 | The Prism of Race: The Politics and Ideology of Affirmative Action in Brazil Brazil has developed a distinctive response to the injustices inflicted by the country's race relations regime. Despite the mixed racial background of most Brazilians, the state recognizes people's racial classification according to a simple official scheme in which those self-assigned as black, together with "brown" and "indigenous" ( preto-pardo-indigena ), can qualify for specially allocated resources, most controversially quota places at public universities. Although this quota system has been somewhat successful, many other issues that disproportionately affect the country's black population remain unresolved, and systemic policies to reduce structural inequality remain off the agenda. David Lehmann is Emeritus Reader in Social Science at the University of Cambridge where he directed the Centre of Latin American Studies. |
