Caleidoscopio del racismo escolar. Saberes, pedagogías, conmemoraciones e iconografías.

Abstract

The school has an exclusive origin. As we have seen it go through in more than two centuries, it was in charge of implementing the modern civilizing project, thereby founding the moral and ideological bases of our white-mestizo national societies. In this way, as we have said at different times, the history of racism and the history of the school in Latin America, with the two faces of the same event of deep internal colonialism and peripheral modernity. With this article we propose a descriptive kaleidoscope of school racism, to help reveal its inner workings. Studies on this phenomenon in Colombia have been mainly concentrated in the last decade on the analysis of school textbooks and case studies on coexistence relations, representations and discursive dynamics. Our goal is to add to their understanding a constitutive element of the school itself and not as just another aspect of school culture. We then speak of forms of racism to highlight its multiple and diverse existence in the school setting. We understand that this modern institution acts through devices that racialize people, and with them the cultures, geographies, knowledge and corporeality that they “represent”. In this sense, the forms of racism in the school also refer to the modes of micropolitics concerning issues of race, culture and so-called ethnic otherness.