http://www.smh.com.au/world/uni-law-challenges-brazils-white-elite-20120831-255io.html
Uni law challenges Brazil's white elite Date, September 1, 2012 Simon Romero Signed the Law of School Quotas ... Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Photo: AFP RIO DE JANEIRO: The Brazilian government has enacted a sweeping affirmative action law, requiring public universities to reserve half their admission spots for the largely poor students in the nation's public schools and vastly increase the number of university students of African descent across the country. The law, signed this week by the President, Dilma Rousseff, seeks to reverse the racial and income inequality that has long characterised Brazil, a country with more people of African heritage than any nation outside Africa. ''Brazil owes a historical debt to a huge part of its own population,'' said Jorge Werthein, the director of the Brazilian Centre for Latin American Studies. ''The democratisation of higher education, which has always been a dream for the most neglected students in public schools, is one way of paying this debt.'' Affirmative action has stirred controversy and opposition, even at some of the state universities that are exempt from the new law and have their own programs to admit underprivileged students. Critics contend that enforcing expansive quotas will undercut the quality of Brazil's public university system, given the nation's relatively weak public elementary and secondary schools. Although the new legislation, called the Law of Social Quotas, is expected to face legal challenges, it drew broad support among legislators. Of Brazil's 81 senators, only one voted against the law this month. Other spheres of government have also supported affirmative action measures. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld in April the racial quotas enacted in 2004 by the University of Brasilia, which reserved 20 per cent of its spots for black and mixed-race students. Dozens of other Brazilian universities, both public and private, have also adopted their own affirmative action policies in recent years, trying to curb the dominance of such institutions by middle- and upper-middle-class students who were educated at private elementary and secondary schools. Public universities in Brazil are largely free of charge and typically of better quality than private universities. The Law of Social Quotas takes the previous affirmative action policies to another level, giving Brazil's 59 federal universities just four years to ensure that half of the entering class comes from public schools. Luiza Bairros, the minister in charge of Brazil's Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality, said officials expected the number of black students admitted to these universities to rise to 56,000 from 8700. The New York Times Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/uni-law-challenges-brazils-white-elite-20120831-255io.html#ixzz259xlBMOR [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
