Toward a global understanding of affirmative action

• In Event: Publication mentoring workshop session
  In Special Session: Gender & Race Studies - Group A

Proposal

I am a recent graduate and current postdoctoral associate.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to better understand affirmative action policy within the international higher education landscape. The driving question is - To what extent does Brazil’s recent implementation of affirmative action policy offer lessons for the United States and other countries about the utility of race-conscious admissions in universities? Ultimately, I make the case for using a global lens to examine affirmative action while highlighting the potential benefits for creating a policy discourse that is more receptive to scholarship and experiences of the Global South.

Many countries are grappling with issues of access and equity in post-secondary education. Although approaches in dealing with these issues may differ, a number of decision makers have relied upon affirmative action (or some form of it) as a solution. India represents one of the first systems to use reservations to assist students belonging to lower social castes (Moses, 2010; Pazich & Teranishi, 2012). France and South Africa provide other examples of affirmative action policy implementation in university admissions (Moses, 2010). One of the most recent cases of affirmative action has occurred in the Brazilian system of higher education through the use of quotas or reserved spaces based on specific criteria such as race, disability or public school attendance (Johnson & Heringer, 2015; Somers, Morosini, Pan, & Cofer, 2013).

Here, the Brazilian case is singled out to highlight areas that could provide insight to the United States and the rest of the world. This comes at a particularly poignant time where Brazil is beginning to reap the effects of its aggressive use of quotas at the beginning of the 21st century (Penha-Lopes, 2017). While the U.S. is simultaneously experiencing another bout of staunch opposition toward race-conscious admissions reflected in contemporary court cases (Moses, Maeda &Paguyo, 2018).

Theoretical Framework
This study looks to Yanow’s (2009) concept of local knowledge as a framework for highlighting the value of less understood modes of interpretation. It advances the belief that knowledge and power are intimately bound together. This is reflected in the policy arena where certain ways of knowing are privileged, validated, and serve as the standard to which other ways of thinking are measured (Yanow, 2003, 2009).

Local knowledge provides an important lens for viewing international contexts because it addresses unequal power dynamics created by centuries of colonialism and makes a conscious effort to bring in to focus the perspective of marginalized actors. By centering local knowledge production, this study validates the higher education access and equity experiences of the Global South as valuable contributions to mainstream policy discourse.

Methodology
This research is based on critical ethnographic fieldwork (Carspecken, 1996; Madison, 2011) conducted between 2016 and 2017 in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The fieldwork included 120 hours of participant observation, 39 semi-structured interviews with students, informal conversations with faculty and administrators, and document analysis. Collected data was then analyzed using an iterative process of memoing, open coding and axial coding to develop themes that began to explain particular points of interest in the analysis (Bogdan & Bilken, 2003; Glaser & Straus, 1967; Maxwell, 2013.

Findings & Conclusion
The paper discusses the higher education context for Brazil and the United States; their individual histories, interpretations, and approaches to using affirmative action; and the present-day policy climate within each country. It then examines four learning points that are unique to Brazil and offers an alternative perspective on race and policy to the larger global community in general and to the U.S. more specifically. These learning points are:

1. Racial fluidity – The understanding of race as a non-fixed category that is complicated by various socio-cultural influences.

2. Student involvement – Since students knowingly apply for specific quota spaces, they bring insightful perspectives to affirmative action.

3. The role of the satellite campus – High quality public universities that have branch campuses in areas outside of the city center in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods offer access to higher education that otherwise would not be available.

4. Bottom-up approach – Quotas would not have been legislated without the Black activists who were instrumental in fighting racial injustice and pushing for increased post-secondary opportunities for underrepresented groups.

Accordingly, the study calls into question affirmative action as a sustainable policy for addressing post-secondary inequality around the world. Moreover, the paper disrupts the dominant flow of knowledge production from the Global North to (re)consider valuable lessons that originate from the Global South.

Author

• Jeana E. Morrison, Boston University