Racial Equality in Brazil: The Role of Higher Education in Advancing Social Justice

• In Event: A Comparative Perspective of Racial/Ethnic Inequality and Higher Education as a Social Justice Force

Abstract

The new model of ethnic-racial policy in Brazil’s higher education was originally implemented at two universities in the state of Rio de Janeiro: the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). This model of affirmative action began as a humanist model, but slowly has become a model recognizing racial discrimination that the African-Brazilian population is subjected to throughout Brazilian society. This movement for affirmative action also recognizes the role of education as a means to overcome inequality, and hence is often discussed as a form of social justice education. The culmination of the affirmative action movement has been the adoption of a politics of racial and ethnic quotas. Other universities have come to join this movement, including the Federal University of Paraiba (UFPB), which was one of the last to adopt the system of racial and ethnic quotas for both people of color and the poor. A key change came in 2012 when the Brazilian government made racial quotas in higher education the law of the land. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the case of the Federal University of Paraiba, located in one of the poorest areas of country, Brazil’s northeast region. The paper first focuses on the broad question of what racial justice signifies in the Brazilian context, and then more particularly turns to the role of higher education in facilitating access for Brazil’s marginalized populations. The following four questions serve to guide the discussion: 1) Is there a difference between a policy of affirmative action and a policy of ethnic and racial quotas, defined in the present-day context as social justice education? 2) Are the ethnic-racial quotas part and parcel of the politics of affirmative action in Brazil? 3) Has the model implanted in Brazil been imported from the U.S.? And, 4) Why was the Federal University of Paraiba one of the last universities to implement the model of quotas?

Authors

• Ana Elvira Steinbach Torres, Federal University of Paraiba

• Mirian Aquino, Federal University of Paraiba