THE WHITE SOUL TRAP: law professors’ academic practices regarding affirmative actions in UnB, UFBA and USP
Affirmative Actions; University; Law Schools; Racial Quotas; Racism
This research builds upon the academic debate surrounding the racial issue in Brazil, especially in the sociological field. It integrates a long research agenda concerning the role of university professors regarding affirmative action policies in public universities, particularly in public law schools. This specific work aims to investigate, from a comparative perspective, the perceptions, positions, and behaviors of Law professors from three institutions in different regions of the country – UFBA, UnB, and USP –, with different histories and distinct paths of affirmative action implementation. To do so, the history of the institutions was investigated through literature about them and the professors' own accounts; the characteristics of the institutions' faculty were gathered from the analysis of academic and professional profiles as well as official documents from the faculties; a semi-structured interview script was developed and applied to 29 professors, and through content analysis, analytical categories about the studied issues were reconstructed using data collected from different research techniques. Through categorizing positions on affirmative actions, perceptions about their beneficiaries, and behaviors during teaching practice, it was possible not only to describe and analyze these, but also to reflect theoreticallyon affirmative actions, their implementation challenges, the role of the teaching bureaucracy in their outcomes, and, more broadly, on race, racism, and social mobility in Brazil.