Black Men’sGames Group

To work on a “self-writing” process, by reading, writing and discussing national and international rap works, composed and sang by other Black men, as the primary tool to address issues and problems related to race, gender, and violence.

Workshops for young Black men from the Recôncavo da Bahia.

The lack of opportunities for youth is one of the significant problems in the region, especially for young Blacks. In the case of Black men, there is a brutalized condition that befalls them. In the horizon of racialized subjectivities in the Recôncavo da Bahia (Cachoeira and São Félix), racial panic education or racialized violence is part of these tasks of subjection, and to recognize this is to acknowledge the effective political character of racial (and gender) violence that marks the experience in the favela and in the suburbs. In this sense, the challenge is to bring young Black men to the creative exercise of dramatic reading and writing, aiming to boost skills, abilities, talents – a space to break stereotypes and stigmas cemented over the identity of young Black men from the suburbs.

The group Brincadeira de Negão was founded in 2013 as a research project at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. The project was developed by a multidisciplinary team of students, in dialogue with professors and students of Bahia state schools in the cities of Cachoeira and São Félix, at the Recôncavo Baiano, Bahia, more particularly in a public high school (Escola Estadual Rômulo Galvão), where there is an important field for the discussions on the production of racialized masculine subjectivities. Inspired by “activist research” this research group considered the urgency to better understand subjective processes, articulated as “feeling structures” connecting male and/or popular subjectivity to particular patterns of sexual practices, gender identity, and violence/lethal victimization, high-intensity social vulnerability, as shown in the 2012/2013 Violence Map. Starting in 2017, the group began a transitional process based on the intense involvement with the social reality issues of young people with whom they established research activities. The reality of the school system itself and the severe conditions of public education, the daily adversities and violence of the city outskirts led the group to rethink their actions, setting new objectives and interests aimed at a more active political work. In 2018, the group disengaged from the Federal University of the Recôncavo da Bahia, regrouped and refounded as Coletivo Brincadeira de Negão, maintaining its partnership with the Rômulo Galvão High School.