JUVENICIDE AND STRUCTURAL RACISM

The Genocide of Black Youth as a Tragic Expression of Rights Violations

Abstract

This article aims to analyze structural racism as a structuring element of Brazilian youth homicide. It addresses youth homicide, as a phenomenon associated with the systematic death of youth related to intense social inequality that impacts the trajectory of life and death of young people, especially black and peripheral Brazilian people. It analyzes the oral reports of young black people and residents of territories with high rates of juvenile mortality, collected through an investigation that sought to investigate the phenomenon of juvenile homicide in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. It shows that structural racism is the central component of juvenile homicide , and this phenomenon occurs as a process, as a synthesis of countless determinations regarding countless rights violations that black youth are subjected to in the perverse class and race relations that make up Brazilian social inequality. Structural racism is a multifaceted phenomenon that manifests itself in countless situations in the lives of the young people interviewed, with emphasis on police violence directed at black youth. It is noteworthy that actions to combat high rates of youth mortality must necessarily involve the fight against social and racial inequalities that mark youth trajectories.