Research, education and the democratisation of economic, social and statistical information.
Monday 27 January, Porto Alegre
One of the workshops at the third World Social Forum was organized by the recently created Afro-Brazilian Observatory. The principal concern of the panellists centred on the need to democratise economic, social and statistical information. They also stressed the importance of carrying out their own research, in order to overcome their current dependence on other sources.
The Observatory is a reference centre in the process of defining economic, demographic and social indicators on Brazil’s black population. Its objective is to produce systematic information on the reality lived by the Black community, analysing racial inequalities and promoting full citizenship for Black Brazilians. The Observatory also aims to provide the Black movement with tools that will enable it to improve in both quality and influence, and to contribute to training its members, to enable them to demonstrate, using hard facts, that the struggle of Brazil’s Black population is not a "minority" issue, since they account for half the country’s population. A half, however, that is treated as secondary citizens, suffer poor working conditions and restricted access to public services.
The workshop organisers argued that the research produced by the Observatory will provide the demands of the Black movement with a more solid and demonstrable foundation. This in turn will help to revert a situation in which their demands are little known, even among political parties and trade unions, which do not include race as an issue in their platforms.
One of the difficulties that must be overcome is the "myth of racial democracy" that still persists, and with it, the State project to "whiten" Brazilian society. The myth projects an ideal of a more tolerant and inclusive society, but at the same time hides the racial inequality to which Brazilians are subject. The myth’s power to hide this reality leads to a negation of the existence of inequality and racism.
The World Conference against Racism in Durban and its programme for action has greatly increased awareness of the need to get hold of information that will allow public policy to be researched and audited. And even while this kind of research is not yet available, the goal set at Durban to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination is itself an important tool for working towards ending racial inequalities.
Finally, the panellists stressed the fact that to achieve these aims, strong alliances must be built with other social movements, and unity and progress must be promoted within the Brazilian Black movement, to ensure that it takes full advantage of the research generated. The results of the research should be clear and easy to understand, in order to guarantee that they are widely disseminated and used.
The Afro-Brazilian Observatory is the product of an agreement between the Social Development Group at the Economics Institute at Rio de Janeiro Federal University (UFRJ), the Human Rights Programme of the Palmares Institute of Human Rights (IPDH) from Rio de Janeiro, and Fala Preta!, a Black women’s organization from Sao Paulo.
The panellists at the workshop were:
Marcelo Paixão, lecturer from the Economics Institute, UFRJ
Amauri Queiroz, president of the IPDH
Edna Roland, president of Fala Preta!
