Racism in Colombia: the vision of Amir Smith Córdoba

Abstract

The article gathers the ideas of Amir Smith Córdoba about education and culture as vehicles for the black desalienation in Colombian society. These approaches of the decade of the eighties of the twentieth century are fully valid in today’s debates that question the place of the African diaspora within Latin American societies ruled by colonial categories that promote racism as a perpetual phenomenon. Córdoba develops the concept of Bl Negritude (Blackness) and Black Culture as scenarios of a political nature and as possibilities of consensus of the descendants of Africans, not only in Colombia but also in the world context. Their intellectual contributions are based on the conception that the deeply racist Colombian society is consolidated from an official educational project that bears a high level of discrimination. This education in its endilgative character - in the words of the thinker - points to the Negro as responsible for his own marginality. The author proposes possible exits by re-elaborating the educational conception in terms of scenario for the presence of epistemic diversity where the knowledge, values and culture of the Negro have a place of importance in the formation processes of Colombians.