Política de Assistência Social: desafios e possibilidades para a promoção da Igualdade Racial

Abstract

Public Social Assistance is a policy that operates for those who need it. To this end, an important social protection project has been developed aiming to guarantee social rights for these users who need their attention. Brazil's history, marked by slavery and colonialism, has relegated its largest population, to poverty, human rights restriction and social subjugation. This population’s race are mostly black in color, resulting from the racialization processes of slavery in the Americas. The research questions how racism was structured to maintain, in the aegis of the so-called racial democracy, the persistent racial inequalities in the country. These issues reverberate today, in Social Assistance Policy, which serves mostly black population. Regarding the methodology, Critical Discourse Analysis was used to investigate the statements given by workers, users and coordinators of the Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS), and to identify how the structure of racism is perceived in their speech. We use the theories of critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough (2008) and Teun A. Van Dijk (2018) to articulate a foundation on transformation of social discursive practice around the concept of racism denial. The discursive analysis points out how the ideology's modes of operation are organized in the discourse of denial and dissimulation of the idea of racism within social assistance policy. The racial identification difficulties of the public served support this ideological conception of denial, shifting the centrality of the object of politics to the economic factor. As a result, race and consequently the effects of racialization inequality are secondary and partial in the actions developed in CRAS. Finally, actions were proposed within Social Assistance Policy, to counter the discursive links that build professionals performance and assimilated users postures, such as denial discourse.