“How to Break Social Standards?”: Racism in the Daily Lives of Young Researchers

Abstract

This article presents a critical reflection on racial issues and the confrontation with racism in the micropolitics of school daily life. Our objective was to analyze the process of construction and execution of an investigation of high school students about the presence and fight against the institutional racism in a state public school of Fortaleza, Ceará. We performed an Intervention Research (IP) in conjunction with the theoretical-methodological framework of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), which guided the construction of a COM research with young people. We created a training course for young researchers to develop research with methodological tools in which they themselves were protagonists in the construction, application and analysis of research. We realize that the theme of confronting racism in the micropolitics of school daily life was central to the research process that the young people conducted among their peers. The results showed that 30.2% of high school students said they had suffered some kind of racial prejudice, such as: prejudice against hair because it was curly; having heard pejorative expressions/nicknames for being black and not having good financial conditions, and reporting not feeling comfortable talking about the prejudice present at school. Thus, the study “How to break social standards?” conducted by young people contributed to the discussion of race relations in school by fostering dislocation in the formation of active young researchers and implicated in their daily lives as an intervention to decolonize knowledge and radicalize participatory character.

Keywords:
Intervention research; Racism; Young researchers; School