Affirmative action

by Elaine Aparecida Queiroz

The recently adopted Brazilian program for racial quotas in universities is causing a big commotion — and not in a good way. People are very unhappy about the way government has chosen to help socially excluded groups because its strategies sound very partial and truly discriminatory.
The program consists in reserving seats in private and public universities for those who have been historically marginalized by society, such as black and Indian people. By doing that, people who are not included in this group have to face more problems to get into university. One of them is that it gets harder to pass the admission tests because there are fewer places available. Another reason is that not only the favored group has had problems to get good education and better financial conditions — in fact, this is a well-known problem for most of the Brazilian people.
The program also has a very ironic side: it tries to give equal opportunities to every person but it makes discrimination grow indeed. First, it despises those races intellectual capacity. And also, it makes people who are not in the program to feel bad about the others who might get a place that could be theirs.
In conclusion, this measure is not about giving higher education possibilities to everyone, but it only tries to mend a hole of a bigger problem that is Brazil bad social conditions, in which education takes part.