Ethnicity/Race, Language, and Inequality in Higher Education in Latin America

DANIEL MATO

Palo Alto

Conferencia; Race, Inequality, and Language in Education Conference; 2021

Stanford University

In Latin America, racism - as an ideology and regime of power - especially affects persons and communities of African descent and indigenous peoples. We do not have time to go into details on this occasion, but we must emphasize that this occurs in specific ways in each country. Moreover, histories and situations often vary between diverse regional contexts within each country, as well as concerning the cases of specific communities and peoples. These differences contribute to understanding the existence of diverse strategies to confront racism developed in specific contexts, as I shall briefly illustrate in this presentation. Nevertheless, beyond those differences, some commonalities are meaningful. In Latin American societies, racism is so naturalized that most of the population, and in particular the mainstream media, often limit the usage of the concept of "racism" to explicit facts of "racial discrimination". This reductionist operation, combined with the generalized ignorance of the role of racism in the origin of social inequalities, often keeps hidden how it permeates specific institutions and is reproduced through them. Educational systems play an important role in the naturalization and reproduction of racism. Higher Education systems and institutions have a crucial responsibility in these processes. Because, they train the teachers of the entire educational system, as well as journalists and other public opinion makers, political and social leaders, decision-makers, and other agents with key responsibilities in all economic, political, and social fields. For these reasons, to make our societies more just and equitable, it is crucial to study the specific ways in which racism is reproduced and naturalized in Higher Education systems and institutions, and to transform education on the basis of this analysis.