This is not new: the colorism of black bodies in geography textbooks

Abstract

The text aims to challenge the images of Black bodies in Geography textbooks through the discourse of colorism in order to subjectivize students' Blackness. It is necessary to understand the textbook as a cultural artefact, a strategic means of shaping perception, categorization, interpretation and collective memory, making the textbook a delineator of identities that produces and reproduces collective memories. In order to achieve the objectives of this work, we rely on the methodological path of post-critical research because it calls for a reflexive perspective on the contexts and realities presented, making it possible to break away from the colonial vision that runs through our subjectivities and prevents the production of binary and fixed research. The previous theoretical references for this research will be drawn upon Ethnic-Racial Studies, Decolonial Studies and Post-Critical Studies based on authors such as Cida Bento, Sueli Carneiro, Renato Émerson dos Santos, Marlucy Alves Paraíso, Wenceslao Machado de Oliveira Jr, Michel Foucault, among other researchers who have contributed to this research. Initial observations in the textbooks show that colorism and racism are still present, based on a colonial discourse in which images of Black bodies are treated differently based on the shade of their skin, appearing through the process of whitening and segregation of the Black population, valuing the ideal of whiteness and denying an identity based on Blackness.