From the Black Councils to the Federal Special Secretariat for the Adoption of Policies that Promote Racial Equality (SEPPIR)

Abstract

Although black Brazilian social movements have been in existence for many decades, at least since the early twentieth century, it is in the 1980s that the struggles against racism and racial discrimination extended throughout all regions of Brazil. It is in such a context of antiracist political activism that emerged in 1984 the Conselho Estadual de Participação e Desenvolvimento da Comunidade Negra do Estado de São Paulo (the State of São Paulo Council for Black Community Participation and Development), and in 1991 the Secretaria Extraordinária de Defesa e Promoção das Populações Negras do estado do Rio de Janeiro (the Special Secretariat for the Defense and Promotion of the Black Populations of the State of Rio de Janeiro). Following these two notorious examples, many states and municipalities established departments or councils focused on implementing policies that had for objectives to end racism and racial discrimination. In this sense, this process became one of the organizational models for antiracist movements in the country, which led to the development of a specialized administrative machinery within municipal, state, and federal governments. With this research, I am attempting to interpret the meaning of social agents’ actions in the field of race relations, notably within Brazil’s Northeastern region’s nine state governments and in the municipal administrations of their respective capital cities.