Ivanir dos Santos
Whites Will Get the Job
Racial stratification has been ignored for so long because the racism exists under a veil, activists told The Economist. “In Brazil you have an invisible enemy. Nobody’s racist. But when your daughter goes out with a black, things change,” said Ivanir dos Santos, a Black activist in Rio de Janeiro. He added that if Black and white youths with equal qualifications apply to be a shop assistant in a Rio mall, the white will get the job.
University of Sao Paulo
Imbalance at University
The imbalance between Blacks and whites can clearly be seen in the country’s universities. In 2006, only 6.3 percent of Black 18- to 24-year-olds were in higher education, compared to 19.2 percent of whites. Because of these numbers, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff enacted what The New York Times called “one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws,” requiring public universities to reserve half of their admission spots for the largely poor students in the nation’s public schools and vastly increase the number of Black students in the universities across the country. Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, told the Times he was “completely in favor” of the quotas. “Try finding a black doctor, a black dentist, a black bank manager, and you will encounter great difficulty,” da Silva said. “It’s important, at least for a span of time, to guarantee that the blacks in Brazilian society can make up for lost time.”
