SELF-DECLARATION OF RACE AND/OR SKIN COLOUR AMONG STUDENTS FROM THE CITY OF SÃO PAULO

The purpose of this article is to broaden the debate about the classification and denomination of color/race in contemporary Brazil, and bring the voice of children and adolescents to the debate. To this end, the work employs two investigation strategies: an extensive review of the literature to show tension points, specially those concerning the confusion between classification and denomination of color/race; and the application and analysis of a questionnaire about the denomination and classification of color/race among public school students from the City of São Paulo. The questionnaire was designed along the lines of the questionnaires prepared by Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics for the 1978 National Research of Household Sample and for the 1998 Monthly Employment Survey. This article indicates that the students’ responses suggest a sophisticated management of concepts and terminology of race/color, which would allow them to answer the item included in the school census of 2005, differently from the strategy used by Ministry of Education/National Institute for Educational Research and Studies.