Abstract:
This article describes the main elements that constituted the thought, history, and ethical and political positions in Brazilian psychology in relation to race relations. These elements are aligned and commented as follows: a) a first debate that begins in the late nineteenth century, in which psychological thought about the racial problem describes black people as an “object of science”; the idea of race is, at this point in history, determined biologically b) the period between 1930 and 1960, characterized by the impact of the work of Gilberto Freyre, in which the concept of race appears as a cultural determinant and was later marked by criticism of the myth of “racial democracy”; c) a moment that began in the late 1970s under the influence of studies of racial inequalities, political opening, and the process of re-democratization of the country where black social movements through their actors, activists, and intellectuals produce the idea of race as a social construct and guide a political agenda redefining the racial debate, and in which psychology begins to discuss black people no longer as “objects of science” but as agents of their own history.
Keywords:
Psychology; History of Psychology; Race; Racism