Novembro de 2008, Luiza Correa

Novembro de 2008,

By Luiza Corrêa (Design)

“True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands - whether of individuals or entire peoples - need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.” Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Opressed

I managed to get my acceptance letter at the only Public Relations College in Rio de Janeiro. It was exciting to think I was able to make it. I never thought I could reach this far. Enrolling in a public institution was my mom’s (and at least two of my uncles) longtime dream. Unfortunately, she was not able to make it herself for many different reasons, and all of them due to the invisible obstacles poor colored people go through. The history behind these obstacles you might have already heard as it includes low investments in K-12 public education, hostile neighborhoods, urgency of making money to pay bills and their nutrition, and violence in and out of the household. This is not just a Usonian phenomenon, but a neoliberal consequence.

Public colleges in Brasil are respected in the country. They are the best higher education institutions one can have and it is entirely free. The best History College and the second-best Medicine College in Latin America are located in terras tupiniquins. In spite of the political chaos the country has been brought into, our colleges are still known by their critical and political reflections about society.

However, despite being public, these colleges were also known as being an elite (and white) space. The poor were never welcome into these spaces for similar reasons. Nontraditional students from the U.S. pursue for-profit institutions and often ended up with an insane amount of debt. It was after a radical change in Brazilian Higher Education conception (2002-2003) that I was able to enroll in the State University of Rio de Janeiro. For the first time, a mass of black and brown students walked into the public university and took seats in classes that were white dominated. We were one step closer to breaking up with the poverty line.

The process of putting forward a racial equity plan favorable to enroll disadvantaged people in public colleges was built in partnership with society. That effort was the result of an extensive pressure by the black, feminist and syndicalist movements, progressive political parties and international commitments. That plan would consider the holistic story black people went through: both the years

they were forced into slavery as well as the post slavery ones. More importantly than acknowledging their suffering, the policy would look to the struggles they face now. How were they performing in society? Are there any social mobility indicators? Why are black people frequently relegated to prisons? In 2018, we counted almost 56% of the population as black and brown. Mitigating the consequences it carries in the Brazilian society was not an act of a single school nor a single city, but a task force.

Inspired by the Education’s Patron Paulo Freire and his revolutionary view on education, the Federal Government worked with an extensive list of stakeholders (including universities and various black movements) to design a plan. Roughly, this plan consisted of a rapid expansion in the number of public universities and guaranteeing the enrollment of black, brown, indigenous and people with disabilities across all of them. As Telles and Paixão (2013) mention in their article Affirmative Actions in Brasil, “The very idea of affirmative action, which largely sought to increase the number of nonwhite students at Brazilian universities, was widely considered as anathema to Brazilians’ long-established idea of their country as a racial democracy.”

Despite its implementation having been considered controversial to some groups, the higher education democratization plan boosted an important discussion about race and class so long avoided in Brazil. I hope to see the number of black and brown people getting higher than the 56% pointed by the last IBGE’s (Brazilian's Institute of Geography and Statistics) research, but Brasil still has a long way to go in the race identification debate.

My research is my way to say, “Thank You” and “I believe in (real) racial democratization” to my ancestors and to the people that fought for me when I didn’t even know I needed or was in a poverty war. It is not a manifesto, but it could be if you want to. This work is definitely a call for empathy and innovative forms to solve old problems. It is an urgent call on joining forces to solve issues we’ve been struggling with for so long. Time is running out for some of us, and as much as getting a diploma is a political act, waiting is, too. While some of us have the privilege of waiting, people are being incarcerated, dying, living miserable lives or conditioning themselves to situations we would never wish for our beloved ones. I used to think empathy was a theoretical tool, but while writing this preamble I slowly acknowledged it was actually a political tool needed in the fight for the education access of people “sem eira e nem beira” like me. “What we need are new choices”, says Tim Brown, IDEO’s founder in “Change by Design”. We indeed need “new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that result in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them”. Brown and I believe Design Thinking is a powerful method that can help solving some our hardest problems by involving people. Two heads are better than one and multiple heads thinking together is a revolutionary act.