A CRITIQUE OF TACIT WHITENESS IN DISABILITY STUDIES

AN ANTICOLONIAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This article, motivated by the research conducted by the Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa Darci Barbosa (IEP-MG) with families of people with multiple disabilities, criticizes the absence of race as a category of analysis in disability studies in Brazil, including in the Brazilian Inclusion Law (LBI) and in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This omission aligns such studies with a tacit whiteness, a hegemonic white racial identity that masks the privileges of white people and disregards or misrepresents the reality of non-white people with disabilities. Perspectives of black Brazilian intellectual production are drawn, such as the concepts of blackness and whiteness, to unveil the ideology of whitening and the myth of racial democracy. These historical elements in Brazilian social thought mask racism, assimilate non-white cultures, and perpetuate privileges. Furthermore, the paper questions the principle of equality through independence and body normativity present in disability legislation, defending human interdependence and the centrality of care based on critical disability studies. Finally, the article proposes intersectionality as a crucial tool to analyze the articulation of multiple forms of oppression (racism, ableism, and sexism) and combat the hegemony of privileged groups. The article concludes that the lack of racial consideration perpetuates racism by omission, reinforcing the need for an anti-colonial anthropological analysis to guarantee social justice for people with disabilities in Brazil, especially non-white people.