"The fact that we increasingly have more diverse classes, whether black students from Portuguese-speaking countries, Afro-Brazilians or even from other contexts" requires "another type of demand and care" from the education system, she argued.

These young people do not see "the history of their people represented in their textbooks" or even the values they grew up with.

This is particularly evident in history subjects but also in other areas of knowledge.

"It is not enough to put Amílcar Cabral's [historical leader of the independence movements of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde] picture" and say that the textbook is inclusive, stressed the researcher and higher education teacher.

When addressing colonialism, "the status of indigenato, which was a legal 'apartheid' in the Portuguese way", should be included, she exemplified.

What Cristina Roldão asks is that "the violence" of Portuguese colonialism "not be hidden", so as "not to provide tools for deconstructing racism in today's Portuguese society". This is because racism, with ethnic segmentation of colonized peoples, was the way for an "empire, which was always semi-peripheral, to build its power".

"In Portuguese history, the colonial past is so alive in the people who are present in the institutions that resist and that are direct continuations" of the domination over other peoples, that "I cannot ignore the problems of the past without recognizing privileges that persist in today's society", she stressed.

This feeling of white cultural superiority in Portugal is evident in the studies carried out. A recent survey, promoted by the Institute of Social Sciences, indicates that more than half of the Portuguese population "believes that there are races superior to others from a biological and civilizational and cultural point of view".

"We cannot convey the idea that everything is fine without first resolving this", stated the researcher who criticized the use of intercultural discourse, without acknowledging the past.

The theoretical concept of interculturality, in which there is a coexistence between various cultures, today "fits too well with Lusotropicalism", a doctrine promoted by the Estado Novo which stated that the Portuguese had a milder colonialism than other empires.

In other countries, this debate on acknowledging the mistakes of the past is more advanced.

The delay in Portugal, said Cristina Roldão, has to do "with the very specificity of Portuguese colonialism, which is a colonialism with fascism", which mixes "conditions of oppression and blockade", which makes it difficult for "the possibility of a critical narrative".

And the sociologist asks that Portugal look at the English or Brazilian example, where this debate is more advanced, and gather contributions from Portuguese-speaking African countries.

"It is necessary to tell another story, to include other perspectives, because there is a history of much violence that needs to be assumed" and that "this past still greatly influences our present", she summarized.

To this end, it is necessary to ensure greater diversity in various points of society and, in the case of education, there is a lack of curricula that include these concerns, but also a "greater ethnic and racial representativeness of the teaching staff".

"I am not advocating quotas, that is another discussion, but we also need to have more black people teaching. I am not saying that only black people can study the Portuguese colonial past, but they also have to be present in this discussion and in what is the thinking about pedagogy in Portugal", she concluded.

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