. In a review of the effects of racial discrimination on the health of children and young people, Priest et al. (2013) concluded that substantial evidence was found that racial discrimination is a critical determinant of health and general well-being in the development of children and youth, showing the adverse effects of this discrimination in all the studies analyzed. In addition, the review identified 121 studies on significant and consistent relationships between racial discrimination and

1  The findings discussed in this chapter are an excerpt from the first author’s doctoral thesis, entitled “Identity construction, experiences of racism and psychosocial repercussions: experiences of black children in Salvador – BA” (free translation from Portuguese), emphasizing children’s narratives. As this is an excerpt, some excerpts from the narratives will seem incomplete or even too directive concerning the experiences of racism. However, it should be noted that all field production was carried out with responsibility, respect, and acceptance of the sensations and feelings generated by the study. Furthermore, the study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee, CAAE n° 19905513.1.0000.5030.

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negative mental health indicators, such as anxiety, depression, and psychological stress, and a critical correlation between racial discrimination and behavioral problems (Priest et al., 2013). Goff et al. (2014) showed that black boys are seen as older and less innocent when compared to their white same-age peers. The authors started from a conception of childhood in which the social category “child” defines a group of individuals who are perceived as different, with their characteristics, including innocence and the need for protection (Goff et  al., 2014). The findings showed an association between “black and monkey,” highlighting it as a significant predictor of current racial disparities in police violence against young black people. The authors believe that the research suggests that dehumanization is a dangerous intergroup attitude and that this intergroup perception about the child/infancy is poorly explored, requiring further studies in this field. França and Monteiro (2004) found that racism in childhood is increasingly subtle and understood as indirect racism. The authors studied racism expressions in white children to identify the effect of age on the expression of discriminatory actions. Their findings contradicted trends indicated in the literature, showing that older children (from 8 years of age) continued to display discriminatory behavior, expressed indirectly, and are “immune to criticism or social punishment.” In this work, the authors believe that possible changes in expressing racism are linked to the internalization of social norms and the ability to address such norms in terms of the children’s life contexts. Silva and Branco (2011) carried out the research focused on the interaction between black and white girls aged 9 to 11 in a structured playful context and found greater appreciation of a white, blonde, and blue-eyed beauty standard. In the interactions proposed by the researchers, regardless of their ethnicity/skin color, the girls valued the white and blonde doll, to the detriment of the black doll with curly hair, and pointed to the ideal of a pretty boy as being “white” with clear eyes and hair. Oliveira and Abramowicz (2010) work on the practice of professionals in a daycare center showed significant differences in the care provided to white and black children by educators. The racial component was a factor in excluding black children from “pampering” actions, acts of affection, or praise related to beauty and good behavior. This study revealed racist expressions that contradict the supposed “Brazilian cordial racism,” especially discriminatory acts against very young children. During field observations, the authors noticed how little care is given to black children, warning of possible penalties on the black body, and who deserves or not the “teacher’s lap.” Fazzi (2004) carried out fieldwork in two schools, one attended by middle-class children and the other by poor children. Her analysis did not systematically cover the age, gender, and skin color strata. However, it focused on the possibility of building an ideal type of prejudiced child, highlighting the nature of the stereotypes underpinning interracial relationships and characterizing what could be prejudiced behavior. Her findings are echoed in the negative representations of black people in

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Brazilian society and point out how children recreate prejudiced realities and uphold Brazilian racism. In line with the findings above, Souza (2016) highlights the importance of reflecting on the categories of ethnicity and skin color in childhood, as they can show classifications and hierarchies in the subjective constructions of children’s subjects. The author discusses the use of stereotyped images that reproduce discourses of valuing the white ideal on posters, walls, and classrooms, without reference to images of black children. Andriani (2006, 2007) also studies children in a public school about the meanings constructed about ethnicity and racism, showing how different subjects elaborate aspects of their social position in the world, based on interaction with peers and mediated by culture. Through cultural-historical psychology, the author concludes that “the establishment of potential action, participation, pleasure, and social well-­ being is related to the conditions experienced and the meanings configured from what is experienced/felt” (Andriani, 2006, p. 181). Finally, the author analyzes the more active role of black children in the discussion, pointing to the possibility of reconfiguring power relationships while living in the group established for the research. The studies above highlight different ways of analyzing the effect of racism on the upbringing and development of children and adolescents. Such perspectives address evidence that highlights racism as a determinant of health influencing the well-being of children and the perceptions, representations, and social constructions directly affecting the perspective, judgment, and production of care for black children in different social and institutional contexts. In their interactional processes, whether in intimate, family spaces, or broader relationships with different social devices, black children have a self-subjectivation and constitution process weakened and impacted by the structural effects of racism. In this sense, this study analyzes the interface “social interaction-child-and-­ youth development” from an interactionist and historical-cultural perspective that dialogues with the challenges and potential of the experiences of these children and adolescents in order to highlight their possibilities of agency in the oppressive social contexts. Furthermore, the human development’s interactionist and cultural-­ historical perspective emphasizes how socially constituted emotions and language also organize psychic expressions and psychological processes. Thus, the psychological development occurs from social relationships and action, from the “interlacing of evolutionary and involuted processes, through the complex crossing of external and internal factors, through a complex process of overcoming difficulties and adaptation” (Vygotsky, 1995, as cited above in González-Rey, 2012). In this way, development is established from social interactions, which, in the case of black children, and according to the evidence listed above, are marked by pain, silencing, and negative, stigmatized, and inferior perceptions of being black in the world and Brazil. In this social scenario, black children interact and develop, seeking ways to build themselves.

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 f the Paths and Challenges of Production of This Research: O Methodological Issues We developed qualitative ethnographic research, whose analysis focused on the narratives of black children and their families. A first methodological challenge referred to the intention to investigate children from a perspective that would place them in a position of social agents, capable of talking about themselves and articulating this position with analyses around interactionist assumptions, which allow us to look at social subjects as possible interpreters of the world, highlighting the meanings that the subjects themselves put into practice while building this social world. In this sense, Vygotsky’s work perspective highlights the intervention of individuals in the development of other individuals and is consistent with the research proposal in which researchers are also active and interact with the study participants (Oliveira, 2010). Ethnographically inspired tools were used to understand the children’s experiences. Ethnography is a way of immersing in the cultural universe of the “other,” different or not from the researcher’s reality, so that dense descriptions of reality are possible, comprising social relationships, socialization production, and reproduction forms, interpreted by the very subjects (Geertz, 1978). On the one hand, contact with children involved the mediation of the adults responsible for them, especially in the case of middle-class families, and, on the other hand, children from the working-class neighborhood, who participated in the research freely and spontaneously since the researcher was already working in the neighborhood in other projects. In this case, most children had more autonomy vis-­ à-­ vis their parents and caregivers and moved freely through the community. However, this element did not necessarily facilitate the researcher’s contact with the children since they decided to participate (or not) in the developed playgroups and more formal interview moments. The main techniques used were participant observation using a field diary; semi-­ structured interviews with children from different family cores (some children were interviewed more than once in different years) and with the children’s parents or guardians; development of playful activities, such as games; reading children’s books; and, above all, the use of drawings that represent the daily lives of children. The children’s books used were almost all about ethnic-racial themes. They were chosen to be the triggers of the theme in situations in which the children did not speak – either due to lack of knowledge or the silence of what is not possible to say. Drawings and readings from children’s books were used as triggers for listening to stories that children could tell and that often reflected their own experiences. Seventeen children and adolescents were interviewed from 2012 and 20142, and all were black (self-declaration): four aged 05–06 years; three children were 2  Initially, the research design envisaged working with children over 07 years old and under 12. However, based on the indications of families and the consequent construction of the field, the age range was expanded and included children aged 05 and 06 years, besides two 14-year-olds.

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interviewed when they were 08–09; six children aged 10–11 years; three children/ adolescents aged 12–13 years; and two adolescents aged 14 years. Also, 5 boys and 12 girls were interviewed. Five children lived in homes whose monthly income was around 02–03 MW; six children with a monthly income between 03 and 05 MW; four children with an income of 05–10 MW; and two children whose parents’ or guardians’ income was in the 10–20 MW range. It is also noteworthy that not all those responsible for the children informed their monthly income, assigning the income of only one of the respondents. The heterogeneity of ages was also an important and challenging element in approaching the study themes. With younger children up to around 08 years, more playful ways and interaction time were required to access their experiences, especially the most painful experiences. We resorted to narratives of suffering, exclusion, and coping with the situations they experienced in adolescents and children aged over 09 years. Pseudonyms were chosen based on names of African origin to identify the children, which was based on a family that named one of their children with an African name. Families were also identified through surnames of African origin, and adults or other people who emerged in the field research interactions received only the initials of their names followed by a period. Data were analyzed from the children’s narratives, highlighting (1) perceptions and meanings attributed to racism, (2) experiences of discrimination and racism, and (3) repercussions and coping possibilities. The main characteristics of the interviewed children are presented in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1  Summary of the main characteristics of the interviewed children Child/ adolescent Niara Malaika Anaya Abeba Mara Ngozi Kianga Kumi Ashanti

Gender Female Female Female Female Female Male Female Male Female

Age at interview 12 years 06 years 11 and 13 years 09 and 10 years 14 years 04 years 05 years 08 years 11 years

Family Azikiwe Azikiwe Okereke Awolowo Awolowo Obasanjo Obasanjo Achebe Bello

Kito Nyashia Latasha Akin Tata Meeca Amir Adimu

Male Female Female Male Female Female Male Female

14 years 11 years 10 years 08 and 09 years 08 and 09 years 10 and 12 years 06 years 10 years

Balewa Ibori Ibori Odili Odili Buhari Buhari Soyinka

Household income (Minimum wages) 5–10 MW 5–10 MW 2–3 MW 5–10 MW 5–10 MW 3–5 MW 3–5 MW – 2–3 MW (mother) and 3–5 MW (father) 3–5 MW – – 10–20 MW 10–20 MW 3–5 MW 3–5 MW –

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Results and Discussion  erceptions and Meanings Attributed to Racism by Children P and Adolescents We found that all children directly or indirectly experienced episodes of racial discrimination and prejudice. Some of them talked about these experiences because they were a little older and could express the theme more freely and because they understood such experiences as racist situations. For others, the understanding of racism was still too far away, producing interpretations linked to situations of poverty and socioeconomic inequality. In the case of very young children, their parents were spokespersons for some of these experiences. The linkage between racist situations and bullying was noteworthy. Practically all children mentioned the experiences lived and observed as bullying situations. Bullying is an old phenomenon that has gained traction and expression more recently. It is a form of violence expressed through direct or indirect verbal or physical abuse, ranging from insults, name-calling, nicknames, slapping, and kicking to forms of isolation and social exclusion (Zequinão et  al., 2016)3. Rosenthal et  al. (2015) had already studied the effects of bullying on the mental health of black adolescents, finding associations between bullying and increased weight and blood pressure, besides a decrease in self-assessed global health. In the case of the experiences analyzed here, we considered bullying and racism experienced by children and adolescents: bullying as a type of abuse increasingly common among peers in Brazilian schools and, therefore, so recurrent in the statements of the children interviewed and racism as a structuring element of social relationships, selecting and shaping every form of social interaction; however, it was barely mentioned among children. Obviously, bullying and racism are not synonymous and act and express themselves differently. Given a national setting in which racism was silenced and camouflaged for a long time, the use of the term bullying4 has gained ground to give meaning to what could not be said before: racism and the Brazilian interdictions. Perhaps, expanding interpretative possibilities, the use of the term bullying by some children is a way to minimize the pain caused by racism that “doesn’t exist,” 3  This is not about exhausting the bullying theme but bringing some aspects of this multifaceted phenomenon very much present in the lives of Brazilian children and adolescents and globally, in order to establish differences between this aggression and racism (also considered a type of violence and is structurally present in Brazilian society). 4  It should be noted that we do not intend to establish an equivalence between bullying and racism. Oliveira (2015) comments on the main differences between bullying and racism. The author highlights that abuse in the context of bullying has the prerogative of the absence of adults and analyzes that those who “suffer abuse tend to commit abusive acts because they have suffered abuse, but do not talk about the subject.” In the case of racism, there is an ideology that “dehumanizes the human being,” perpetuated in defense of the existence of a superior race and whose abuse can occur between peers, but also in the presence of adults, or even provoked by them (Oliveira, 2015).

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“has never been seen to happen,” or “has been unheard of.” Furthermore, resorting to bullying may also mean the only way to say about the pain caused by discriminatory and racist practices, about which one cannot say. Finally, it should also be considered that racism, which structures Brazilian social relationships, feeds the aggressive practice of bullying itself, building the imbricated feedback from violent and aggressive attitudes, physical or not, carried by ideologies that traverse socialization, learning, and training of perpetrators and victims of all forms and expressions of violence. The association of racism with bullying among children may also be related to the use of specific insults, typical actions among peers in the case of bullying, but also loaded with racist connotations: “Racism is something like this: calling someone white, black, ‘charcoal’. A lot of names” (Kito, 14 years old); “It is repulsive. Cursing someone because of his/her skin or hair…” (Tata, 08–09 years old). In any case, even without explaining the differences between such abuse, Niara’s narrative allows us to understand that children have to address both forms of social exclusion, whether because of the racism prevailing in society or because of violent bullying: I studied at M.C. College [private school]. The year before last, when I was in 5th grade, I was the only black girl in the entire school. (…) So… sometimes it was cool, and sometimes it was weird. It was cool because you were the only one, so there wasn’t anyone very much like you. I was the only black girl anyway. There were those brunettes, but I was black. It’s bad because sometimes I suffered racism. Sometimes, it was bullying. So that is the part I don’t like. I think most people don’t like to suffer racism and bullying either. (Niara, 12 years, Azikiwe family)

Another essential aspect to be considered concerns an understanding of racism and racial prejudice directly related to contexts of poverty and socioeconomic inequalities. The reality experienced by children in the working-class neighborhood is similar to the excerpts narrated by young Ashanti, perceived as very similar to the contexts of low-income families in the literature referred to by her. Ashanti says racial prejudice is “the black man who lives in the garbage,” a direct allusion to the terrible housing and living conditions of many black families in the neighborhood where she lives: Because he says, he’s black… that he lives in the trash… Whatever! It’s more or less that. Preconception. (…) I saw it in a book. (…). It was in Harry Potter’s… Because… it’s… the boy’s family. She had many children, and she had to buy everything secondhand because she had many children. Furthermore, they didn’t have much money that day because the father worked in the objects department. (…) So, when he joined to be the goalkeeper for the Gryffindor team, which is the house he was in at Hogwarts when he was playing, they invented the song for him. So, they were singing: “the son lives in the garbage….” (Ashanti, 11 years, Bello family)

Abeba, aged 9, defines what racism is and identifies an example of a racist situation in a children’s TV soap opera and also reports that she has never gone through any of these experiences: Racism is: “When someone does not want to be friends with another because of race or religion.” In the excerpt from the soap opera Carrossel, she describes: “Maria Joaquina, who was a rich white girl, doesn’t like it and keeps being racist with Cirilo, who is a poor black boy.” Another definition

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associated with poverty, following trends in spatial distribution and other socioeconomic indicators typical of the effects of structural racism on the Brazilian black population. Racism perceptions and representations among children are confused with other social phenomena, such as poverty and violence (bullying), and reinforce felt experiences, often unnamed, that cross their perceptions.

Discrimination and Racism Experiences Kito (14 years old), Meeca (10–12 years old), Mara (14 years old), and Ababa (09–10 years old) did not report personal experiences of racial discrimination or prejudice, or even bullying, pointing out situations of others they observed. Abeba, as already mentioned, addressed racism in a children’s soap opera, and the others cited swearing and jokes as an expression of these forms of racial violence: “stiff hair,” “louse hair,” and “charcoal.” Mara narrated situations at school that she understood as racism: “When they call a girl with shorter hair than mine and curly at school… I think it’s Tim Maia. This is what they call her…, not me… Martinho da Vila?”5 Some girls narrated episodes where they were called male names because of their short hair. This was the case with Ashanti (11 years old) and Nyashia (11 years old). Remember that long, long, straight hair is the white standard for female beauty, unlike Ashanti and Nyashia’s hair, which is frizzy in the research context and short, cut because of different issues. Ashanti’s mother had used straighteners on her strands, ruining her hair and having to cut it very short so that it would recover the natural root of the strands; on the other hand, Nyashia reported a skin problem on the scalp that resulted in a cut known as “Joãozinho.” Then, her hair was the element of distinction for the production of racist and discriminatory attitudes, especially at school: “Yeah, it already happened. Everyone at school, because of my shorter hair, because my mother had given them a straightener that messed up all the hair. It broke. It got short. (…) Everyone was confusing me… Everyone passing by me asked me if I was a boy or a girl.” (Ashanti, 11 years, Bello family) Because… I cut my hair, right. I am allergic to sand. So, at one time, I was all sore, with tiny wounds. Then my hair, my head was full of wounds. It was full of stuff. So, I cut my hair, and it grew all curled up. So, I cut it again, and they started calling me [John]. I used to cry, but now I don’t cry anymore. (Nyashia, 11 years, Ibori family)

Again, on hair, Tata (aged 08–09) narrated her experience of racism when she lived in a city in the southeast of the country, where she said, “I was already called ugly because of my hair. My hair was stiff because I was black….” In the current city (Northeast), Tata said she had not gone through any prejudiced experience. Tata’s mother warned that her daughter didn’t like her hair but that there was an awakening to the appreciation of her curls after moving to the current city. In this  Reference to two famous Brazilian singers who are black and have curly hair

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sense, Tata says the capital of the Northeast was the place that allowed her more significant contact with her peers, renewed contact with her mother’s family, and, perhaps, greater possibilities of being and living a black girl with more “tranquility.” Akin (08–09 years old), Tata’s twin brother, had an ambiguous relationship with his hair and skin color and was experiencing discrimination because of his “sex,” as he commented. Akin had other tastes, unlike the boys his age: he did karate (forced by his mother) but didn’t like it; he watched and liked children’s programs more valued by girls. He liked theater and was not “quarrelsome” like other boys he interacted with. Because of his interests, he was called a “faggot,” a “gay” by colleagues and, mainly, by his older brother. This situation generated great anxiety for his mother, who did not know how to address the choices of her son, who was still so young, and for Akin himself, who felt very bad and “dull,” making it very difficult to “get it out of his head.” Anaya (11–13 years old) said that society’s problem was minor because of color prejudice and more religious intolerance. Being from Candomblé, her experiences spoke of the difficulty of “being a religious initiate” and having to wear specific clothes and clothing that made him stand out and, thus, drew the attention of other schoolmates. Anaya was called “macumbeirinha mirim” 6 because her mother is an “African faith priestess.” In any case, Anaya coped with situations well despite the discrimination, taking a stand and questioning her colleagues. Her mother always stood by Anaya, offering her support and coping with the prejudiced attitudes: When I became an African religious initiate, I had to shave my hair, go to school, wear white clothes. (…) Then, everyone noticed, right. There was no way of not noticing it. Then the teacher was talking about religion, so I talked a little about mine. Then the girl said that my religion belonged to the devil, “go look for God!”. The only right religion was hers. I got up on the chair and said: ‘if my religion isn’t right, neither is yours. If my religion belongs to the devil, so is yours. Respect mine so I can respect yours’. The principal called my mother at school because of this. Then my mother said, “yes, my daughter is being bullied. Do you think that’s right, that the girl is right and that my daughter is wrong because she got up in the chair, defended herself, and defended her religion? Do you think this is wrong?”. (…) Then my mother said: “you have to see my daughter’s side more. My daughter has been suffering from this for a long time, and you don’t notice it? Is it because the girl is a Christian that she right is and my daughter is wrong?” (Anaya, 13 years, Okereke family)

For Amir (06 years old), Kianga (05 years old), and Ngozi (04 years old), the parents or guardians, or even the context, indicated some situations they suffered, however, without realizing what had happened. For example, Amir was

6  “Macumbeirinha mirim” was a pejorative nomination referring to the fact that the child is the daughter of a Mãe-de-santo (priestess of African-based religions in Ngozi went through two difficult situations that could go unnoticed concerning the racial problem. The first time, at age 3, Ngozi had been spanked at the daycare center because she still didn’t know how to use the toilet and just wanted to use diapers. Her mother considered it absurd for a teacher aide to beat a 3-year-­ old child because she had not yet left her diapers. This episode may be related to how teachers and daycare caregivers deal with children, in this case, a black boy. Brazil), who, in a prejudiced and pejorative tone, receives the title of “macumbeira.”

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experiencing some difficulties at school, but during the research period, it was difficult to identify in detail what was happening: the little boy was suffering and showed in his drawings and comments that he felt very sad and used a lot of strength to draw the lines on the paper, expressing anger or outrage in his scribbles. Kianga, on the other hand, questioned her family about her skin color and curly hair from an early age in response to the remarks and provocations of schoolmates, saying she prefers straight hair because her hair is “stiff.” Ngozi went through two difficult situations that could go unnoticed concerning the racial issue. The first time, at age 3, Ngozi had been spanked at the daycare center because he still didn’t know how to use the toilet and just wanted to use diapers. His mother said it was absurd for a teacher aide to beat a 3-year-old child because he had not given up using diapers. This episode may be related to how teachers and daycare caregivers deal with children: in this case, a black boy. The narrated situation corroborates the findings of the research by Oliveira and Abramowicz (2010) on children pampering. The second, more recent episode addresses the observations of Ngozi’s mother in a shopping mall when the boy tries to get close to other children to play and other mothers push him away from the children. The attitudes are subtle, and Ngozi’s mother reports that the look of other mothers is what denounces that they don’t want her child around them. Ngozi’s mother understands that these attitudes are related to her son’s skin color and hair: “What would it be for then? If Ngozi wasn’t badly dressed, didn’t stink, if he was all dressed up like her son was too, got it?” (S., mother of Ngozi, Obasanjo family).

Repercussions and Possibilities for Confronting Racism The aspects that most stood out as repercussions for discrimination and prejudice episodes involved reactions such as crying, isolation, psychological distress (feeling rejected, feeling that they carried “a lot on their minds”), sadness, in some cases expressions of aggressiveness in the drawings and games, shyness, social exclusion, and two things that attracted much attention: the idea of “studying to death” (making efforts to be the best) and the use of games to deal with violent processes of discrimination, such as the statement “playing bullying.” Niara (12 years old) produced a very informative report on the repercussions of racism in her development. She went through situations such as being isolated and concentrating exclusively on her studies, becoming a “super studious” person who “did not leave the library.” In her mind was the idea that she needed to “study to death.” Niara was isolated from the other white classmates of the private school where she studied, and this led her to have to be the best, to prove herself the best so that she could win back her classmates. Niara, still 12, grows up with extra weight in establishing the self and her relationships: It was on my first day of school. I went to introduce myself. All the girls were white. Well, not really white, they were more… Malaika’s color [brown]. Everyone clapped, shouted, and talked. When it was my turn, no one did that. Everyone was looking at me with strange

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faces, and I automatically left the room on my own. I spent ten minutes or half an hour in hiding so that no one could find me. However, then I went to talk to the supervisor. She explained everything to me, and then I felt much better, much happier. Then during the break, I was sad again because no one wanted to mingle with me: I was alone…. (Niara, 12 years, Azikiwe family)

Niara’s case gained significant repercussions at the school where she studied. Her mother made a considerable effort to show the school the problems her daughter was experiencing. The school said that it was Niara’s behavioral problem, placing all the blame on the subject, who, at the time, was around 07 years old. Niara’s mother had to resort to psychological reports to show the school that her daughter had no problems and that the aforementioned educational center would need to take a stand on the racial issue and change the way it was addressing the issue of diversity and racism. Several changes were made at the school after Niara’s mother’s clashes. It is worth highlighting the role that families and other interactive spaces for the children and adolescents (schools, daycare centers, and community spaces) play in the care and possibilities of coping with situations of racism experienced by children and adolescents. Families are one of the first interactive spaces, and how such processes are developed reflects on children’s self-esteem and mental health. Studies have pointed out difficulties of certain black families in offering support to their children in coping with situations of racism, as they are “adverse affective experiences” that can compromise psychosocial aspects of those suffering from the pain produced by racism (Podkameni & Guimarães, 2007; Guimarães & Podkameni, 2008). However, the leading role of some mothers in perceiving episodes of racial discrimination and following up on the possibilities of confronting racism was highlighted in this research, offering not only to support to their children but also expressly and publicly demanding reparative attitudes. Besides the psychosocial repercussions illustrated above, the use of games also drew attention to the statement and understanding of some children. Kito, Nyashia, Akin, Tata, and Kumi mentioned that bullying or prejudice situations were actually games between children. The games are part of the socialization processes and, in many cases, reproduce scenes and events from the children’s daily lives. Children use games for learning, experimentation, and meanings about the world they live in. It is also some kind of cultural contribution and the development of new social relationships, crucial for child development. Contemporary authors have been exploring the contributions of play to the understanding of socialization, constitution of the subject, and cultural “transmission” (Pontes & Magalhães, 2003; Queiroz et al., 2006). “Playing bullying” emerged as a strong expression and indicator of children’s practical and discursive possibilities in suffering and social exclusion. In some situations, it referred to a consensus, a social norm among children, rules of relationship and behavior so that they could express their anxieties in the form of games, jokes, and the playful in their lives. “Playing bullying” may be related to a child’s defense mechanism, a defense expressed in the attack, with limits on what can be said. This expression can be a defense mechanism for situations of discrimination and also a

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way of children confronting racism. In a nutshell, Kito says about the “unspoken” of the rules established (or even imitated) by children at school, complaining about a classmate who denounces the playful acts to the teacher: “If everyone is playing bullying, why will she talk?” (Kito, 14 years old, Balewa family). Adimu (10 years old), when reporting a situation of discrimination experienced in the family, reacts to her cousin’s questions, indicating a new possibility of confrontation that is not just silence, isolation, and sadness. The girl is sad about what happened, but she doesn’t stop talking, questioning her relative about the absurdity she had just said. This short passage narrated by Adimu can point to new ways found by children to deal with racism in Brazilian society. Without a shadow of a doubt, breaking the silence is essential, and Adimu, still shy, seems to start this process: E: Have you ever suffered any prejudice? Adimu: Yes. E: And how was it? Adimu: It was a cousin of mine. She asked why I am not her color. She said this color is ugly. E: And you said what? Adimu: I said: “are you prejudiced?” Then she said: “what is a prejudiced person?” I said: “it’s someone who doesn’t like blacks, black people” (Adimu, 10 years old, Soyinka family).

A last and interesting confrontation was chosen by twins Akin and Tata (age 08–09) after reading a children’s book about black children and their frizzy hair. The twins decided to write a story and tell situations typically experienced by curlyhaired black girls. In the story, the children point to an attempt to reconcile blacks and whites, observed by the different skin tones used to illustrate the characters in the story. This ideal of equality in the story of Akin and Tata also appeared in the statements of some children that signaled an understanding of racial issues in terms of equal rights. The idea of “I don’t care” of ignoring discriminatory and racist facts was the keynote of other children too, who claimed to prefer to concentrate on their activities rather than having to respond to the attitudes of their peers at school. In any case, the story narrated by Akin and Tata closes this chapter with the eyes of these children: a perspective marked by the hope of social transformation and reconstruction of Brazilian racial relationships: “She did it, and everyone thought she was beautiful! She thanked her friends and threw a party! A party in honor of black people!” (Drawings 3.1 and 3.2). The prejudice of the little girl Maria Julieta (Authored by Akin and Tata, 09 years) Maria Julieta She has curly hair and black (like a man), beautiful as a flower! She is black and, when she passes by, her beauty fills the flowers with love. Her hair is blond and black at the ends. It's so curly it's made of waves! The mother loves her hair, and every day she makes a hairstyle prettier than the other! Everyone keeps saying she's ugly when she gets to school because she's black and has curly hair, but it's all about envy! From wave to wave, each wave has a story! The hair is so curled it looks like a ball!

3  “It Is Repulsive: There Is Swearing Because of the Color of the Skin and Hair”… Drawing 3.1  Book cover created by Akin and Tata

Drawing 3.2  Illustrations for the book by Akin and Tata Sometimes she wears such a colorful tiara! Furthermore, other times, she wears some ornament prettier than the other: little butterflies… ! Sometimes the tiara is so beautiful that it hides the beauty of her hair. She receives countless compliments while walking on the streets! She suffers so much prejudice at school because of her color and hair color, but, deep down, she doesn’t care about anything because she knows that her hair is as beautiful as the color…

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S. A. Brasil et al. Sometimes she cries because of prejudice. Then she befriends a girl and a boy who tried to help. She managed to do it, and everyone found her beautiful! Moreover, she thanked her friends and threw a party! A party in honor of black people: So many beautiful people in her family! Hair is prettier than others. You can’t even explain so many curls!

Final Considerations In this chapter, we aimed to broaden some views on the effects of racism on the upbringing of Brazilian children and young people and understand the experiences and processes of confronting discrimination and racial prejudice in a context marked by advances and setbacks in affirmative and dynamic racism policies in Brazil. It is necessary to consider racism as a social, historical, structured, and structuring expression, which can act directly on the living and health conditions of the population (Williams & Priest, 2015; Almeida, 2019). The authors’ arguments in this chapter confirm the obvious: racism is bad for health, especially the health and well-being of children and adolescents. In addition to the political-ideological assumptions that support the supposed inferiority of the Brazilian black population, Brazilian-style racism is expressed in subtleties and silent situations perceived in analyzing the experiences of children and their families in this study. Dealing with children was the most enjoyable part of this research. We could present a little of this social universe (from the perspective of children and adolescents), its meanings around racism, and social and affective consequences. It was essential to realize that children have their ways of protecting and defending themselves in the face of certain situations of discrimination or prejudice. Despite the challenges, it is worth highlighting the need for more investments in studies using methodologies that favor listening to children and adolescents. In different ways and intensities, children did not fail to address relevant aspects of racial relationships, dealing directly or indirectly with crucial situations in the relationship between blacks and whites or analyses of the rise of blacks in society and the need to value racial identity. Almost all of the children interviewed experienced, directly or indirectly, racial discrimination or prejudice at school, in their neighborhood, or even within their family. The main consequences of these painful experiences can be summarized as isolation, sadness, crying, and depression. The processes of confronting racism were distinct from the context of each child’s life. Life dynamics in which violence was the primary context of social and community organization almost made the racial issue invisible, especially from the children and youth perspective. While fully understanding racial discrimination, many children responded to such episodes negatively or defended these situations: playing bullying, making jokes, or trying to be the best in the class were essential responses representing the emotional charge that racism can bring about. The children’s statements and experiences also evidenced different ways of protecting themselves and coping with discrimination and prejudice by their parents or

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guardians. In some situations, the children’s parents or guardians were utterly unaware of the discrimination/prejudice experienced; in other cases, the mobilization and demand for actions and reparatory processes were perceived and affected how children perceived and dealt with their own identity and coped with situations. An “ideal of valuing equality” was unanimous among the children. Their statements repeated the idea that “we are all equal because we are human beings.” Would such a perspective, among children, mean the naivety of this audience, or could we understand, within the universe of children and youth, a legitimate tendency to think about racial relationships? Besides acting to maintain the status quo, what do these children say, and what do they want? Do they avoid conflicts? Do they have defenses? Do they believe in a world marked by racial equality? Would it be better not to face discrimination situations and simply ignore them? Regarding situations of racial discrimination and prejudice, the children’s interpretations and meanings took such episodes as synonymous with bullying, not only because this type of aggression has become increasingly common in Brazilian schools but also because racism is the foundation of social relationships and would not even be excluded from aggressive practice in schools. The findings of this research significantly support the recomposition of public policies. The narratives exposed serve as an inspiration and align with the contemporary debate around the identities engaged and willing to produce social transformations. Those responsible for Brazilian childhood cannot avoid the issue of race relationships. Children say (and say a lot) about their experiences. Their narratives intersect issues surrounding them, contributing to society’s different segments of life. Their narratives break with the silence that wants to cover up Brazilian racism. It is necessary to deepen the reading of children and youth experiences so that new technical, political, and social tools can be used in redesigning the socialization and care processes of black children and adolescents in this country.

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Silva, M. P. D., & Branco, A. U. (2011). Negritude e infância: Relações étnico-raciais em situação lúdica estruturada. Psico, 42(2), 197–205. http://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/ revistapsico/article/viewFile/6516/6521 Soares, M. C. (2011). Relações raciais e subjetividades de crianças em uma escola particular na cidade de Salvador. [Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade Federal da Bahia]. Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal da Bahia. http://repositorio.ufba.br/ri/handle/ri/14322 Souza, E.  Q. (2016). Crianças negras em escolas de “alma branca”: Um estudo sobre a diferença étnico-racial na educação infantil. [Tese de Doutoramento, Universidade Federal de São Carlos]. Repositório Institucional da UFSCar. https://repositorio.ufscar.br/handle/ufscar/7873 Williams, D. R., & Priest, N. (2015). Racismo e Saúde: um corpus crescente de evidência internacional. Sociologias, 17(40), 124–174. https://doi.org/10.1590/15174522-­017004004 Zamora, M.  H. R.  N. (2012). Desigualdade racial, racismo e seus efeitos. Fractal: Revista de Psicologia, 24(3), 563–578. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1984-­02922012000300009 Zequinão, M.  A., Medeiros, P., Pereira, B., & Cardoso, F.  L. (2016). Bullying escolar: Um fenômeno multifacetado. Educação e Pesquisa, 42(1), 181–198. https://doi.org/10.1590/ S1517-­9702201603138354

Chapter 4

Emotion Socialization and Developmental Outcomes in Black Children: Relations with Ethnic-Racial Socialization Patrícia Alvarenga, Nilton Correia dos Anjos Filho, Paula Kleize Costa Sales, and Antonio Carlos Santos da Silva

Introduction Parental attitudes and practices directed to children’s emotional expressions affect emotional understanding and self-regulation and social competence during childhood. The set of parental attitudes and practices regarding child emotional expressiveness has been systematically investigated under the scope of  the Emotion Socialization Model (Eisenberg et al., 1998) in the last two decades. Studies conducted in North America, Europe, and Oceania with samples composed of white, middle-class families predominate in the field, though some comparative studies include Latin, Asian, and African American families. This chapter discusses the literature on emotion socialization in black families and investigates the relations between mothers’ emotion socialization practices and children’s developmental outcomes in a sample of black families from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. We begin discussing the relations between emotion socialization and ethnic-racial socialization in black families. Next, we analyze these issues in the Brazilian context. In the second part of the chapter, we investigate relations between maternal emotion socialization practices and children’s emotional self-regulation and behavioral problems in a sample of 35 self-declared black and brown dyads with children aged 3–7 years.

P. Alvarenga (*) · N. C. d. A. Filho · P. K. C. Sales · A. C. S. da Silva Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 L. Dutra-Thomé et al. (eds.), Racism and Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83545-3_4

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 motion Socialization, Ethnic-Racial Socialization, E and Developmental Outcomes in Black Populations Emotion socialization is the process through which parents help children understand, express, and deal with their own emotions and with others’ emotional states (Eisenberg et al., 1998). When children display behavioral cues indicating positive or negative emotions, parents tend to react in supportive or unsupportive ways. Supportive emotion socialization practices recognize the child’s emotions and reinforce their expression, using empathic responses that seek comfort and help the child understand the situation that generated the emotion. Additionally, supportive practices include attempts to guide the child to find possible solutions to the problems experienced (O’Neal & Magai, 2005). This set of practices reinforces emotional expressiveness and validates the child’s emotional experience, favoring competent social-emotional development (Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017; Silk et al., 2011). On the other hand, unsupportive emotion socialization practices cover punitive reactions, which reduce the future likelihood of emotional expression. Scolding, minimizing, ignoring, or exacerbating a child’s emotional responses and showing discomfort with the expressed emotion are examples of unsupportive practices. These reactions may further intensify children’s negative emotions and delay emotional self-regulation learning since they discourage children from disclosing feelings and, by doing so, reduce interactive opportunities, which may foster emotional understanding (O’Neal & Magai, 2005). Findings showing the adverse effects of unsupportive practices on children’s emotional self-regulation and other social-emotional outcomes, such as social competence and internalizing (i.e., anxiety, depression, social withdrawal) and externalizing (aggressive and defiant behaviors) problems, are consistent (Breaux et  al., 2017; Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017; Hooper et al., 2018; Silk et al., 2011). However, most of those studies have been conducted with white, middle-class samples. There is also evidence of the positive impact of supportive parental reactions on children’s emotional self-regulation and the reduction of behavioral problems (Hurrell et al., 2015). However, children’s age and culture may play essential roles in these relations (Hooper et al., 2018; Mirabile et al., 2018). Additionally, findings indicate that children’s emotional self-regulation mediates the relation between parental emotion-­ related behaviors and child developmental outcomes (Cunningham et al. 2009; Jin et al., 2017; Morris et al., 2007). Eisenberg et al. (1998) emphasized the cultural embeddedness of the emotion socialization process, and this assumption is supported by studies that found contrasting results for different ethnic groups or different countries. These studies point to cultural differences that directly impact parental beliefs and practices related to children’s emotions and indirectly affect children’s social-emotional development (Nelson et  al., 2012, 2013). In black families, emotion socialization seems to be strictly related to ethnic-racial socialization, that is, the way parents help their children build their racial identity and prepare them to deal with prejudice and

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discrimination (Dunbar et  al., 2017). Through ethnic-racial socialization, parents also share knowledge about black people’s history and help children develop pride in their ethnic background, which tends to be consistently related to positive developmental outcomes (Dunbar et  al., 2017). Thus, ethnic-racial socialization also seems to impact different dimensions of development, other than emotional competence. For example, a recent meta-analysis found that ethnic-racial socialization was more closely and positively correlated with self-perception among African American children than in other racial or ethnic groups (Wang et  al., 2019). Nevertheless, Elmore and Gaylord-Harden (2013) examined the effects of ethnic-­ racial socialization on black children’s behavioral problems and did not find significant associations. Findings that support the hypothesis of interdependence between emotion socialization and ethnic-racial socialization indicate (a) a greater tendency to monitor children’s emotions in African American mothers compared with European American mothers (Labella, 2018); (b) more disapproval of the children’s expression of negative emotions among African American parents (Nelson et al., 2012); (c) less frequent use of practices that encourage the expression of negative emotions, such as anger, in African descendent samples compared to white samples (Nelson et al., 2012); and (d) a trend to encourage children to suppress emotional responses among African American mothers (Labella, 2018). By monitoring and discouraging the expression of negative emotions, especially anger, parents might prepare black children to face racist contexts. Therefore, emotion socialization practices could support ethnic-racial socialization as they protect the child in situations where the expression of negative emotions would pose a risk due to the context of prejudice and discrimination maintained by the dominant culture (Dunbar et  al., 2017). Although this is a coherent assumption, literature shows little evidence to corroborate this hypothesis. Some findings indicate higher academic and social competence levels in children whose mothers adopt these beliefs and practices of emotional socialization (Nelson et al., 2013). However, this pattern seems to target black boys more frequently than black girls (Nelson et al., 2012). On the other hand, studies show that maternal support to negative emotions is related to better social-emotional outcomes, even in African Americans (Cunningham et al., 2009; Bowie et al., 2011). Another study involving African American teenagers and adults suggests that the positive effects of unsupportive emotion socialization practices require associated moderate patterns of ethnic-racial socialization, which do not stimulate distrust toward social relations (Dunbar et al., 2015). In sum, studies indicate that African American parents’ articulate use of adaptive ethnic-racial and emotion socialization practices may protect children from the negative effects of discrimination by helping children understand and regulate their emotions (Dunbar et  al., 2015, 2017). Nevertheless, evidence supporting this hypothesis is still insufficient. Additionally, we highlight the fact that this association between ethnic-racial and emotion socialization processes is conditioned by racism, which may also affect child socialization in other cultures. In the next section, we discuss this issues regarding the Brazilian context.

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 acism, Ethnic-Racial Socialization, and Black Children’s R Social-Emotional Development in Brazil Brazilian population comprises whites (47.73%), browns (43.13%), blacks (7.61%), and other races (1.05%), like yellow and indigenous (IBGE, 2010). The black race encompasses black and brown skin color, with the latest having miscegenated black ancestry (Conselhor Federal de Psicologia, 2017). However, in Brazil, most brown people do not claim to be black when questioned about their race (Silva & Leão, 2012). Thus, the “black race” concept represents a sociological and political construct (Carvalho & Meirinho, 2020; Federal Council of Psychology, Brazil) since it is not necessarily based on a shared genetic evidence or ancestry (Carvalho & Meirinho, 2020; Schucman & Fachim, 2017). Racism refers to any phenomenon that justifies differences, preferences, privileges, domination, hierarchies, and material or symbolic inequalities between human beings, based on the concept of race (Schucman, 2014). Racism manifests itself on individual, institutional, political, and cultural levels (Almeida, 2019; Faro & Pereira, 2011). In Brazil, the largest slave country in modern times and the last to abolish slavery (Botelho, 2019), racism exposes the black population to countless risk situations, in addition to unworthy and stressful living conditions (Faro & Pereira, 2011; Federal Council of Psychology, Brazil, 2017). The white population, on the other hand, holds financial capital, political power, better education levels, wages, conditions for access to work, and greater professional recognition (Brasil, 2017). Although Brazil does not legitimize segregation and hatred against blacks in the legal sphere, negative attributions based on black people’s phenotypic characteristics are one of the main organizers of social inequality (Schucman, 2014; Lopes, 2005). Black men with low income and education levels comprise the largest portion of the Brazilian prison population (Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, 2014). Young black women are the majority to suffer sexual violence (Goes, 2016). Murders affect three times more blacks than whites (Waiselfisz, 2015). Moreover, physical and mental illnesses, including depression and chronic stress, are more prevalent in the black population than in other races (Damasceno & Zanello, 2018; Faro & Pereira, 2011; Smolen & Araújo, 2017). Also, black women are at greater risk of having inadequate prenatal care, no registration in maternity hospitals, wandering between hospitals for labor, and not having local anesthesia for episiotomy than white women (Leal et al., 2017). Finally, black children tend to have higher mortality rates than white and brown children (Vieira & Giotto, 2019). These indicators reveal that, in regard to race, Brazilian society is marked by inequity and by submission of black people to more stressful life experiences and, at the same time, fewer opportunities for social transformation (Faro & Pereira, 2011). Concerning family dynamics and childrearing, few studies specifically refer to the black population or characterize sample race. Three studies investigated aspects of the ethnic-racial socialization of children in black Brazilian families. One research highlighted the significant difficulties of adults in dealing with racial

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discrimination and the resulting stressors, which contribute to a limited capacity to support children when they face racial prejudice (Prestes & Paiva, 2016). Two other studies showed that, in black Brazilian families, strategies to protect children from prejudice and discrimination were not a priority. When present, these strategies oscillated between actions that reproduced racism and practices aimed at resisting it (Hordge-Freeman, 2013; Schucman & Gonçalves, 2017). In regard to children’s social-emotional development, there are no studies comparing emotion socialization in families of different racial groups or specifically in black families in Brazil. The alarming scarcity of Brazilian studies characterizing child development and socialization processes in black families, who represent most of the Brazilian population, is further evidence of racism’s damage. Other fields of knowledge already pointed out this trend in Brazil (Damasceno & Zanello, 2018; Faro & Pereira, 2011; Smolen & Araújo, 2017). However, studies on the deleterious effects of discrimination suffered by the Brazilian black population revised here clearly indicate that children’s social-emotional development and parenting socialization practices can be similarly affected by racism. It is crucial to explore these aspects of child development and family dynamics. The current study represents an initiative in this regard. We investigated the mediation role of children’s emotional self-regulation on the relation between maternal emotion socialization practices and children’s behavioral problems in a Brazilian sample.

Method Participants The sample comprised 35 mothers aged between 24 and 45 years old (M = 35.77, SD = 5.01), recruited by convenience in 2 private schools in Salvador city, in Brazil’s Northeast, where 78.86% of the population is black (IBGE, 2010). Eligible mothers were those who lived in the same household with the child. The sample comprised 60% (n = 21) of black and 40% (n = 14) of brown participants. Mean education level was equivalent to high school or 12.83 (SD = 2.53) years, and most caregivers were employed (62.90%; n = 21). Children’s age ranged from 3 to 7 years (M = 5.91, SD = 1.17), and 68.60% (n = 24) were female. Mean family income was R$ 3,474.77 (SD = 2,191.31, MD = 3,000.00), equivalent to 3.48 national minimum wages.

Procedures and Measures After filling out demographic data, participants were individually interviewed and used cards with the Likert scale points to indicate their answers to the standardized measures. The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES), adapted

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for Brazilian parents (Lins et  al., 2017), assessed maternal emotion socialization practices. It consists of 12 hypothetical everyday situations that involve children’s expression of negative emotions in the face of frustration and disappointment. Results provide scores in two scales: supportive and unsupportive reactions to children’s negative emotional expressions. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL, versions 1.5–5  years and 6–18  years) adapted for the Brazilian population (Silvares et al., 2010) assessed children’s behavior problems. CBCL comprises 100 (version 1.5–5 years) or 113 (version 6–18 years) items and provides scores for internalizing problems (emotional reactivity, anxiety/depression, somatic complaints, and withdrawal) and externalizing problems (attention problems, breaking the rules, and aggressive behavior). The Emotion Regulation Checklist adapted for the Brazilian population (Reis et al., 2016) assessed children’s emotional self-regulation. It consists of 23 items that assess caregivers’ reports concerning the children’s emotional regulation (awareness of own emotions, positive emotional expressiveness) and emotional lability/negative (level of emotional activation, deregulation of anger and reactivity, the absence of flexibility, and lability of humor). The two scales together make up the total score of children’s emotional self-regulation.

Results Preliminary Analysis The assessment of maternal emotional socialization practices showed that mothers used more supportive than unsupportive strategies. The mean of the supportive reactions subscale was 4.05 (SD = 0.32; CI = 3.94, 4.16), and the mean of the unsupportive reactions scale was 2.09 (SD = .58; CI = 1.89, 2.29). We compared scores of maternal emotional socialization practices between groups of mothers self-reported black and brown using the Mann-Whitney test. Results showed no differences between the two groups. In regard to children’s outcomes, the average score of internalizing problems was 58.20 (SD = 8.76; CI = 55.19, 61.21), and the score of externalizing problems was 55.91 (SD = 5.83; CI = 53.91, 57.92). Finally, the mean score of emotional regulation was 72.17 (SD = 7.16; CI = 69.70, 74.63). Maternal unsupportive reactions were negatively correlated with children’s emotional self-regulation (r = −.38, p < .05) and positively correlated with externalizing problems (r = .35, p < .05). Maternal supportive reactions did not correlate with children’s emotional self-regulation nor with children’s behavior problems.

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 ediation Role of Children’s Emotional Self-Regulation M in the Relation Between Unsupportive Maternal Practices and Children’s Externalizing Problems A mediation analysis examined the effects of maternal unsupportive emotion socialization practices on children’s externalizing problems via children’s emotional self-­ regulation. Figure  4.1 shows B and p values of the tested model that explained 34.6% of the variance in children’s externalizing problems [F(2, 32)  =  8.46, p = 0.001, R2 = .346]. Results of the mediation analysis (Figure 4.1) showed that maternal unsupportive emotion socialization practices had no direct effect, but rather an indirect effect, on children’s externalizing problems. Specifically, unsupportive practices predicted lower emotional self-regulation [B = − 4.71, t = −2.39, p = .02], which, in turn, was inversely related to children’s externalizing problems [B  =  −.41; t  =  −3.29, p  =  .002]. A bootstrap confidence interval for the indirect effect based on 20,000 bootstrap samples was entirely above zero (B = 1.95, 95% CI [.32, 4.66]), showing there was an indirect effect of unsupportive emotion socialization practices on externalizing problems, via emotional self-regulation. Statistical power (1 − β) = .86 was satisfactory.

Children’s emotional selfregulation

- 4.71*

- .41**

Unsupportive maternal practices

Children’s 1.95

externalizing problems

Fig. 4.1  Andrew Hayes’s model 4 of a simple mediation analysis of the effects of unsupportive maternal practices of emotion socialization on children’s externalizing problems, mediated by children’s emotional self-regulation. Solid lines represent direct effects, and the dashed line indicates an indirect effect. Nonsignificant paths are not represented. *p < .05; **p < .01

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Discussion Racism affects different dimensions of child socialization and development in North American families (Labella, 2018; Nelson et al., 2012, 2013). In regard to emotion socialization, racism could foster unsupportive emotion socialization practices among black parents to suppress children’s negative emotions, particularly anger, and, thus, protect the child from risks posed by prejudice and discrimination (Dunbar et al., 2015). Thus, emotion and ethnic-racial socialization processes may be inter-­ related in this population (Dunbar et al., 2017). There are very few studies examining aspects of ethnic-racial socialization in Brazil (Hordge-Freeman, 2013; Prestes & Paiva, 2016; Schucman & Gonçalves, 2017) and no published investigations on the emotion socialization processes of this population. On the other hand, several studies show that racism jeopardizes black Brazilians’ life and development (Damasceno & Zanello, 2018; Faro & Pereira, 2011; Goes, 2016; Leal et  al., 2017; Smolen & Araújo, 2017; Waiselfisz, 2015). These findings point to the need for research that tracks the effects of racism in young children’s social-emotional development. We provided preliminary evidence of the adverse effects of maternal unsupportive emotion socialization practices on black Brazilian children’s developmental outcomes. Children’s emotional self-regulation mediated the relation between unsupportive emotion socialization practices and children’s externalizing behavior problems (aggressive and defiant behavior). These findings are consonant with previous studies conducted with both black (Cunningham et al., 2009; Bowie et al., 2011) and white families (Breaux et  al., 2017; Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017; Silk et  al., 2011). At the same time, our findings contrast with the hypothesis, which assumes that unsupportive emotion socialization practices could protect children in racist contexts and lead to improved developmental outcomes (Dunbar et al., 2015). Punitive and minimizing reactions may reduce opportunities for children to develop emotional understanding and emotional self-regulation abilities and, by doing so, intensify children’s negative emotions (O’Neal & Magai, 2005). Poor or infrequent verbal communication with parents about emotions may limit children’s learning about both emotional language and emotional self-regulation strategies (Salmon et al., 2016). It is also likely that mothers who dismiss or punish their children when they feel sad or angry may teach them to suppress emotional expression. Child engagement in controlling strategies could result in less energy to deal with situations, tasks, and social relationships (Cunningham et al., 2009). In short, the lack of appropriate language to express emotions coupled with reduced energy to cope with social demands could explain the observed reduced levels of emotional self-regulation and the high scores of externalizing problems. These two predictors may be a result of maternal unsupportive emotion socialization practices. This picture becomes more complicated if we consider that racism is part of the social context in which black Brazilian children develop. The lack of maternal support to the expression of fear, anger, or sadness elicited by others’ prejudice and discrimination may be particularly disruptive for young children. Within this

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context, the aggressive reactions typical in externalizing profiles might emerge. It is also noteworthy that black children encouraged by parents to express their negative emotions may be perceived as less competent in their social surroundings because of racism-related expectations. This trend is related to the fact that minority groups are supposed to show submission in social relations (Nelson et al., 2013). By any means, descriptive analyses have shown that mothers more frequently reported supportive reactions to children’s negative emotions than unsupportive reactions. This finding indicates that mothers tend to talk to their children about their negative emotions in many situations, helping them cope with these feelings and develop emotional self-regulation strategies. At the same time, studies conducted with black Brazilian families have shown parents have considerable difficulties in providing support to children when they face racial prejudice (Hordge-Freeman, 2013; Prestes & Paiva, 2016; Schucman & Gonçalves, 2017). These findings suggest that the negative impact of maternal unsupportive emotion socialization practices on child outcomes found in our analysis may be associated with the lack of ethnic-racial socialization strategies. Thus, intervention programs to promote ethnic-racial socialization practices among black Brazilian parents are needed. The analysis presented in this chapter has limitations, such as its correlational design, the small sample size, and the absence of information about mothers’ ethnic-­ racial socialization practices. Nevertheless, our analysis provided evidence of the adverse effects of unsupportive emotion socialization practices on black children’s emotional self-regulation and externalizing behaviors. We know little about black Brazilian people’s psychosocial processes and their repercussions in health services, politics, and social roles (Damasceno & Zanello, 2018). Thus, understanding children’s socialization within families may be crucial to promote racial equity. Therefore, policymakers must promote research on emotion and ethnic-racial socialization processes in black families and implement intervention programs to facilitate these two domains of child development, especially in countries like Brazil, where a significant part of the population suffers from the devastating effects of racism.

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Schucman, L. V. (2014). Sim, nós somos racistas: Estudo psicossocial da branquitude paulistana [Yes, we are racists: A psicossocial study of whiteness in São Paulo]. Psicologia & Sociedade, 26, 83–94. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-­71822014000100010 Schucman, L. V., & Fachim, F. L. (2017). A cor de Amanda: Identificações familiares, mestiçagem e classificações raciais brasileiras [Amanda’s color: Family identifications, miscegenation, and racial classifications in Brazil]. Interfaces Brasil/Canadá, 16, 182–205. https://doi. org/10.15210/interfaces.v16i3.10001 Schucman, L. V., & Gonçalves, M. M. (2017). Racismo na família e a construção da negritude: Embates e limites entre a degradação e a positivação na constituição do sujeito [Racism in the family and construction of blackness: Clashes and limits between degradation and positivization in the subject’s constitution]. Odeere (UESB), 2, 61–83. https://doi.org/10.22481/odeere. v0i4.2366 Silk, J. S., Shaw, D. S., Prout, J. T., Rourke, F. O., Lane, T. J., & Kovacs, M. (2011). Socialization of emotion and offspring internalizing symptoms in mothers with childhood-onset depression. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 32, 127–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. appdev.2011.02.001 Silva, G. M., & Leão, L. T. D. S. (2012). O paradoxo da mistura: Identidades, desigualdades e percepção de discriminação entre brasileiros pardos [The paradox of mixing: Identities, inequalities and perceptions of discrimination among Brazilian browns]. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 27, 117–133. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-­69092012000300007 Silvares, E. F. M., Rocha, M. M., & Linhares, M. B. M. (2010). Inventário de Comportamentos de Crianças entre 1 1/2 - 5 anos (CBCL/1½-5). Versão brasileira do “Child Behavior Checklist for ages 1 ½ -5” [Inventory of Behaviors of Children between 1½ to 5 years (CBCL / 1½-5). Brazilian version of the “Child Behavior Checklist for ages 1½ -5”]. Unpublished Manuscript. Smolen, J.  R., & Araújo, E.  M. (2017). Raça/cor da pele e transtornos mentais no Brasil: uma revisão sistemática [Race/skin color and mental health disorders in Brazil: A systematic review of the literature]. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 22, 4021–4030. https://doi. org/10.1590/1413-­812320172212.19782016 Vieira, A. J. B., & Giotto, A.C. (2019). Principais Causas de Mortalidade Infantil na Região do Entorno Sul do Distrito Federal. Revista de Iniciação Científica e Extensão, 2(2), 258–267. https://revistasfacesa.senaaires.com.br/index.php/iniciacao-­c ientifica/article/view/272. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. Waiselfisz, J. J. (2015). Mapa da Violência 2016: Homicídios por arma de fogo [Map of Violence 2016: Homicide by firearm]. FLACSO. Wang, M. T., Henry, D. A., Smith, L. V., Huguley, J. P., & Guo, J. (2019). Parental ethnic-racial socialization practices and children of color’s psychosocial and behavioral adjustment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. American Psychologist, 75, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/ amp0000464

Chapter 5

Violence, Structural Racism, and Their Relation to Health Outcomes of Black Brazilian Youth Dandara Ramos, Emanuelle Góes, Joilda Nery, and Osiyallê Rodrigues

Introduction From prenatal life to death, racial classification follows one across the life course, and with this classification comes the potential for exposure to racism and the inequities that are caused by it (Gee et al., 2012; Krieger, 1999). Focusing on young people, defined here as the period between childhood and adulthood encompassing both adolescence and youth (ages 10–24) as per the WHO definition (World Health Organization, n.d.), this chapter aims to discuss evidence of the impacts of violence and structural racism on health and development of black young people in Brazil. Brazilian youth is marked by deep inequities, visible through indicators from several domains, ranging from living conditions to education, health, and employment (Firpo, 2018) with civil rights violations falling disproportionally on the poor and the black, social groups that have been historically underprivileged in comparison to those in Brazilian society’s white middle and upper classes (Adorno, 1996; de Araújo et al., 2010; Maestri, 2010). The reality of young blacks, in particular, is one of severe social vulnerability, as they are at the top of poverty rankings, indexes of unemployment, illiteracy, and school evasion, besides being the vast majority among victims of violence in urban contexts and the most frequent targets of homicides and police brutality (de Segurança Pública, 2019). As we discuss in the next sections, race shapes health, economic, and social indicators of Brazilian young people in patterns that are clear and consistent throughout time. A type of stratification that is aligned with the definition of D. Ramos (*) · J. Nery · O. Rodrigues Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, BA, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] E. Góes Center for Data Integration and Health Knowledge (CIDACS-Fiocruz Bahia), Salvador, BA, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 L. Dutra-Thomé et al. (eds.), Racism and Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83545-3_5

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structural racism, as “the totality of ways in which societies foster [racial] discrimination, via mutually reinforcing [inequitable] systems…(e.g., in housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, criminal justice, etc.) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources” (Krieger, 2014, p. 650). As exposure to structural racism changes in nature and intensity throughout the life stages, our understanding of its impacts has to consider the existence of age-­ patterned exposures and sensitive periods, the first meaning patterns of race-based risks that are differentially concentrated on specific age groups, and the second meaning that exposures to racial hassles at certain ages can pose a greater risk than exposure to the same issues at other ages (Elder et al., 2003). Thus, the study of sensitive periods suggests that age acts as an effect modifier of racism, and the study of age-patterned exposures suggests that the manifestations of structural racism (e.g., in access to sexual and reproductive healthcare) would likely vary in incidence and prevalence across the life course (Gee et al., 2012). This specific knowledge is of special importance to the study of human development, and in this chapter, to explore such evidence, we discuss Brazilian data on homicides, non-lethal violence, socioeconomic inequalities, and access to health services that show black youth to be at greater health risk than youth from other ethnic groups. After this review of epidemiological data, we aim to discuss its implications to the study of the effects of racism on youth development, following a life course perspective.

Health Data on Black Youth in Brazil Homicides As the world’s second leading cause of death for young people (ages 10–24), homicides are one of the most reliable indicators of the levels of interpersonal violence in human populations. In Brazil, between 1980 and 2010, the youth homicide rate rose among the highest worldwide, establishing violence as one of the most relevant health problems in the country (Cerqueira et al., 2019; Dahlberg & Krug, 2006). With a youth homicide rate of 65.6 per 100,000, Brazil is suffering from a youth homicide epidemic,1 and there is a clear racial pattern when we analyze the data more closely. Considering the year 2017, the latest available mortality database in the country, even after adjusting for population size, nearly three black youth (including children, adolescents, and young adults  – ages 10–24) are murdered for every white victim. For young males, the racial disparity is even greater, as the 2017 homicide

1  The WHO considers rates superior to 10 homicides per 100,000 people as epidemic rates. Source: https://apps.who.int/violence-info/homicide/

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rate among blacks was 185 per 100,000 people against 63.5 per 100,000 among whites (de Segurança Pública, 2019). Looking at the temporal trends in the past 20 years (1997–2017), the number of young blacks murdered has increased by 429%, compared to 102% of white youths. Such disparities vary greatly across the country’s regions and states. Analyzing the relative risk indicator, which expresses the ratio between the homicide rate of black and white youth (for values above 1, the greater the value, the greater the proportion of young blacks killed compared to whites), the risk of homicide is greater for black youth in all but 2 of the 26 Brazilian states and the federal district, ranging from a 10% increase in risk in the state of Tocantins to rates that are 12.7 times higher for blacks in the state of Alagoas (BRASIL, 2017). The national black/ white youth relative risk for homicides is of 2.7, showing that violence is victimizing black youth at rates that are nearly three times greater than those for whites. Focusing on a specific source of violence, the one that is perpetrated by the police, in an analysis of a dataset produced by the Ministry of Justice of Brazil in 2012 with 78,008 observations, findings have shown black youth to have a higher probability of being victims of thefts and verbal aggressions by the police, results that remained significant even after controlling for all the considered individual and community variables (Ozemela et al., 2019). Furthermore, between 2017 and 2018, data from the 13th edition of the Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security [13° Anuário Brasileiro da Segurança Pública] (de Segurança Pública, 2019) revealed that 75.4% of the victims killed by the Brazilian police were non-white (black and brown/mixed race). Analyzing all 7,952 records of police interventions ending in death, the pattern of distribution of police lethality points to the expressive overrepresentation of blacks among the victims. As blacks make up about 55% of the Brazilian population, they are 75.4% of those killed by the police. The incidence of police killings also varies over the life cycle of young people. It is particularly acute for male adolescents and young adults, as 60% of victims were between ages 15 and 25 and 99% were male. In big cities like Rio de Janeiro, for example, most of the victims of police raids are young black men who live in poor neighborhoods (Bachega, 2020). Lethal violence is also a main cause of death among black young women in Brazil. Considering police reports for the first semester of 2020, although more than a third of Brazilian states did not publicize data on race or ethnicity of female victims of homicides, 75% of murder records with sufficient data quality were black or mixed/brown (“pardas”) women (Velasco et al., 2020). Looking at death certificates for 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, this percentage was of 66% (Cerqueira et al., 2019). Past trends on femicide in Brazil also show that while the homicide rate of non-black women had a 4.5% growth between 2007 and 2017, the homicide rate of black women grew 29.9%. In absolute numbers, the difference is even more pronounced, since growth among non-black women is 1.7% and among black women 60.5% (Cerqueira et al., 2019). Similar disparities can be found in maternal death rates, another main cause of lethal death for young women in Brazil for which 60% of victims are black or brown/mixed. Deaths that are avoidable by adequate health assistance in more than

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90% of cases (E. A. Goes, 2019; E. F. Goes, 2020). Maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion are also disproportionately affecting black and indigenous young women, with risks three times higher for these groups than for whites and showing almost no reduction in the past decade (Cisne et al., 2018; Martins, 2006). Romio (2019) discusses as femicides, violent deaths of women as a consequence of the social and economic exploitation of their work and their bodies, can be classified in three main categories: reproductive femicide, deaths related to the political aspects of control of women’s bodies and sexuality, for which the ultimate expression is abortion-related deaths; domestic femicide, related to physical violence within domestic relationships with partners or other family members; and sexual femicide, related to lethal violence against women by sexual activities. For all three forms, lethal violence against young women in Brazil shows a racialized pattern that manifests both in society at large and in institutionalized contexts. This racial bias of lethal violence in Brazil is one of the most evident faces of racism in our country. Two particular concepts are important to our understanding of why the relationship between a specific race group of youth and the state’s institutional security agents is so pervasively characterized by violence: institutional racism and racial profiling. Institucional racism was introduced as a concept in the late 1960s in the United States, amidst the black civil rights movement against segregation and also the fight against apartheid in South Africa (Santos, 2018). It is defined as a race-oriented manifestation of structural violence, acting on the basis of three main mechanisms, as proposed by Anunciação et al. (2020, p. 4): “(1) via segregation-promoting legislation and the direct action of legislative agents; (2) via omission, when actors reproduce practices and instruments that impede the consolidation of social protection networks, generating socio-racial and territorial distortions; and (3) via the actions of individuals or groups driven by forms of prejudice that have been instigated by an institutional setting conducive to civil rights violations, stigmatization and discriminatory processes.” Racial profiling, for instance, can be understood as one manifestation of institutional racism in the context of police violence in Brazil. As the discriminatory practice by law enforcement agents of targeting individuals based on their race (Racial Profiling: Definition, n.d.), racial profiling is, therefore, a form of police-perpetrated violence that can be easily inferred through the analysis of epidemiological data previously presented on this section and also the recurrent stories of victimized black young people reported on Brazilian media outlets (Alessi, 2016; Andreoni et al., 2020; Franco, 2020).

Non-lethal Violence Beyond the immense impact of homicide rates on black youth, non-lethal injuries resulting from violence also constitute a major public health problem for this group in Brazil. Data from the Violence and Accident Surveillance System (VIVA),

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carried out in public emergencies Brazilian cities, shows that calls reporting violence against people of dark skin (black or mixed race) were higher (67.6%) than among whites (28.7%) and indigenous or Asian descendants (1.6%). Of the total calls registered in 2014 (N = 4406), the highest prevalence was among people between 20 and 39 years (50.2%), male, black, and with lower educational levels. The most reported events being physical assaults (87.8%); cuts/laceration (46.3%) and 13.7% involving a firearm (Souto et al., 2017). Considerable research has documented the racial disparities in youth violence in the country beyond the analysis of official epidemiological data and vital statistics. The latest edition of the National School Health Survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde do Escolar 2015- PeNSE), with data representative of all five regions of the country and its state capitals, shows that 15.4% of non-white (black or mixed race [pardos]) middle school students (N= 102,301; average age 14.28 ± 1.03) reported having missed classes because they did not feel safe on the way from home to school or even inside school. Among white students, this percentage was 13%. Furthermore, more than half of the non-white students went to school in neighborhoods with high rates of theft, drug use, and homicides (Gomes, 2019). Data from the 2015 National School Health Survey also shows black adolescents to be reporting more violent victimization by family members than their white counterparts (PR= 1.35; 95%CI= 1.28–1.42, p