A post on Instagram by Afrolink, a Portuguese affirmative action website, led to the suspension of a postgraduate program at a Lisbon university and had repercussions across Europe. The content criticized the “Postgraduate course in Racism and Xenophobia”, offered by the Faculty of Law of Universidade Nova de Lisboa in partnership with the Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia, a government entity. The post was illustrated with portraits of the program’s teachers — all white.
“The reactions were understandably indignant, and the university and the observatory removed the course page on the same day”, says Paula Cardoso, founder of Afrolink. Born in Mozambique and with Portuguese citizenship, she says she examined the course program in detail and found what she calls absurdities, in addition to the lack of diversity in the teaching staff. “One of the modules was titled: ‘But does racism really exist?’. Now, for those who experience it every day, the question is insulting to say the least.”
Wanted by Sheetthe Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia and Universidade Nova did not respond until the publication of this report.
Margarida Lima Rego, a professor at Nova, told the Lusa news agency: “Between the moment the course was approved and its operationalization, several changes occurred. The main one was the unavailability of some trainers to teach at the postgraduate level. This led to adjustments in the program, which ended up not reflecting the principles of diversity and inclusion.”
The episode — and the creation of the Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia — illustrates the Portuguese relationship with the topic, which is taboo in the country. Cardoso states that the expression “structural racism” appeared for the first time in an official Portuguese document in 2021, when the government of socialist António Costa created the Plan to Combat Racism and Discrimination. The creation of the Observatory was a recommendation of the Plan; it was installed in 2023 as an academic project, in partnership with the Faculty of Law of Nova.
“It was a project that was born crooked”, says Portuguese Myriam Taylor, an activist in the area of diversity and human rights. “Command positions have always been occupied by white people, as if the word observatory meant white people observing racism. At the university, no one thought it was strange, because in Portugal the fact that there are no racialized people in spaces of power was normalized, and the university It’s a space of power.”
For Taylor, this behavior towards racism has historical origins. The Salazar dictatorship, which oppressed Portugal between 1933 and 1974, propagated the idea that there was no racism in the country and that Portuguese colonization had been benign.
The dictator António de Oliveira Salazar was inspired by the concept of lusotropicalism created by Gilberto Freyre. For the Brazilian sociologist, the Portuguese were accustomed to diversity due to the fact that the Iberian peninsula had been occupied by countless peoples. Thus, they would not be racist, compared to the English and Americans. Freyre even traveled to Portugal and several African countries at Salazar’s invitation.
Paula Cardoso, from Afrolink, also revisits a conversation she says she had with Ana Catarina Mendes, minister in António Costa’s government, shortly after the launch of the Plan to Combat Racism and Discrimination. “She asked me what structural racism was and was surprised when I said that there were black people who were discriminated against in the job market when they put their photo on their resume,” says Cardoso. “The idea that there is no racism in Portugal makes it difficult to debate important issues in the country and our history.”
The Nova Faculty of Law website has a specific tab on the topic “diversity and inclusion”. The portal reads that “inclusion and gender equality are fundamental considerations in the composition of internal committees, juries, panels and other bodies”.
At least in the case of the course that ended up suspended, this consideration was not observed.
