People passing by called her “Monkey”: facets of racism in children’s writings

Abstract

How do public school students represent manifestations of racism in texts? Through the analysis of polyphony, we scrutinized the nuances of racial prejudice in personal accounts of sixth-year students from a public school. Considering the speaker's division allowed us to see how racism appears in the words of children aged 10 to 12 years. Racial insults were the main marks of the racism reported. However, it appears never in the voice of the narrator of the text, but always in the voice of other enunciators. We noticed that children judge racist manifestations wrong, censoring their occurrence. However, such manifestations are included in the voices of others incorporated in the texts. We conclude that the Polyphonic Theory of Enunciation is a useful tool to deepen the understanding of racist discourse.