Undergraduate psychology: analyzing student experience surrounding whiteness-blackness related themes

Abstract

Considering the scarce academic exploration of racial relations in Psychology undergraduate courses and the diverse manners of exploration facing the issue, this research aims to investigate if and how the social meanings on the theme of racial relations are presented, in the whiteness-blackness unit, based on reports by students of Psychology undergraduate courses offered at São Paulo state public universities. Fundamented by Cultural-Historical Psychology (CHP) theoretical references, it is conceived that psychological science is a human construct historically forged on the production and reproduction of life relations, its main theoretical premises are based on the ideal image of a white universal individual, located in a eurocentric or north-American context. Historically, psychology in Brazil has faced three moments that, synthetically, can be identified as the adoption of the black person as an object of study in the early 20th century; the permeation of the racial democracy myth; and the conception of race as a human construct, demarcating material e symbolical inequities, therefore, being a constitutive factor of subjectivities by providing an unequal locus to individuals. In this context, this investigation is justified by the identification of a gap in research related to racial issues discussions inserted in psychology undergraduate education. For this purpose, the Content Analysis methodology, developed by Bardin, was applied to the structured questionnaire instrument composed of open questions, answered through the online platform Google Forms. This method allows the interpretation of the content from messages composed by the students, based on their personal experiences, analyzing the social meanings in the light of PHC, seeking to apprehend the latent contents expressed in the reports.(AU)