Djamila Ribeiro Discusses Place of Speech and Antiracist Education at a São Paulo Private School

All 200 seats were taken at Escola Viva, in Vila Olímpia, and the proceeds went to scholarships for Black students and to Espaço Feminismos Plurais

Students, parents, teachers, staff and administrators took all 200 seats at Conversa Viva: Lugar de Fala, a Sept. 3 session on lugar de fala, or place of speech, with Djamila Ribeiro at Escola Viva, a private school in the Vila Olímpia district of São Paulo. Teachers from other schools attended as well. The session was held as an extracurricular event, and the school community helped shape it from the planning stage on.

Members of the school’s racial equity committee designed the conversation, and Fábio Conceição, a teacher who leads antiracism training for staff, faculty and families there, moderated it. Place of speech, antiracist education and affirmative action framed the discussion, which also took up memory, personal histories, privilege, received wisdom and the small changes people can make in daily life. Ribeiro closed by taking questions from students and from the mothers who had helped put the event together.

Ribeiro said the session showed how antiracist education can move past the conceptual and reshape what institutions actually do:

“You come away energized, knowing about a project that has put antiracist education into practice,” she said in a video posted on social media.

In the same video, she described antiracism as a responsibility each person takes on from where they stand:

“Racism is a problem of Brazilian society. And from my social location, I’m going to do things differently: ‘I’m going to start an antiracist committee at my school,’ ‘I’m going to invite other white people to take part in the debate’ … because the history of the Black population is the history of Brazil.”

The point draws on what she argues in Lugar de Fala and throughout her work: where a person stands socially shapes their access to rights, to opportunity and to a say in public life. In education, she says, that means concrete measures, not just a revised reading list.

At Escola Viva, that has meant a fund set up to broaden Black students’ access to the school:

“The entire amount raised at the event went to the school’s Racial Equity Fund, which supports scholarships for Black students, and to Espaço Feminismos Plurais, the nonprofit I have the honor of chairing, which serves women in situations of social vulnerability in São Paulo,” Ribeiro said.

Students attending on scholarships from the fund pitched in and ran a booth, with proceeds also going to the total raised.

The program included sales of the expanded Brazilian edition of Lugar de Fala (Rosa dos Tempos/Grupo Editorial Record) and a signing that ran more than an hour:

“I was very moved to see how far my work reaches those young people and that it’s being taught in their classes,” Ribeiro said.

Conceição said the session built on training already underway across the school community:

“It is possible to build, to care for the education of children, to care for the education of young people so that they can build a future in which every existence is possible.”

On Instagram, the school said it hoped to keep the initiative going:

“May this be the first of many gatherings!”

Ribeiro plans to return to Escola Viva next year and is considering bringing the format to other schools, which can reach her through the Espaço Feminismos Plurais press office. The model tested in Vila Olímpia puts several pieces together: the school’s own committee, a moderator from inside the faculty, families involved in the planning and proceeds routed to a scholarship fund.

That combination, more than any single afternoon, is what points toward turning a conversation about racial equity into school policy — and toward changing who sits in the classrooms.

Translated by AI