Anti-blackness, land racism an racial selectivity in rural Brazil

Abstract

Based on the contributions of the field of critical race studies, discussions of land racism and racial selectivity, we propose to racialize the debate on the agrarian question and the political subjects involved in the struggle for land and who conform other territorialities, dissenting from the proprietary rationality of white matrix, starting from the observation that the theoretical and conceptual elements for working on race relations in this debate are still under construction.  Our proposal is to provide some concepts and formulations, based on empirical examples, which will help in the treatment and analysis of the different ways in which black and indigenous peoples are excluded from access to land, and the rights and ways of living associated with it. In the first part of the article, we take a look at studies of the Brazilian agrarian question from the perspective of anti-blackness. In the second part, we work with the concepts of land racism and the strategic selectivity of the state to characterize the historical process of the sedimentation of negative selection mechanisms when it comes to black subjects trying to guarantee their access to land. In the third part, we discuss the undisguised rejection of black people in the process of territorial titling of the Sesmaria do Jardim quilombola territory in Maranhão, reflecting on an empirical case in which land racism, racial selectivity and anti-blackness are present.