Respect to equality in It’s the difference

The context of public policies and the subject quilombola in Maranhão State

Abstract

By thoroughly examining the theoretical dimension of public policy, this article brings out the real need of researching the role of the National State as an institution created to implement policies and programs which guarantee “equal” rights to “all” and as an institution that respects citizens’ specificities when inserted in their own territorial sphere. For this purpose to be achieved, it becomes necessary that policies of universal nature are carried out. Such policies reveal a facet of the actual crisis in modern society which is the problematical of inequality and exclusion. From a theoretical and methodological reference point that emphasizes the dialectical analysis of the phenomenon approached, and through the technique and the case study, we tried to comprehend the contradictions of insertion, in terms of formal rights, from ethnic-racial segments especially regarding the policy of territorial demarcation, safeguarding the right to equality without destroying the forming differences of their ethno-territoriality. The context of public policy today, and here now favouring the matter of the Quilombolas territoriality in Brazil, especially in Maranhão, allows us to think over on the this dilemmas and the possibilities of dealing with these differences within the boundaries of the State.