Race, Politics, and Education in Brazil: Affirmative Action in Higher Education [Hardcover]

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.

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 gll“ę