Repercussões da experiência de racismo nas ocupações maternais de mulheres negras: estratégias de enfrentamento

Abstract

In the Brazilian context, the percentage of black and mixed-race women who play the role of mothers is higher than that of white women. Although very rare in the field of Occupational Therapy, studies show that the black population, specifically black women, experience inequalities and face situations of racism on a daily basis. In childrearing, the conditions of racial violence remain, expressing themselves in symbolic and physical violence in school contexts, work environments and in State policies. This study seeks to answer the following question “How does the experience of racism faced by black women affect their maternal occupations?”. The research, with a qualitative approach, adopted the body mapping storytelling that is based on oral narratives, graphic and artistic resources. Ten female mothers with a mean age of 35.9 years participated in the study. The generated data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The results are presented in three parts: Part I. Ten motherhood stories narrated through body maps storytelling; Part II. What is a collective problem? Impacts of racism in the daily lives of black women mothers; Part III. Proposed agenda: exposing the messages of black women mothers to others. The centrality of the elements of race and racism is highlighted in the participants' narratives, which allow the identification of the processes of constitution of black identity permeated by episodes of violence in different contexts, with the school as the main stage. It is noted that, in the mothering process, from before conception to parenting and education, black women deal with concerns and fears related to the idealization of this child, as well as feelings of self-vigilance in spaces of racial socialization. When raising children, they even go through repertoires of racial rituals and etiquette that continue to be linked to a racist structure, albeit in an unintentional way. The study shows that black women mothers develop an occupational imaginary constituted and based on the maintenance, rupture or support of the transgressive teachings of the mother figure, as well as the individual elaborations of the constitution of their own black racial identity and consciousness, which may be related to a subjective level, and not necessarily at a political level. The occupational imaginary of black mothers materializes through an ingenious care work that seeks the protection and personal fulfillment of their children, but does not necessarily prepare and protect their children for the strengthening of black identity and mitigation of the complex and violent effects of racism. From a technical-professional point of view, the study provided foundations on the singularities and particularities of black mothers and childhoods that demonstrate the urgency of considering the specificities of these lives in the field of occupational therapy. This will guarantee the commitment and the ethical-political horizon in the construction of professional practices and innovative public policies capable of transforming the occupational contexts in which institutional racism is produced and perpetuated.