Palmeiras holds talk on racial awareness for youth team players | OneFootball

The players and coaching staff of the under-14, under-16, and under-17 teams of Palmeiras attended a lecture on structural racism this week. The event was organized by Verdão during the week of Black Consciousness Day, celebrated last Thursday (20).

The lecture was organized by the Youth Team’s Psychosocial Center and aimed to promote racial literacy among the young Palmeiras athletes. In addition to discussing concepts, the speakers shared experiences of cases in which racism manifests itself in subtle ways, seeking to broaden the boys’ understanding of unacceptable practices.

“We are talking about athletes who may suffer from or commit acts of racism. We need to educate them, to carry out awareness work so that they understand what racism is, that it’s not just insults or monkey gestures. When we talk about racial literacy, we mean teaching these boys how to defend themselves,” said Marcelo Carvalho, executive director of the Observatory of Racial Discrimination in Football.

“You see many professional players who report racism but don’t want to talk about it because they say they don’t understand much about the subject. That’s why it’s essential to educate at the youth level, so they leave more aware and don’t reproduce certain practices,” the executive director added.

More Literacy Initiatives

In July of this year, Palmeiras’ under-15 athletes visited the Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araújo, located in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo (SP). The young players learned in depth about the history of the country’s ethnic and cultural formation and explored a collection of more than eight thousand works related to the Afro-Brazilian universe.

Just last week, Verdão organized a lecture on combating violence against women and rape culture, also aimed at the youth players. Athletes and coaching staff members from the under-15, under-16, and under-17 teams participated in the event, which was held at the club’s social headquarters.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.