The problem isn't trying to correct a historical social injustice. The problem is that they are doing it wrong. Quotas don't help. In many cases, they only make things worse. Especially racial quotas in Brazil. We are talking about the land of miscegenation, after all.
It's like we all forgot about Alan and Alex Teixeira da Cunha. Identical twins, who applied to the University of Brasília in the exact same year. They went through the racial examination process, that was required, because of the quotas system. One was considered white, the other was considered black (and yes, black, not
pardo):
Of course, that was in 2007. There are bad examples even now. Last year, my university (UFMG) reserved 12.5% of the available positions for public school and black students. The candidates that benefitted from these quotas would run only against each other. If they didn't pass for those 12.5%, they'd run against everyone else. The result was amazing. The students that were running in the quota system had, on average, a better score than the ones in free competition (i.e. not benefitted by quotas). So it was as if there were no quotas in place at all.
To add to the above example, there are dozens of studies around showing that students that enter universities via the quota system
do not do worse than other students. Grades are extremely similar. So all this issue is quite pointless. It's not helping with anything. It's not making any difference.
What Rio said a few posts above this one is pretty much the truth:
No, here black and white study on the same place.
There hasn't been a racial divide in Brazil in a long time. The
Chico & Roberta (yes, I haven't forgotten the lambada fever) stereotype of blacks, whites and
pardos all dancing and having fun together is actually pretty accurate:
[youtube]efvsSS6_ZYw[/youtube]
It's the same in schools, universities etc. The real issue is not race. It has never been race. The real issue is social class. Richer Brazilians have a strong prejudice against the poor. Whether they are black or white is almost always immaterial.
KlassWar wrote:How much's that on Brazil? 'Cause plenty working class families in Spain gotta survive with 1400-1600 EUR a month, and I'm pretty sure the costs of living are higher in Spain than on Brazil.
And they look decidedly middle-class.
1500 USD is equal to about 3060 BRL. Most institutes here consider that 1200 BRL is the minimum a four-member family needs to live without going through difficulties (mostly with food and transportation). So, I doubt that family can be considered poor, but they certainly can't live very comfortably with that much money only.
The social class model used by Brazilian institutes is a bit different from the ones used in the US. We usually classify people into 6 social classes, from A to F, A being the richest class and F, the poorest. Who is part of which class varies from system to system. Many even omit the F class. The system used by the IBGE (official census institute in the country) is this:
- Class A: Monthly wage above 12440 BRL
- Class B: Monthly wage between 6220 and 12440 BRL
- Class C: Monthly wage between 2488 and 6220 BRL
- Class D: Monthly wage between 1244 and 2488 BRL
- Class E: Monthly wage up to 1244 BRL
That would put such family in Class C, which is usually understood to be the traditional middle class. But yeah, stuff here is usually more expensive. Especially with so many taxes. So being in Class C isn't exactly a good thing.
PoFo ethnic party statistics: http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8&p=14042520#p14042520