Exploring Racial Formation in Children: Thoughts from an Encounter with Black Children in Brazil

ABSTRACT In this work, using spontaneous expression of white skin color preference by Black Brazilian children as stimulus, we seek to examine the construction and performance of racial subjectivity in Black children. Drawing on a range of psychoanalytic theories, we strive to develop a psychoanalytic understanding of racial formation that is complex and non-essentializing. The paper concludes with an examination of the possibilities of pedagogical interventions that might provide space for Black children to occupy and perform more expansive racial identities, assisted by teachers who embody receptivity, a capacity for positive mirroring, and an ability to practice mentalizing pedagogies.