Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil

University Quota Students and the Quest for Racial Justice

By (author) Vânia Penha-Lopes

Publication date:

06 June 2017

Length of book:

188 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498537803

Using affirmative action to decrease racial inequality is the latest chapter of a long tradition of comparing Brazil and the United States with regard to race. Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quota Students and the Quest for Racial Justice is timely for both countries as they struggle with racial justice in higher education. This book responds to the United States’ dismantling of affirmative action programs and a belief that they have run their course. Data show that, while affirmative action policies have contributed to a significant increase in the representation of non-Whites in the U.S. middle class, other segments of the population have yet to take full advantage of such policies. In Brazil, this book engaged with the need to understand the first results of a public policy expected to promote major social change, as it represents the first time that country admitted the existence of racial inequality in its core and took measures toward combating it despite any subsequent controversy or dissent.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Brazil Matters: Race as a Mirror
Chapter 1. History in the Making: The Implementation of Affirmative Action in Brazil
Chapter 2: The Students
Chapter 3: University Quotas and Racial Identity
Chapter 4. Attitudes about the Quotas Policies
Chapter 5. An Overview of the Performance of Quota Students at Brazilian Universities
Conclusion: The Future of Affirmative Action in Brazil
References
About the Author

Vânia Penha-Lopes uses original interview material, administrative university data, and a wide range of academic research and media sources to provide a detailed picture of what affirmative action looks like in Brazil, the meanings it acquires to different local actors, and the consequences of the policies to the policy’s beneficiaries, the quotistas. The most interesting material. . . offers a window into how these students understand and experience race, racism, and affirmative action. Also valuable are the book’s use of administrative data to highlight quota students’ performance at UERJ and its review of Brazilian research on quota students’ performance in Brazilian universities more broadly, organized and made accessible to an English speaking audience here for the first time.