“Criança laudada tem cor? Um estudo sobre racismo, poder psiquiátrico e educação”

Abstract

Based on a Foucauldian genealogical approach, our study traces the trajectory of psychiatry in the construction of childhood as a target for normalisation, intervention, and control, linking this analysis to the production of academic failure and the shaping of the contemporary developmentalist field. It then mobilises Sueli Carneiro's theory of the raciality apparatus and decolonial references to understand the racialisation of childhoods and its relationship with processes of exclusion in the school environment. We analyse five praised children, as well as records of conversation circles with education professionals. The figure of the child with a medical report, analysed under Erica Burman's concept of extimacy, highlights a subject situated in a liminal place: included under permanent surveillance, without ever being fully recognised as belonging to the school space. The results indicate that the reports not only describe children, but also produce them as medicalised and racialised subjects, justifying continuous adaptation and monitoring itineraries that, in practice, reinforce an exclusionary educational model. We conclude that the medicalisation of black children in reports should be understood not only as an isolated phenomenon, but as a mechanism of racial regulation and mutual relations that can perpetuate inequalities. By highlighting the boundaries between mental health and education, the research proposes an epistemological shift that enables emancipatory horizons.