“There were never black kids in the textbooks,” says Gabrielle Márquez, an 18-year-old student who admits she felt underrepresented in school supplies. Today he studies medicine, but admits that he often “felt like I couldn’t manage” to finish school.
Your feeling is not unique. There are 34 million school-age Afro descendants in Latin America. However, statistics show that seven million of them will leave the education system before completing primary school, twice the regional average compared to their non-African peers.
“Textbooks are one of the many educational tools available to teachers and students,” says Germán Freire, senior human development specialist at the World Bank and author of a new report. The books “allow us to understand the kind of visions, prejudices or failures that influence the school experience of Afro-descended children and young people,” he explains.
The World Bank study, Afro-descendant inclusion in education, builds on extensive research on Afro-descendant populations in Latin America conducted in recent years and reveals new data on the quality of education and returns to education in this population. In addition, it addresses one of the possible causes of exclusion – racism in education – by identifying exclusion from education as one of the main factors exacerbating the regional educational crisis for the Afro-Colombian population.
All of this is confirmed in interviews with Afro-born children and young people, who share their reactions and relate their first-hand experiences.
Neither teachers nor textbooks
An important factor in the exclusion of Afro descendants is racism, whether explicit or implicit, as children and adolescents receive negative messages and stimuli about themselves and their life prospects.
“Most of the teachers are white,” says Maybell Serrano, a 14-year-old student, pondering a picture in a textbook. An unsupported faculty and a small number of Afro-descended teachers – who may be more sensitive and serve as role models – limit the academic achievements of these populations.
On the other hand, the depictions in textbooks often do not promote the recognition of the identity of Afro-Colombian communities, but on the contrary help to promote folkloric depictions and stereotypes.
The World Bank study involves reviewing 5,121 images from 40 primary and secondary books from ten Latin American countries. They featured people of African descent in only 15% of the images, mostly engaged in activities related to music, sports, rural, manual or industrial work.
“Textbooks in the region rarely represent the contributions and aspirations of the Afro-Colombian population,” says Freire. “More often, they tend to reinforce visions that may not be inherently negative, but which reproduce a limited and stereotyped vision of their contribution to society, and which impact on Afro-American boys and girls’ aspirations and perceptions of opportunity.”
Roniel Mesa, an 18-year-old student, says that “everything starts at school.” And he explains it clearly: “Books have to change in order not to repeat the same stereotype.” He concludes that with this small change from one generation to the next, a lasting change is achieved.
Changing the way race relations and racism are addressed in textbooks is a first step in the broader process of crafting an antiracist education agenda. “That I could give my niece a book and open it and see a black woman who is a lawyer,” Márquez suggests.
In the region, children and young people receive negative messages and impulses about themselves and their life prospects.
Education without racism in Latin America
Although Latin America is experiencing a widespread learning crisis, African-American students are hardest hit. In Brazil, for example, almost half of African-American children cannot read or understand age-appropriate texts, compared to 39% of non-African children.
In Colombia, the situation is equally worrying. Almost seven in 10 Black children were unable to understand age-appropriate text in 2019, compared with about four in 10 of their non-African peers.
A critical step in promoting inclusion in education is recognizing and addressing the factors that cause and perpetuate exclusion. The report proposes a number of strategies:
- Create racially inclusive books and educational materials that deconstruct discriminatory notions about Afro descendants and appropriately represent their history and culture.
- Recognize and combat structural racism and create and expand mechanisms to denounce and eliminate discrimination.
- Engage the community and school in conversations on this topic and create more inclusive curricula.
- Support diversity and inclusion teacher education and development programs to create safe environments where students are welcomed and valued by employing zero tolerance policies towards discrimination.
- Improve racial data collection and analysis to develop and strengthen policies to reduce educational inequality.
Overcoming the marginalization of children and youth of African American descent in Latin America is crucial for the development of the region. Quality education without racism is the most effective way to achieve this. In the words of ten-year-old Yomairy Vásquez, change is necessary so that “the new generation can see that there is a new opportunity for people of African descent.”
Cecilia Martinez Gomez She is a communicator at the World Bank.