Scientific racism? Training of medical students at a university in the south of Santa Catarina

Abstract

The present work is research applied to medical students of a university in the south of Santa Catarina with the aim of investigating the presence or absence of racist assumptions and/or content in the education of university students. The questions focused on two specific problems, one about the existence of a centrality of white bodies in examples, books, slides and the like, during medical training, emphasizing the specificities of dermatitis and other symptoms related to the epidermis when they occur in black bodies; and whether students perceived the element of race as a social, theoretical concept, or perceived the element of race as a biological aspect - not just phenotypic. Of the 150 responses, from students from the first to the last period, the results confirmed the existence of a white standard as a model, although students do not necessarily see this as a gap in their own training. On the other hand, regarding the idea of race, the answers were divergent and demonstrate that scientific racism still exists and is institutionally passed on. Empirical research also relies on a decolonial theoretical contribution that seeks to explain the link between modernity and coloniality based on the integration of science as an element that participates in exploration