At Brazil's Universities, Affirmative Action Faces Crucial Tests
Even as a court considers abolishing racial quotas, legislators aim to expand their use
When Rio de Janeiro became the first Brazilian state to adopt quotas for Afro-Brazilian students in institutions of higher education, in 2002, black activists hoped that the country was finally coming to terms with the bitter legacy of slavery. But just eight years later, affirmative-action policies—which have since been adopted by scores of other Brazilian universities on behalf of the country's most disadvantaged groups—could be ruled unconstitutional by the country's Federal Supreme Court.
The court, which is to reconvene on August 2, will hear two separate challenges to quotas: one for Afro-Brazilians at the University of Brasilia and the other involving graduates of public high schools at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
The two universities are among the roughly 150 of the country's 2,000 institutions of higher education that have adopted some form of affirmative action since 2002, according to education experts. (The government does not keep figures on how many universities have adopted the policies.) The government's University for All Program, or ProUni, a scholarship program at private universities, has similar quotas for Afro-Brazilians and students from low-income families, among other disadvantaged groups.
The Rev. David Santos,who directs Educafro's efforts to support education for disadvantaged people in Brazil, talks with participants at the start of their preparation for university-entrance exams.
The Rev. David Santos,who directs Educafro's efforts to support education for disadvantaged people in Brazil, talks with participants at the start of their preparation for university-entrance exams.
In return, the universities receive federal tax breaks.
But even as the country's highest court debates the constitutionality of quotas, bills that would further extend their use are being debated in Brazil's National Congress. Affirmative-action policies could become even more widespread with a proposed university-reform bill, several versions of which are pending in the Federal Senate.
The legislation would create the first across-the-board policies for affirmative action at the country's more than 50 federal universities, while setting a precedent for all publicly financed universities. (Only the Congress can determine rules for federal universities.)
An earlier bill, which would establish 50-percent quotas at the federal institutions, to be divided among low-income students, Afro-Brazilians, and other minorities, passed the lower house of Congress in 2008. (The legislators voted anonymously, according to news reports, reflecting the controversial nature of the issue.)
Legislators passed the country's first Racial Equality Statute in July. The new law defines what constitutes racial discrimination and inequality, offers tax breaks to companies that hire more black employees, and makes teaching African and Brazilian black history mandatory in all elementary and middle schools. However, to the frustration of Afro-Brazilian activists, legislators stripped any reference to quotas in higher education or the workplace.
The senators are not expected to vote on the latest affirmative-action bills before the high court makes its ruling.
"If the Supreme Court rules the Rio laws unconstitutional, then our law could also be declared unconstitutional," says José Penaforte, legislative assistant to Sen. Serys Slhessarenko, author of one of the proposals up for debate. "But if the affirmative-action laws implemented in Rio's state universities are ruled legal, then that gives our law backing in the Senate. It might also help some senators get on our side."
A Racial Democracy?
The issue is a controversial one in a nation that likes to think of itself as a racial democracy. Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888. But unlike the United States and South Africa, Brazil never formalized racial segregation. The country also has a long history of miscegenation.
Ms. Slhessarenko favors racial quotas, while other members of the Senate's Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission, which rules on the admissibility of bills before they can be debated, prefer quotas based on income and social criteria. Her bill proposes that 50 percent of places at federal universities must be reserved for students from public high schools. Half of them must come from families earning less than 1.5 times the minimum wage, while the percentages of students in other half must reflect its state's racial makeup. The current national minimum monthly wage is 510 reais, around $285.
The Senate bills may not come up for votes until after the new Congress convenes, in February. General elections are scheduled for October, when Brazilians will choose a new president, congress members, and state governors, so this year's legislative calendar has been cropped.
None of the three main presidential candidates have mentioned affirmative action in their campaigns, possibly because of the sensitivity of racial debate, analysts say. "They are afraid to be against it because there is a lot of pressure from the black lobby, and no one wants to be accused of being antiblack," says Simon Schwartzman, a researcher at the Institute for Labor and Social Studies, in Rio de Janeiro, who is an expert on higher education. "So they don't talk about it. But when they are pressured, they are for it."
Still, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been a proponent of affirmative action, including the creation of a Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies.
The government's census statistics show that 49.7 percent of Brazilians consider themselves white. Of the rest, 6.9 percent say they are black; 42.6 percent say they are pardo, a Portuguese term for people of mixed African and European descent; and 0.8 percent are categorized as "other," which includes those who claim indigenous or Asian descent.
However, only 2 to 3 percent of students at public universities are black, and a minority are of mixed race, according to Ms. Slhessarenko and the Rev. David Santos, a Roman Catholic friar and executive director of Educafro, a nonprofit that helps prepare minorities for university entrance exams.
From Discrimination to Diversity
Proponents of racial quotas, like Brother Santos, say they are necessary because Afro-Brazilians lag behind in almost every health, social, and education indicator. Getting them into universities, he argues, is the quickest way to begin addressing those distortions.
It is "scandalous" that so few students at public universities are black, Brother Santos says. "Quotas are a symbol of repairing the damage to the black community. We suffered under 388 years of slavery and have been offered no indemnity."
Opponents, meanwhile, argue that quotas constitute a form of reverse racism, and that they fuel racial tensions where none existed before.
Indeed, after the University of Brasilia adopted 20-percent quotas for Afro-Brazilian applicants, in 2004, students set fire to a dormitory building that housed visiting African students.
"There's the assumption that any Afro-Brazilian student there is there on quota," says Pat Somers, an associate professor of higher-education administration at the University of Texas at Austin, who recently visited the university in Brasilia. "Sometimes the other students in the classes will make remarks to them, like, 'You are just taking up a seat.' There is still a lot of controversy."
Ms. Somers, who favors racial and socioeconomic quotas, was invited to testify before the Brazil's Federal Senate in June on the American experience with affirmative-action policies. In the United States, she notes, affirmative action has been phased in over decades, while in Brazil, universities adopted quotas of up to 50 percent virtually overnight.
She adds that American universities have recently shifted their focus from finding ways to compensate for racial discrimination to establishing diversity on their campuses. "In the U.S., to some extent it's based on the sense that African-Americans are doing better," she says. "The more important issue in higher education is that knowledge has changed, and the world that we're preparing students for is a much smaller world, so having this diversity in our universities better prepares our students for what they do after graduation."
As in the United States, though, the debate in Brazil has triggered legal challenges by students who feel they have been wrongly denied admission because of the quota system.
"I am against quotas and especially racial ones," says Flavio Bolsonaro, a state legislator in Rio de Janeiro who has unsuccessfully challenged the state's affirmative-action laws. "These policies are demagogic and misleading, and they don't promote social mobility."
Mr. Bolsonaro and other critics argue that the government should instead concentrate on improving the public-school system. "What we need to do is discuss how to make basic education better," he says. "No government wants to invest seriously in paying teachers decent salaries or building spacious, hygienic areas where children can get proper lessons, because the results won't be apparent for 15 or 20 years. So demagogues prefer to promote quotas instead of attacking the root of the problem."
Ms. Somers, though, argues that racial quotas at Brazilian universities, combined with quotas for minority faculty members and tutoring for minority students, are even more necessary than in the United States, given the short history of affirmative action in Brazil.
"Certainly in Brazil they've made incredible strides," she says. "But I think that they need to have race-based affirmative action for another 10 to 20 years. It depends on the results. What we're all looking for is not just admitting these students, but having them graduate. That's the ultimate test of how the universities are doing."
Marion Lloyd, a Mexico City-based correspondent of The Chronicle, reported from the United States.
Source Link: http://chronicle.com/article/At-Brazils-Universities/123720/
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