SPORT PSYCHOLOGY AND THE IMPACTS OF RACISM ON THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE BLACK SOCCER PLAYER

Abstract

The history of black people in Brazil and in the world is marked by episodes of struggles for recognition, respect and equal rights. The consequences of the 300 years of slavery in Brazil (1550-1888), reached different spheres of the social context, making the black person still have difficulties in the social and economic ascension. As we have seen over the years successive cases of racism in sport around the world, we have challenged the idea that there is a racial democracy in this field, when it is claimed that athletes project themselves because of their merits and by their own efforts. As soccer is the sport that most converges the feeling of nationalism in our country, this research carried out a bibliographic review to investigate how structural racism affects the subjectivity of black people who work with soccer. We found that blacks find spaces as athletes, because of their physical, technical and tactical qualities, but that as referees, coaches and managers their participation is minimal. The survey also revealed that Psychology itself as a science and profession took a long time to comment on racism because it was only in 2017 that the Psychology and Public Policy Reference Center (CREPOP) launched a booklet on race relations. Also the Sport Psychology (PE) commissions undertaken by the Regional Psychological Councils, only managed to launch a “Revista Diálogo” in PE in 2018 and in 2019 a booklet on “Technical references for the performance of psychologists in public sport policies”. However, none of these publications discuss the issue of racism in particular. In addition, we observed according to Myotin (2018) that most of the knowledge produced in PE does not come from the faculties of psychology, but from the physical education schools, which are obviously dedicated to studies on improving the performance of athletes. We present affirmative policies that aim to democratize the participation of black people in the command of Sport and we think of an EP that is ethically oriented to be anti-racist.