Education, Power, Respect

On Monday, we attended a mini-seminar with Professor Flavia Piovesan and students during her class at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Sao Paulo (PUC-SP). There, a young woman from Mozambique brought up the fact that all of the three blacks in the class were from Africa. Sadly, there were no Afro-Brazilians enrolled in the course. But, what I was more intrigued by was the impact of an affirmative action type program in Mozambique described by the young lady. Mozambique is 99% indigenous tribal groups, but people in power still found a way to discriminate and oppress others. Here, they used geography to exclude people from the university. As a result of groups from the north and east’s exclusion, the people in the south were perceived as ‘smarter’. However, when the University began opening up to more people from the north and east, those students were able to debunk the myth of “south superiority” and gain greater access.

This shows how power can be used to oppress others in order to maintain that power in any context. I think power goes beyond race since there is always potential for intra-group oppression, but racism is the strongest tool used in maintaining power. Education and exclusion from education have always been tools for maintaining power. Nevertheless, technology and globalization may alter the desire for domination and subordination of weaker groups. This combination requires the involvement of a higher percentage of the population for the creation, innovation and adoption of new technologies; using less than the full potential of human capital may cause a nation to slip behind others. Hopefully, this need will incentivize countries to provide equal opportunity and access to education to all of their people.