Black and Academic

Solitude in peer dialogue in spaces of power

Abstract

Academic life reveals different challenges, which are intensified by the overlapping of social oppression such as racism, machismo, homophobia and economic inequality. The article aims to reflect on the impasses that black women encounter when occupying this space of power. We know that the admission of black students to the university, even with affirmative policies, has not yet reached an equal level of opportunities, and when it comes to staying in these spaces, the difficulty for black students worsens. We seek to reflect on the problems faced in the undergraduate course with different reports of black students, addressing cases of institutional racism and racial discrimination. The choice of authors that support our discussion also has an affinity with the decolonial and intercultural discussion of knowledge, seeking a different look at the loneliness that this space of power, occupied very recently by black women, produces in their process of individualization and exclusion of the different. We present a provocation about survival and collective strategies in a space that is not inviting and individualizes bodies, and strategies of resistance and construction of unsubmissive thoughts about higher education.

KEYWORDS: Black Feminism. Racism. Ethnic-racial Relations. Education.