A conferência de Durban e o antirracismo no Brasil (1978-2001)

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the relationship between Brazilian Black Movement and the United Nations Third Conference against Racism, held in 2001 in the city of Durban, South Africa. We seek to understand how it became possible that the Black Movement and the Brazilian delegation could have supported a consensual political position in Durban on racism/antiracism. Favoring a theoric and methodological approach focused on transnational analysis, the work focuses on the contemporary history of the Black Movement in Brazil, since the foundation of the Unified Black Movement, in 1978, until the Brazilian participation in Durban. The racialization of political struggle and the institutional dialogue between the Movement and the Brazilian State, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, processes that take place in the 1990s, were central in the production of consensus for Durban. The transnational context of action of the Conference, however, is understood here as a point of inflection, both historical and political. The nature of the relation between the Black Movement and the Conference highlights the importance the latter assumes in the discoursive reception of multiculturalism and affirmative action in Brazil, relation mediated by transnationality. Finally, it is considered that Durban Conference forms a new political map for global anti-racism, with the emergence of new actors in the international scene. Moreover, the implications of the Conference in the history of anti-racism in Brazil enable more watchful eyes to the historical specificities of local spheres, articulated, in turn, with transnational contexts of action.