A construção da identidade negra por pessoas pardas: um estudo em psicologia social

Abstract

This thesis focuses on investigating the construction of the racial identity of mixedrace people within the socio-political context of race relations in the Brazilian Northeast, more precisely in the state of Pernambuco, considering the search for recognition as an inevitable tension in relation to disputes over visibility from the perspective of local miscegenation, the ideal of whitening, racism, the color continuum or colorism, and the biracial perspective. This proposition makes use of the dialogue between the identitymetamorphosis- emancipation syntagm proposed by Antonio da Costa Ciampa and the nuances related to recognition presented by Aluísio Lima in his proposition of a theory of identity-metamorphosis-recognition based on Ciampa's discussions and its articulation with contemporary critical theory. Furthermore, it takes as its point of articulation cultural, postcolonial, decolonial, and what I define as anti-colonial studies, which are studies produced in Brazil about Brazil, with an emphasis on the reality of the Northeast. Considering that identities are constructed from a lack and consequent need for self-affirmation and social recognition, Black identities in the colonial context (the only possible space to consider race as a social marker) end up being created and defined by the fixed point of whiteness, since the search for recognition by the Black population is their demand. That is, whiteness founds the Black being while simultaneously preventing it from being anything else, making it necessary for Black people to assert themselves as such in order to exist, choosing a kind of ideal of Blackness that does not encompass the majority of Black people in Brazil. Beyond theoretical discussions on identity, I also offer reflections on our colonial process, the construction of the myth of Brazilian cordiality and racial democracy, as well as the ideal of whitening, articulating these issues with the discourses of people constructing a possible Black racial identity, pointing out the process, obstacles, and issues raised. These discourses were recorded in group activities on interracial coexistence, composed of university students in the Zona da Mata region of Pernambuco, and in research on the relevance of peer recognition of Blackness for positive identity formation.