Avoiding identities: The health between submission and the resistance

A conflict exists between the construction of social identities and public policy discourses about vulnerable populations in Brazil. Black social movement organisations adopt an "inclusive" discourse to highlight the “whitening” trends that neutralise issues of race and racism. This 'whitening' affects the public health statistics, in particular the indicators of violent deaths. The health professionals, despite ethical and professional obligations often fail to acknowledge their role in this process of 'whitening'. This paper addresses why and how these processes occur. Methodology: Case study analysis of interviews with nine forensic medicine professionals from a northeastern Brazilian city. The analysis pays attention to four discourses. The “legitimating” discourse, functions to maintain and expand the domination of a hegemonic discourse of a non-racialised Brazilian society; the “avoiding” discourse functions to escape talking about this domination using negation and mimesis; the “resistance” discourse, characterised as an open fight against the inclusive de-valuation strategies that undermine the non-racialised view of Brazilian society; and the “project” discourse makes possible the emergence of new actors. Results: The denial of racism is locates racial vulnerability as a property of social class, rather than ethnicity. The professionals express the dominant thinking, i.e. that the problem is a legacy of slavery. This is not wrong, but it represents only a partial truth. For the doctors in the sample, the importance of the race is only "statistical". Consequently the professionals fluctuate between a legitimating discourse and an avoiding discourse. Seldom does the resistance discourse appear, for example only in such instances where the cause of death is external, where cause seems beyond the remit of medicine. Conclusion: The research confirms the evidence of the "whitening" process, how it occurs in medical spaces, and illustrates the many ways that identities can be transmuted neutralising the possibilities of revolt against domination and extermination.