Is there dendê in the Base? Black lives and the Bahia Curriculum

Abstract

In this text, I discuss about the Bahia Curriculum, a curricular framework that aims to ensure students’ learning rights in schools in Bahia, Brazil. The document is based on the normative guidelines of the National Common Curricular Base (Base Nacional Comum Curricular − BNCC), from the peculiarities of the State, operating by the meaning of curriculum as knowledge based on Macedo (2017; 2019). I point out the impossibility of fulfilling BNCC’s promises regarding quality assurance in education and focus on the treatment given by the Bahia Curriculum to ethnic-racial issues, especially with regard to valuing diversity, promoting inclusion, and educational actions aimed at combating racism. I emphasize the failure of the commitments assumed in view of the school institution’s primary role in the perpetuation of the racial norm, at the same time that I recognize loopholes for its displacements, from the crossing of the unpredictable in educational practice based on Silva (2006). The Bahia Curriculum assumes a promise of equity and ambitions for life projects for young people who move from Elementary School to High School. Meanwhile, the high rates of murder of young blacks indicate that students, as well as the characters of Conceição Evaristo (2016), are agreeing not to die. Given that, it is from the daily life of a rural school in Conceição do Coité, in the Sisal Territory, that erupts the cry of teachers facing the genocide of the black youth. In addition to pointing out the impossibility of the control intended in the curricular documents, I defend an educational action based on palm oil (azeite de dendê), to claim with our living Xangô, Gilberto Gil, for localized, racialized, and politically positioned curricular practices.