Whiteness, Discourse and Representation of Black Women in the Academic Environment of the Federal University of Bahia

Abstract

Symbolic elites perpetuate the most critical forms of racism, which points to the importance of the analysis of how racist discourses are constructed, with a specific focus on the white elite. In this paper, the focus is Bahia's capital whiteness as shaped by students at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). For this, we gathered data, generated at UFBA, from open questionnaires and a focus group with undergraduate students. For this critical discursive analysis (CDA), we used a section of a broader research, in which the perception of whiteness by self-declared white students from UFBA was investigated. Our analysis suggests that the understanding of white privilege is permeated with ideas that can support racist practices and discourses, and that the representation of black women is still based on socially constructed stereotypes in an actively racist society such as ours.