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University race quotas row in Brazil

By Gary Duffy,BBC News, Rio de Janeiro

There are more people of African descent in Brazil than in any country outside the Africancontinent itself, but the higher you go in Brazilian society the less evidence there appears tobe of that reality.

Critics say part of the blame lies with a system which has often failed to provide equality of access tothird-level education, though recent years have seen some improvements.To try to address the problem, many Brazilian universities have adopted affirmative action policies orquotas to try to boost the number of black and mixed race students, or more generally those from poorbackgrounds.It is a controversial approach which some argue is necessary to end decades of inequality, while othersfear 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 shedoubts 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 adoptquotas."I thought I was going to finish school, find work in a little shop, get married and pregnant and that wouldbe 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 payprivately - 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 publicuniversity places for poor black and indigenous students, and the same number for students educated inthe much criticised public school system.

Legal challenge

Those parents who can afford it often opt to have their children educated in more expensive privateschools, giving them a considerable advantage when it comes to highly competitive university entranceexams - especially for prestigious courses such as law and medicine.It is a process which works against poorer students - which in Brazil often means black or mixed race."When you consider the way things are in Brazil, you can see that poverty has a colour," says LenaMedeiros de Menezes, vice rector at the State University."It will take a long time for investment in primary and secondary education to bring about equality. Howdo I see quotas? It's a way to change things and change them rapidly."But in Rio de Janeiro a question mark hangs over the quotas system after a legal challenge mounted bystate congressman Flavio Bolsonaro.He argues the approach is a form of reverse discrimination."What are you going to say to a teenager who goes to do a university entrance exam and gets a highmark, but doesn't get through, but another teenager has passed with a much lower mark because theyhave a dark skin?" he says."What would be the legacy of that for future generations?"

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | University race quotas row in Brazilhttp://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...1 of 311/6/2009 2:36 PM

White or black?

Rio's Federal University (UFRJ) does not operate a system of quotas, though the issue has been widelydebated.Professor Marcelo Paixao, who lectures there, says it is clear that in Brazil those of African descent arelargely absent from many key professions."Here the percentage of black people holding jobs - such as doctors, engineers, economists, lawyers - isvery low," he says."When you have universities - principally the most prestigious ones which are the public ones - so closedto presence of the Afro-descendent population, this means these professions will also continue to beexclusive to a certain group of people for a very long time."The debate in Brazil is further complicated because of the sometimes uncertain definition here of who iswhite, black or mixed race - official surveys let people classify themselves.Hundreds of years of racial mixing means that many Brazilians regard themselves as neither black norwhite but something in between, and recent surveys suggest some people have even changed their viewof how they should be described.

Racial equality law

Some argue that quotas even partly based on race introduce a tension that never existed in Braziliansociety in the way it has in the United States, while others say it simply recognises the obvious linkbetween being poor and black. “

You can not force a racial identity in a population where a largepercentage of the population don't have a clear racial identity and don'twant that

” Simon Schwartzman Brazilian researcher"I think the main issue has to do with poverty and the bad quality of basic education," says SimonSchwartzman, senior researcher at the Institute of Studies of Work and Society in Rio de Janeiro."People who are poor don't have access to good education; they have more difficulty in having access, inparticular to the more prestigious courses. It is a question of poverty not of race."There are good reasons to be against race quotas in Brazil - I don't think it makes any sense at all. Forpeople who are poor and didn't have a good education, I think there is a good argument for that,provided you do it properly."You can not force a racial identity in a population where a large percentage of the population don't havea clear racial identity and don't want that. If you look at the population and ask people 'what is yourrace?' - many people won't know exactly what to answer."That is not to say that you don't have prejudice, that the fact that you are black you don't suffer,because you do. You should do specific things about that, but not to institute a kind of national policybased on race," Mr Schwartzman says.For a future generation of students this complicated question has still to be finally resolved.A long-debated law on racial equality only recently passed an important stage in congressional approvalby avoiding controversial issues such as quotas.It appears the final word may be left to the country's Supreme Court which is due to give its views on thematter in the year ahead.

Story from BBC NEWS:

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | University race quotas row in Brazilhttp://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...2 of 311/6/2009 2:36 PM