EDUCATION-BRAZIL: New Bill to Reserve University Quotas for Blacks

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 6 2001 (IPS) - The Brazilian Senate is debating a bill that would reserve a minimum number of places in the universities for black students, a measure defended by the government at last month’s World Conference Against Racism, in South Africa.

Critics of the bill, which was introduced several years ago by former president José Sarney, argue that it would be hard to apply quotas for Afro-Brazilian students, due to the difficulty of verifying who qualified for the measure, which they say would compromise the quality of education.

Only two percent of those categorised as blacks in Brazil have 15 years of schooling – the minimum necessary to earn a university degree – compared to nine percent of whites, Roberto Martins, president of the governmental Institute of Applied Economic Research, told the Senate this week.

Illiteracy among blacks and “brown” or mixed-race people in this Latin American country of 170 million stands nearly three times higher than the 10.3 percent rate among whites, according to the latest statistics.

In the last census, just six percent of Brazilians declared themselves “black” and 39 percent classified themselves as “brown” or mixed-race. However, organisations advocating the rights of blacks say more than 45 percent of Brazilians have African ancestors, although many refuse to acknowledge that element of their ethnic make-up due to social discrimination.

That conclusion has led black rights activists to demand that half of all university places be reserved for Afro-Brazilians.

In Brazil, people of African descent, especially women, suffer high poverty and unemployment rates and earn low wages as a whole.

There is a growing consensus among experts regarding the need to fight poverty and inequality in Brazil – as black advocacy organisations have long insisted – as well as agreement that education is the key to modifying Brazil’s extremely unequal distribution of wealth.

At the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa from Aug 31 to Sep 8, Brazil defended quotas and other affirmative action or positive discrimination measures.

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso himself has declared his support for such measures.

The Brazilian government “cannot deny in practice the discourse” it took to the Durban conference, Ivanir dos Santos, secretary of the Rio de Janeiro-based governmental Centre for the Articulation of Marginalised Populations, told IPS.

The results of affirmative action in the United States show that “everything depends on political will,” said Dos Santos, who argued that “the present situation in Brazil must not continue unchanged.”

It is important that the bill on university quotas move through Congress now, bolstered by the position Brazil took in Durban. “Besides, there will be elections in October 2002, and blacks represent many votes,” which parliamentarians eager for reelection are keen to win, he added.

But Education Minister Paulo Renato Souza is opposed to the measure, and has proposed an alternative: offering blacks free university entrance exam preparation courses.

The minister’s proposal responds to the arguments of university rectors, professors, and education experts who reject quotas as ineffective and hard to apply in a country where a majority of the population is of mixed racial descent. According to critics, it would be impossible to distinguish who qualified for the quotas.

Furthermore, quotas would lead to a drop in the quality of higher education in Brazil by allowing in students ill-prepared for the university, argue critics, especially professors like Adilson Simonis, an expert in statistics at the University of Sao Paulo.

However, Joel Rufino dos Santos, a writer and literature professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and one of Brazil’s most respected black intellectuals, said “I support the quotas, because something must be done to fight the inequalities, which are unacceptable.”

What Dos Santos referred to as the “negative effects” of affirmative action seen in the United States, where greater access to the university gave rise to a “conservative black middle-class,” might not be repeated in Brazil, he argued, because leftist political parties and social movements here could make quotas an important element of broader social change.

Solutions can be found to the problems pointed to by critics, which must not be allowed to stand in the way of action against discrimination, but which should instead stimulate a search for solutions, said Dos Santos.

Identifying those who are of African heritage is easy, he maintained, by simply tracing an individual’s ancestry through the birth registers.

However, besides ensuring that blacks have access to the universities, mechanisms must be set up to help them continue studying, rather than dropping out to get a job in order to survive, he added.

The professor also maintained that a large part of the scholarships currently handed out by the government to students who are not poor could go to blacks.