Race, Politics, and Education in Brazil: Affirmative Action in Higher Education

Product Description Brazil has undertaken affirmative action in its universities on an unprecedented scale. An expert group of international scholars puts the new policies in historical, political, and legal context; evaluates their outcomes for students and universities; and demonstrates that the policies have been successful in addressing racial inequality. Review "Race, Politics and Education in Brazil is a rich volume which elucidates the complexities of the historical backdrop and political challenges to instituting contemporary race-conscious affirmative action policies within a nation long touted as a "racial democracy." Its contributors deftly demonstrate their expertise and empirical research to provide a thick account of the role of social justice activists, government officials and international human rights organizations in building a consensus to integrate both the curriculum and student body of the historically exclusionary elite spheres of higher education. Bringing together the most recent research on affirmative action in Brazil for an English-reading audience is especially valuable for those concerned about the declining support for affirmative action in the "post-racial" United States because the Brazil story provides useful insights for future activism." - Tanya Kateri Hernandez, author of Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response (2014)"Johnson and Heringer have collected a unique, comprehensive, and extremely valuable set of essays on affirmative action in Brazil, a country whose public policies on human rights and social equality increasingly demand attention. This volume's focus on race is timely and sorely needed, as it brings us a multi-faceted overview with updated in-depth analyses of issues and information from the legal, social, ethical, jurisprudential, and statistical fields. It elucidates complex questions Brazil presents for multiracial societies, indeed for the globally multiracial world, with its heritage of "racial democracy" or what I have called "the sorcery of color". We have much to learn from the experience so vividly portrayed in this volume." - Elisa Larkin Nascimento, author of The Sorcery of Color: Identity, Race, and Gender in Brazil (2009)"There is a dense scholarship on affirmative action and anti-racism in Brazil. This timely book is witness to that and brings about enough evidence that racism can be fought even in a context where ethnic identity is not as solid as many wish or as tangible as it seemingly is in the US. Brazil might not have a distinctly organized black community with black voting, but has shown that this is not a key requirement in attempting to reverse racial injustice. As part of an epochal move to make Brazilian society more inclusive, (attempting to reverse the effects of extreme and durable social and racial inequalities and) in a political context that is often contradictory, affirmative action has proven very good for Brazilian Universities, by making them not only less unjust, but also a more interesting environment." - Livio Sansone, author of Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil (2003)"Race, Politics, and Education in Brazil is necessary not only because it deals with issues so dear to all of us, like race, politics, and education, but also because it highlights the black movement's leading role in the formation of our society. By discussing affirmative action in higher education, this book enables us to question concepts such as equity, rights, and justice and evaluate how the demands of social movements have been necessary for the continuing search for the application of each one of these terms. Undeniably, a lot of progress has been made in relation to opportunities for black Brazilian men and women. However, much remains to be done. Therefore, one of the main contributions of this book is to cause us to reflect even further on the relevant quest