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| Farhad Sh, Flickr, CC |
During the past weeks we watched a historical victory for black Brazilian people. Maybe the biggest one since the end of slavery (and their right to vote, which came much later and were mixed with other poor and illiterate non-blacks rights). The Senate in Brazil approved that, from now on, 50% of all students who enter public federal universities every year need to come from public schools. From this number, half of students should be black, and the other half should be those who aren't black, including there proportionality to other ethnic minorities according to their presence in each state. This is still an unequal situation since a lot more more than half brazilian students are in public schools before university, a lot more than half of those being black. Still, it is a very important step. But I must turn to the Brazilian higher education system first and, then, to Brazilian political and ratial history so that you can really understand what's going on around here.
Higher education in Brazil is diverse (although not so much in terms of its students' race). There are different institutions of different kinds. The most prestigious institutions are the public ones, which are all owned and manged by the State, wheter locally (by cytyhalls), in state-level (by state governemnts) or federal (by the federal government). In Brazil, all universities are obliged to select a limited number of students. They use a test called "vestibular" and in exceptional cases, such as the University of Brasilia, students can choose to take different exams in each of the three years of high school so that they're not evaluated based on a single performance. There is no such thing as open admissions in Brasil (I strongly envy Argentina for that).
Until now, these limited places in the majority of the most prestigious universities (the federal ones), have been assigned in a "vestibular" test, which is not fair at all, since those who can afford (usually whiter and richer) pay for specialized schools that train their kids to pass these tests. But being so, wouldn't this be more of a social issue than ratial?
Brazilian history is a sequence of opressive actions from a very small and very powerful group of white rich people against a huge number of black workers. It all started when white Portuguese (then Spanish, then Dutch) arrived in the southern corners of what is nowadays Brazilian terrotory. Differently from most latin american big colonies, in the colonizer's policies Brazil mean natural resources extraction only. At first. They basically sent here everyone they didn't want living in Portugal (renegated noble families, convicted murderes, thieves, and other marginalized groups). Their first idea was to enslave indigenous people who lived here, but jesuits believed they were somewhat human, and therefore could be taught religion and become people. With all the african slavery starting, and the enormous advantage of indigenous tribes over white people for having most forests mapped in their heads already (and for knowing how to live exclusively from the forests resources), they instituted african slavery some decades after they arrival.
Black slavery in Brazil went for a really long time, and we were the last country in the American continent to end slavery. Shame on us. A lot of shame on us indeed. We still liked to be different from everywhere in Latin America, so when we became independent (1822) we kept both slavery AND monarchy. Yeap. It was only in 1888 that a Princess (for republic would only come the following year, 1889) from a Spanish family signed the end of slavery. But.
What did we do when slavery ended? Did we allow black people to be citizens? Yes. Just like whites? Hmmm... No. We didn't. The small group of white powerful and rich people felt it was humiliating if they had to pay their own animals to do the same work they used to do for free. Since they were the ones in charge, they came up with a plan. In the end of the 19th century there was famine in Europe, and their governments were having a hard time dealing with that. Brazilian and European governments decided to play smart together and signed various agreements to facilitate european immigration to Brazil. Smart, huh? While governments in countries like Italy, Portugal, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and many others, got rid of part of their poverty (simply by sending poor families away with the promise of a better life), Brazilian government was proud to announce that their farmers would have white workers to hire. As an even better consequence, we would be safe from becoming a nation of black people (like Haiti, who pay their price until these days).
The most cruel consequence of all that is that if you were born black in Brazil, you never really had a chance. In Brazil, social and ratial conditions are strongly codependent. While someone can get richer, though, they simply can't get whiter. That means they will have to live with prejudice for their whole lives. Racism is a crime in Brazil, but it's really hard to see anyone really sewed for that. Structural racism, though, is everywhere and really hard to be seen. It's also one of the worst kinds: young black men who get shot by the racist police, who thinks they're obviously drug dealers; young black women who are treated like animals in hospitals when they get there after rapes or during unwanted pregnancies. Just for being black. It doesn't matter how poor the white person is, they will never have to face those risks.
As if all this wasn't horrible enough, all organizations that represent our public universities and private schools (where white kids usually study) have been releasing notes to the press stressing they're opposed to such policies. They feel that themselves, the so unpriviledged rich white people who have always occupied all sorts of positions of power in our society, are being discrimnated. Yes, that's what you've heard. Absurd. Ridiculous. Nonsense.
But, hey, in the context of equality and human rights, there is no such thing as racism making sense, right?
That's what I thought.
