Brazil's Colour Bind

By Stephanie Nolen, The Globe and Mail

Brazil is combating many kinds of inequality. But one of the world’s most diverse nations is still just beginning to talk about race.

...Brazil has two kinds of universities: There are private ones, which are either exceedingly expensive or of very poor quality. And there are public ones, run by the federal and state governments, which tend to be of a much higher calibre – and are free. But because competition for spots in the public schools is fierce, only applicants who have had a private-school education, and the benefit of months or even years of private coaching for the entrance exam, can pass the entrance test.

But in 2004, UFBA introduced a new policy: 36 per cent of seats would now be reserved for black and mixed-race students. For years, black activists had been targeting the universities, as the ultimate symbols (and purveyors) of the elite, for a first effort at affirmative action. In 2002, university administrations began to adopt ad hoc strategies, reserving spots for non-white students. The quotas, as they are baldly called here, applied to every faculty, but they had an outsized impact on the prestigious schools of law, medicine and engineering, which, even in majority-black Bahia, had long graduated all-white classes, year after year.

Read the full report here.

Click here for a related Diverse article about race and access to higher education in Latin America.

Affirmative Action in Brazil

Americas Quarterly
by Amy Erica Smith

Affirmative action programs have spread rapidly across Brazil’s higher education institutions. Afro-Brazilians seeking a university education now have access to opportunities that were unreachable just decades ago.
In fact, a recent study by the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro found that 70 percent of Brazil’s public universities—both federal and state—have adopted some form of affirmative action. This comes despite the fact that federal legislation for university-based affirmative action has yet to be passed. But the programs continue to be deeply controversial. Opponents argue that affirmative action may unfairly disadvantage non-targeted groups and that it politicizes race in ways that are distinctly un-Brazilian.
But outside of the media limelight, what does the average Brazilian think? New data from the 2010 round of the AmericasBarometer surveys by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) provide a window on ordinary Brazilians’ views.

Full Story: http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/1939

Affirmative action in higher education in Brazil

Inside Higher Ed
By Simon Schwartzman
September 27, 2010 11:30 am

As reported by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo[1] a recent study from the State University of Rio de Janeiro found that 70% of public higher education institutions in Brazil have adopted some kind of affirmative action program. Legislation is being discussed in Congress to make these programs mandatory, but the institutions are doing it voluntarily, or according to state legislation.
Public higher education is Brazil is tuition free, and admission can be very competitive for fields like medicine, engineering or law in prestigious universities, but very easy in less demanded fields such as education, geography or social work. Most affirmative action programs give quotas to students coming from public schools, while others give advantages to students considered black. Many combine these two criteria. There are more programs based on school origin than on race. In some institutions, instead of quotas, students considered underprivileged get bonus points in their university entrance examinations. Most programs also add a family income limit.

Full Story: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/the_world_view/affirmative_action_in_higher_education_in_brazil

Affirmative Action Divides Brazil as Election Nears

The Huffington Post
Posted: September 3, 2010 05:48 PM
Eric Ehrmann
Writer on sports

Respected polling now indicates that cancer survivor Dilma Rousseff of the Worker's Party will likely be voted Brazil's first woman president next month. But election season debate over American-style affirmative action quotas is stretching the nation's social fabric and could spell trouble down the road for Dilma, who until resigning to run for high office, served as president Lula's chief of staff.
With the BBC tagging Brazil as the world's second largest black population after Nigeria, educators and jurists from the mostly non-black political class are questioning programs for people who claim to be descendants of African slaves but fail to create enough equal opportunity private sector jobs to employ them.

Full Commentary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-ehrmann/affirmative-action-divide_b_703443.html

Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Claims to Affirmative Action Denied

Global Voices
Posted 14 July 2010

Affirmative action, one of the most controversial issues dragging on in the Brazilian congress for most of the first decade of the 21st century, was left out of the Racial Equality Statute passed last June 16th by the senate. The policy, which would implement a mandatory temporary quota system for Afro-Brazilians in universities, jobs and political parties, was rejected together with incentive measures for private companies adopting the system [pt]. According to pro affirmative action groups, the decision to exclude the policy neglects the historical processes leading to the state of socio-racial inequality existent in Brazil today. On the other side of the coin are opponents of affirmative action who speak of reverse discrimination and incitement to racial tensions.
The day before the vote in congress, No Race blog [PT], which presents itself as both anti-racist and against race public policies, published Senator Demóstenes Torres’ justification of his opposition to affirmative action. The Senator, a member of the DEM [PT] (Democrats party) an opposition party to President Lula’s PT, explains that race does not exist and justifies why he removed from the text - but not from the title “Racial Equality Statute” - the terms “race”, “racial” and “ethno-racial”.

Full Blog Post: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/07/14/brazil-afro-brazilian-claims-to-affirmative-action-denied/

University race quotas row in Brazil

BBC News
Sunday, 1 November 2009
By Gary Duffy, BBC News, Rio de Janeiro

There are more people of African descent in Brazil than in any country outside the African continent itself, but the higher you go in Brazilian society the less evidence there appears to be of that reality.
Critics say part of the blame lies with a system which has often failed to provide equality of access to third-level education, though recent years have seen some improvements.
To try to address the problem, many Brazilian universities have adopted affirmative action policies or quotas to try to boost the number of black and mixed race students, or more generally those from poor backgrounds.

Gisele says the quotas system has given her a head-start
It is a controversial approach which some argue is necessary to end decades of inequality, while others fear it threatens to introduce racial tension in a society which has been largely free of such problems.
Gisele Alves lives in a poor neighbourhood in Nova Iguacu on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, and says she doubts she would have got to college without a helping hand from the state.
She is studying at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), which was one of the first to adopt quotas.
"I thought I was going to finish school, find work in a little shop, get married and pregnant and that would be it. I didn't expect much more than that," she says.
"But with the system of quotas I started to think I could go to university. My parents couldn't pay privately - if I wanted to study it had to be at a public university."
Giselle got her place in part due to Rio's controversial quotas system which sets aside 20% of public university places for poor black and indigenous students, and the same number for students educated in the much criticised public school system.

Full Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8285350.stm

Latin America's worst wage gap for women and minorities? Powerhouse Brazil

Christian Science Monitor
By Andrew Downie Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
and Sara Miller Llana Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 13, 2009 edition

Men earn 30 percent more than women in Brazil, according to a new report from the Inter-American Development Bank. That gap is almost zero in Guatemala and Bolivia.

São Paulo, Brazil; and Mexico City - Mention Brazil today and adulation follows. Its fight against poverty, its growing middle class, and its emergence as an economic powerhouse are all being studied as models to be applied elsewhere. (Read our three-part "Brazil Rising" series for more.)
In one area, however, the country is far behind its peers: income equality. In a new study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), released Monday, Brazil sits at the bottom of a list of 18 regional countries when it comes to how much women and minorities are paid for the same job a white man does.
Men earn 30 percent more than women of the same age and education level in Brazil. In Bolivia and Guatemala, that gap is essentially zero. Compared to Mexico, the other economic engine of the region, Brazil also stands out: Men in Mexico earn just 7 percent more than their female peers. The same gaping divide appears in Brazil when comparing wages for whites and minorities – a blow to a nation where half the population considers itself black or mixed race and prizes itself on being "color blind."
"Brazil is regarded in gender and ethnic terms as a very equalizing country. Everywhere there is inclusion. This is what Brazilians like to think about themselves," says Hugo Ñopo , an IADB economist and lead author of the study. "What the statistics show is that there are important gaps.... We think of it as an invisible wall."
Women: majority of workers in Latin America
With trade liberalization, economic growth, and urbanization, women throughout Latin America have joined the workforce in droves in recent decades, today comprising about 52 percent of all workers. But fair income distribution has not caught up. In the 18 nations studied, men earn on average 17 percent more than women, when accounting for age and educational attainment levels. In most countries, the gap is biggest among those with the least education. Women's participation in the informal sector, such as domestic work that typically is underpaid and without benefits, drives down their earning power.
But in Brazil, the gap is so high, Mr. Ñopo says, because women are absent from the highest levels of corporate hierarchies. According to Leila Linhares Barsted, executive coordinator of Cepia, a Rio woman's rights group, gender gaps have closed over the decades and women now comprise 40 percent of the nation´s workforce – an all-time high, she says. Brazil has good social policies in place, giving women 120 days of maternity leave. That's more than in the US.
But wage inequality looms large. "In spite of government campaigns for equality, there is a still a sector that discriminates, salary wise, against women," Ms. Barsted says.
While old-fashioned discrimination is to blame in part for unequal wage distribution, there are other forces at play, says Ñopo. The study revealed the same gender income gaps for those who are self-employed – data that surprised the researchers and goes against long-held views that the employer is always to blame. "It's the other way around. Self-employment is very attractive for females who have to take care of household responsibilities," Ñopo says. "Having flexibility is invaluable for them. But the result is this flexibility that they look for in the labor market comes at a price."
Brazil also at bottom for racial disparity
After Brazil, Uruguay and Nicaragua are the worst for wage inequality between genders. In Uruguay men earn 26 percent more than women and in Nicaragua, 20 percent more.
For minorities, Brazil is also is ranked at the bottom of the list at 30 percent disparity (followed by Guatemala at 24 percent and Paraguay at 22 percent).

Full Story: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1013/p06s07-woam.html

Affirmative Action, Brazilian-Style

The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 11, 2009

By Marion Lloyd
Six years after Brazilian universities began embracing affirmative action, higher education in Brazil is no longer the domain of a mostly white elite.
Since 2003 more than 1,300 institutions of higher education have adopted quotas for Afro-Brazilians and graduates of public high schools. The government has also created 10 public universities and dozens of new campuses in poor areas in an effort to expand access to higher education for the underprivileged.
But the debate over the quota system—racial quotas in particular—continues to inflame passions in a country that has long considered itself a racial democracy.
Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888. Today the descendants of slaves officially make up nearly half of the country's 190 million people, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the government census bureau. Proponents of quotas for Afro-Brazilians argue that only Nigeria has a larger black population. But centuries of racial intermixing, which was initially encouraged by Portuguese colonizers seeking to whiten the population, have made it famously hard to classify Brazilians by race.
Take the case of Alan and Alex Texeira, identical male twins who applied for admission to the federal University of Brasilia in 2007 under the racial quotas. After analyzing photos of the brothers—a required step for accessing the university's quota system—separate "race boards" determined that one was black and one was white.
Opponents of the racial quotas argue that poverty, not race, is the main obstacle to getting a university education in Brazil. The country's more than 130 public universities are free, and competition at most of them, particularly the 55 federal universities, is brutal. Private universities enroll about 80 percent of the 4.5 million students in the higher-education system. But in a nation where per capita income is just $7,350 a year, and the distribution of wealth is among the world's most unequal, most families cannot afford to send their children to private universities.

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/Affirmative-Action/48734/

BRAZIL: University Racial Quotas Bogged Down in Congress

IPS
By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 28 (IPS) - Claudio Fernández is able to study law thanks to affirmative action quotas at the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). But a draft law to expand race quotas to all public institutions of higher education is stalled in the Senate."The quotas helped me overcome a situation in which the son of a domestic employee with five children – my case – cannot even imagine making it to a public university, not to mention a career in law," Fernández told IPS. The UERJ law student is poor, just like 67 percent of blacks in Brazil. Public primary and secondary schools in Brazil do not tend to provide a solid educational foundation for continuing on to tertiary level studies. In addition, private courses for the university entrance exam are costly. Most of the students who make it into the country’s prestigious public universities come from middle and upper socioeconomic strata and studied at private schools. Brazil’s tuition-free federal universities provide the best higher education in the country. The draft law that would reserve quotas for black and indigenous students in public universities and vocational-technical institutes, introduced by the leftwing government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is aimed at overcoming these imbalances, which are later reflected in the labour market. The initiative would reserve 50 percent of spots in the federal university system for students from public schools, half of whom must come from families with a maximum income of 1.5 minimum monthly salaries – equivalent to 313 dollars. The racial quotas, meanwhile, would be set according to the proportion of blacks and indigenous people in any given state, based on census information from the Brazilian Institute of Statistics. For example, in a state like Bahía in the northeast, where a majority of the population is black, the proportion would be higher, while it would be lower in the southern state of Santa Catarina. But the draft law, approved by the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 20 - National Black Awareness Day – is bogged down in the Senate constitution and justice committee. In a telephone interview from the capital Brasilia, where a protest was held last week outside the Senate to demand passage of the law, Daniel Cara, coordinator of the National Campaign for the Right to Education, told IPS that "the approval process has been slow, given the importance of this draft law."

Full Story: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46649