The Role of School in the Construction of "Black Inferiority" and "White Superiority" in Moroccan Students

Abstract

This article addresses language-based discrimination towards blacks as an underinvestigated and latent form of prejudice. We will attempt to demonstrate that the status of blacks in general, and black body, in particular is the site of the symbolism that has been historically associated with black as color and as a negative linguistic construction that has been grafted onto the black body, as an invisible entity where fear of the devil, djin and evil spirits are articulated. We will unpack the role of the school in the reproduction and reinforcement of the inferiority of black, both as a color and as a body in the minds of children since the early stages of primary school education. Our sociological investigation is informed by visual sociology to engage in content analysis of textbooks images, an attempt that stems from our belief that such vehiculated images partakes to the formation of child’s representation of the self and the other