Black Consciousness: teacher creates 20 rules to combat racism in schools

Imagine if there was a guide to help you combat racism and ensure the safety of black children in schools. It was with this objective that the educator Ricardo Jaheem created a protocol with 20 measures to be adopted by environments that deal with children.

In the week of Black Consciousnessthe teacher from the municipal network in Rio de Janeiro told CNN who has already suffered racism at school. “I am that black boy who was placed at the back of the classroom and who was considered incapable of learning,” he said.

This was the motivation to create the “Protocol for the protection of black children: 20 measures to encourage positive racial identity in education spaces”. The document lists practical guidelines that should be used to ensure inclusion and respectful care of children.

The educator argues that the protocol can be used in any environment, but, in schools, the material could contribute to reducing educational inequality.

Educational inequality

The Brazilian Basic Education Yearbook 2024, released last week, showed that those aged up to 19 black students is 68%, 66% for browns e 59% for indigenous people. The number about to 78% among white students and for 88% between yellows.

Another recent survey revealed that 54% of Brazilian teachers already involve their students in classrooms.

These numbers indicate that discrimination against black people is present in schools and, therefore, Jaheem’s expectation with the protocol is to guarantee black children real protection.

“We can say that, every day, thousands of children arrive at school and feel, in their bodies, the weight of the denial of rights”, he commented.

I hope that black, peripheral and indigenous children can have the right to be children and to smile, learn, play and experience love in any environment they are in — especially in the school environment.

Ricardo Jaheem, teacher

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1. Adopt an anti-discrimination language manual
2. Create an annual schedule of debates, workshops and workshops, so that everyone in the organization has ongoing training on diversity
3. Include actions aimed at the external community in strategic planning
4. Create communication channels and promote events to listen to peripheral groups
5. Create a racial committee to monitor sensitive situations
6. Listen and respect individual stories
7. Promote multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary anti-racist actions
8. Hiring black intellectuals
9. Eliminate racial stereotypes that perpetuate places of exclusion for black children
10. Guide actions based on affective connections
11. Develop active listening processes
12. Include the history of African peoples in curricula in all areas of knowledge
13. Create actions to combat religious racism
14. Value the history and culture of original peoples
15. Adopt indicators to relate school performance and critical factors in the surrounding area, such as urban violence
16. Promote mental health programs
17. Thinking about black diversity
18. Include stories told by indigenous peoples in curricula
19. Consider intersectionality in anti-racist projects
20. Create a monitoring network for the points of this protocol for validation and expansion according to need