“Black”, “white”, “human being”: A look to the racial self-declaration of scientists of Zika Virus through their personal and professional trajectories

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the racial self-declaration of a group of scientists who worked on the Zika Virus. They were interviewed between 2018 and 2023 in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Through their racial self-declaration (or the avoidance of it), we sought to understand how these scientists perceived their social markers of difference (with a focus on race) as influencing their personal and professional trajectories. We identified three main approaches: 1) scientists who recognized racial markers as important in their trajectories, whether as Black, pardas, or white scientists; 2) scientists who, while not emphasizing racial markers, acknowledged the importance of other markers (such as class, gender, motherhood, and disability); and 3) scientists who demonstrated little to no awareness of social markers of difference in their trajectories.