Educating for a Diversity Milieu: Demystifying Stereotypes

Abstract

The inclusion of Afro-Brazilian and African culture in the school curriculum by Act 10,639/2003 favors the demystification of the Negro stereotype as from the transcultural process which occurred in Brazil and an analysis of Negro artists who became prominent in certain areas of social and cultural interest. The above-mentioned law has not become really effective since there is a dearth of didactic material on the production of Brazilian Negro artists and on Negros in the pre-slavery period. Educators feel themselves unprepared to deal with such a delicate and discriminated subject matter. Current analysis analyzes the biography of two Negro Brazilians, namely Estevão Roberto da Silva and Heitor dos Prazeres. They were specifically chosen because they were Afro-descendents and highly prominent in the difficult Abolition period. The importance of Negros prominent in certain cultural or social environments has been perceived so that Brazilian identity could be recovered.