NARRATIVES OF BLACK DOCTORS ABOUT THEIR SCHOOLING PROCESS

skin color, hair and resistance

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the reflections on the importance of discussing ethnic-racial relations by presenting narratives of school experiences of black doctors who experienced situations of structural racism throughout their school trajectory, including the higher course in medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). These narratives were produced in a Master's research that investigated processes of subjectivation of five black and poor women who entered the medical course in 2009 and concluded it in 2014. The research that supports this article operates with Foucauldian concepts , especially the modes of subjectivation. As a methodology, narrative interviews were used, understood as a technique for producing research information through a conversation, based on some structuring axes. The argument of this article is that the black body is the target on which the power relations that refer to racism focus. Thus, in order to produce modes of subjectivation, the doctors needed to re-signify this body (particularly with regard to black hair and skin color), making it occupy a social place historically denied to the black body. In this process, they destabilize power relations, create resistance and produce other ways of being.