Racial Democracy In Brazil Essay

When Gilberto Freyre present his theory of racial democracy in Brazil, he struck gold. His theory became the primary mechanism by which the country could exist under the idealized notion that racism did not exist because Brazil was a colorblind nation. Racial democracy permitted the Brazilian government to ignore massive repression under the veil of a racist free country. However, in 2001 the veil was uncovered as conversations proposing affirmative action policies in public university turned the entire idea of a colorblind society on its head. Naturally, Brazilians divided as opponents clung onto ideas of racial democracy and proponents took advantage of this opportunity to spark larger conversations on racial discrimination. In 2002, these

Those who receive university education will make up a strong majority of the middle and upper class. It is no surprise then that a lack of representation of blacks in college reflects in their lack of representation in leadership roles. A primary example of this is racial representation in Brazil’s Supreme Court. Of the total 164 persons who were/had been members of the Supreme Court from 1828 to the present day, only three were recognized to have been of African descent (Santos, 147). Affirmative action policies sought to remedy these shortages. While opponents argue that the quota system has granted an unfair advantage to less qualified persons of color at the expense of highly qualified whites, this dismisses that a majority of these highly qualified whites are in that position because they were afforded access to better education, testing environments and even private tutoring. This is why “of the 1% who make up the richest Brazilians, 85.9% declare themselves to be white” (Santos, 146). With such a stark advantage, affirmative action policies were needed to equalize the playing field in education. Affirmative action has been successful because it gave blacks access to opportunities that have historically been preserved for whites. The improvements were astounding; In 2000, whites accounted for 85% of the college population and persons of color in

One of the main reasons affirmative action was such as transformative policy is because it “signaled the ultimate failure of the racial democracy myth, and [revealed] the existence of racially segregated labor” (Nascimiento, 788). Forcing Brazil to recognize the lack of black representation in universities revealed the overall inaccuracy of a myth that has kept blacks in a vicious and unrecognized cycle of poverty and violence. While opponents may argue that affirmative action policies made an issue out of race because it created a black versus white society, I argue this tension between the two races has always existed in Brazil. If race was never a factor in Brazil, why have the most controversial affirmative action policies been “when the beneficiaries are Afro-Brazilian” (Santos, 146)? Discomfort about race cannot only be acknowledged when the privileged lose their