Freire’s interfaces with ethnic-racial relations and EJA

Abstract

Since the end of the 1950s, Popular Education (PE) has been seen as a paradigm of education in favor of minorities, presenting as principles its option in favor of liberation and empowerment of the victims of the world. This work seeks to highlight PE from the option for issues related to ethnic-racial relations and Youth and Adult Education, mediated by the Paulo Freire’s discourse. Consisting mostly of black people, ethnic-racial issues are not always considered in EJA, especially with regard to thinking about this modality imbricated with an anti-racist education. Thus, this article deals with a study with a qualitative-bibliographic approach and presents some reflections on the contribution of Paulo Freire's thought to Youth and Adult Education and the teaching of ethnic-racial relations. From the discussion carried out, it is clear that, even without specifically dealing with issues related to EJA and ethnic-racial issues, Freire, in his works – Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1987) and Pedagogy of Autonomy: knowledge necessary for educational practice (2011) – provides a reflection on this imbrication in several aspects: political, pedagogical and sociocultural. In the search for an emancipatory education based on the paradigm of Popular Education, these two works interconnects and allow the understanding that only mediated by word, by dialogue, by reflection and/in action is that an emancipatory education is built and, consequently, anti-racist for all.