The social disappearance of black women in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Social disappearance; black women; pandemic; COVID-19; Right to Memory
This paper deals with the social disappearance of black women in Brazilian society. Social disappearance is a strategy for maintaining power, and for this research it is analyzed in the light of race and gender. Brazil's history is built on the slavery regime, which lasted for 388 years, and its repercussions are still felt by the black Brazilian population today, and because of this construction, black women are assigned to the bottom of society's pyramid. In this sense, it is important to understand the ways in which social disappearance operates from the updated practices of colonialism, which reinvents itself as necessary to maintain power. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the data provided has not been concise with regard to race, and race and gender, so although there is a suspicion of underreporting, black women are still the main victims of the pandemic period. The analysis based on bibliographic research combined with an analysis of the data provided during the COVID-19 pandemic shows how there is a systematic lack of public policies aimed at black women, which in the pandemic context has been translated into scarce/underreported data when considering the intersectionalization of race, gender and class. The literature review points out that it is essential to think of a strategy to combat the social disappearance of black women based on the Right to Memory for the resignification of black women in Brazilian society.