3. Media and Racism

Abstract

In this paper, I address the theme of racism in the mathematics classroom in order to investigate the invisibility of black people in printed media. To do this, I describe a pedagogical strategy called the Social Research Group (SRG), which largely originates from critical mathematics education. SRGs are research groups formed by students in basic education who develop thematic investigations. In this text, we describe how the theme of racism was problematised through one of the landscapes of investigation, built on the theme of the visibility of black characters in national magazines. This scenario, in addition to enabling reflection on an important topic for Brazilian society—racial democracy—served to promote the idea that mathematics not only colonises various social practices, but can also be an instrument that helps us to reveal social asymmetries.