Abstract
Brazil suffers from the effects of scientific racism, the myth of racial democracy and whitening policy. In 2019, 28% of students graduating from Medicine courses in Brazil were Black. With the objectives of revealing the forms of manifestation of racism in medical graduation and understanding how Black students face racism, we conducted an exploratory and qualitative research, according to Minayo’s method, through semi-structured online interviews and analysis were carried out in ATLAS.ti9® software. With a theoretical-critical framework, we realize that the dimensions of internalized, interpersonal and institutional racism overlap, evidencing its structural character, linked to the historical-economic development of our country. Black students’ belief of inferiority is reinforced at an interpersonal level in looks, jokes or comments about their hair. At an institutional level, the need to study the health of the Black population is denied, while the low representation in the faculty and students is not perceived as an expression of racism. Racial identification, organization in collectives and the existence of legal protections are fundamental, but the effective confrontation of racism in medical schools requires a critique of the economic system that systematically privileges White people.
Keywords:
racism; medical education; Black population health