Relações raciais e racismo na Polícia Militar de Mato Grosso: análise das práticas operacionais da polícia militar e os desafios para a segurança cidadã

Abstract

This thesis analyses the subjective and intersubjective meanings and the significant symbols that military police officers attribute to their operational approach activities in racial relations. It aims to understand and analyze the reality of the practices these professionals build in the face of their actions with black individuals. The theoretical-methodological design used was qualitative research from the perspective of George Herbert Mead’s (1933) symbolic interactionism transmitted by Herbert Blumer (1982). This stimulating perspective constitutes the military officers’ comprehension of their social environment. It also understands them as a group member where he is subject to a continual interpretation of meanings. The study participants are military police officers from their training to the moment they apply the knowledge they receive in their operational actions in the public spaces of society. The theoretical categories resulting from the study – training, approach, handcuffing, and military police perception – through analysis as a content analysis technique coexist as a process of interaction. Such process manifests itself with greater emphasis in these actions in the encounter with the black individual as a target of suspicion, producing signifiers that give meaning to the reality of approaches in the context of race relations under the logic of equitable practices. However, the military police officers’ operational practices in their interaction with the black individual have shown racist actions. And these practices constitute interpretations and meanings in the face of approaches in the context of race relations. Regarding the final considerations, we interpret the operational practices of military police officers in the context of race relations as more professional than social characteristics. Such interpretation emphasizes the social bond that is related to the degree of belonging to which the officer belongs, prints cultural attitudes of institutional socialization in these operational approaches, with meanings of actions based on the institution’s sources of how to act about the black individual, and offers evidence of the activation of acts of racism in the impressions of this “foreign” individual. Racism becomes the primary status that affects the way we interact with the black community, where we assess the significance of these interactions with the black population. It also defines an encounter with this black individual and operates as a kind of “social skin” transmitting prejudice and discrimination onto their characters.