Racism in Childhood and the Childhood of Racism: Life and tracks of a Black Child

Abstract This article, based on an archaeological-type methodology of genealogy, aimed at retrieving and mapping fragments of the life of a black child in a judicial document housed at the Simonense Historical Museum in 1861. Further, it intends to understand this document, its speeches and positions, deciphering how the legal machinery worked in its most expressive concept of power-knowledge, and what views and approaches the local power used to manage lives and bodies. The work also sought to understand how, in that nineteenth-century context, “color” and “race” influenced procedural disentangling. The work led us to find that in the middle of the 19th century a new idea of ‘child’ came into being. This child model, idealized at that time by hygienist medicine, would only serve the white, Catholic, wealthy child. It would not support the black child. It was not just an existing type of racism, but a new type of racism that was born along with the very idea of a child. It was the childhood of this type of racism in Brazil. And this racism would have consequences for legal proceedings involving black children. It would give rise to selective justice, with judicial decisions affected by the racial issue.

摘要 本研究基于谱系考古学方法论，旨在还原并梳理1861年藏于西蒙内斯历史博物馆（Simonense Historical Museum）的一份司法档案中一名黑人儿童的生活片段。此外，本研究旨在解析该档案及其承载的话语与立场，阐释司法机制如何以最具代表性的权力-知识（power-knowledge）理念运行，以及彼时地方权力采用何种观念与手段管控个体生命与身体。本研究同时试图厘清，在19世纪的历史语境下，"肤色"与"种族"如何影响司法程序的裁决结果。研究发现，19世纪中期，一种全新的"儿童"观念应运而生。彼时由卫生医学建构的这一理想儿童范式，仅适用于白人、天主教徒且家境优渥的儿童，完全无法适配黑人儿童。这并非既存的种族主义形态，而是伴随"儿童"观念诞生的新型种族主义，这也是巴西此类种族主义的雏形阶段。这种种族主义会对涉及黑人儿童的司法程序产生负面影响，最终催生选择性司法——即司法裁决深受种族议题的裹挟。