Tão bom como tão bom: discursos afro-brasileiros, racismo e projeto de nação na Bahia (1889–1937)

Abstract

This article aims to discuss how Afro-Brazilians positioned themselves between 1889 and 1937, in the face of racist practices and discourses. At this time, the construction of a national project that was incompatible with the large contingent of non-whites that made up the Brazilian demographic picture was discussed. The first forty-eight years of the republican regime in Brazil was the period in which the ruling classes, as part of their project for the nation, put into practice racist ideas and a series of eugenicist measures, with the aim of leading the Brazilian population to a physical and behavioral type closer to those of Europeans. The choice of Bahia as the geographical landmark of this work was due to the fact that it was the unit of the federation with an Afro-Brazilian majority in the period, and because it had an important pole that irradiated racist ideologies in the country, the first Faculty of Medicine, in Salvador. From journalistic sources, literary texts, articles and academic productions of the period it was possible to discuss and analyze racial ideologies, as well as how Afro-Brazilians reacted to them from their discourses, social practices and strategies to confront racism.

Este artigo discute o posicionamento dos afro-brasileiros face às práticas e discursos racistas. O marco cronológico do artigo refere-se a um período de discussão de um projeto de nação que excluía a população afro-brasileira. O marco geográfico do artigo definiu-se pelo fato da Bahia abrigar um grande contingente de afro-brasileiros e ser, também, um polo de produção e difusão de ideologias raciais, a partir a Faculdade de Medicina e da atuação de intelectuais com Nina Rodrigues. O foco no posicionamento dos afro-brasileiros tem por finalidade evidenciar suas percepções do racismo científico e suas estratégias para invalidá-lo. Utilizou-se como fontes periódicos e trabalhos acadêmicos de afro-brasileiros e de ideólogos do racismo do período.