FORMULATING INVISIBILIZATION: PHARMACY'S COLLABORATION IN THE MAINTENANCE OF STRUCTURAL RACISM
ABSTRACT
The dynamics of racism maintenance occur because of the relationships that exist in several daily
social spaces. This happens because these spaces were built and consolidated based on a process of
racial hierarchization and consequently an annulment of the black population in places of power and
positive highlights. An example of this is the low black professionals representativeness and
representation in the spaces of power in Pharmacy. Historically, through their publications,
directorships, and presidency, the Regional and Federal Councils of Pharmacy have collaborated
with the construction of the image of the pharmaceutical professional as a white person.
Considering that there are black pharmacists, but their existence has been annulled in certain spaces,
functions, and prominent representations in the professional field, we can reflect on the invisibility
of these professionals not only among their peers, but in society as a whole. This situation is one of
many examples of how structural racism operates in the institutional and daily spaces of our society.
As a Pharmacist who has worked for more than twenty years in Public Health and a Social Scientist
who has been working in Education for a short time, I seek to understand how the absence of Black
men and women in the center of pharmaceutical professional representation has historically and
culturally happened. To this end, I survey the processes of marginalization of this part of the
population in this specific area as well as in Public Health and educational spaces. In this
investigation, making use of dialogues between Clóvis Moura, Angela Davis, Silvio Almeida,
Neusa Santos Souza, Lélia Gonzalez, and Frantz Fanon, I bring the definitions of structural racism
and the ways in which racism occurs in society. Furthermore, I seek to understand how the
Pharmaceutical Industry, by investing heavily in relationships with students and professionals, ends
up producing not only drugs, but also professionals according to its own economic interests. By
crossing these two trajectories (marginalization of the black population and training of
pharmaceutical professionals), I propose that, as the pharmaceutical professional is a kind of
product of the Pharmaceutical Industry and as the black population has been historically directed to
places of social marginalization, the Industry collaborates with the maintenance of structural racism
in our country by understanding that the black pharmaceutical professional would be a "product"
that should not go to a prominent place in the "showcase", being the invisibilization of these
professionals the result of this process.