The Implementation of the Dream

We visited with the organization CEAFRO today in Salvador.  CEAFRO is a community-based organization that has an extension program through the Federal University of Bahia.  Over a three-hour meeting, we spoke with five quotistas who went through the CEAFRO program, and also spoke with a representative from the Cultural Institute of Steven Biko.  The two organizations do amazing work to give Afro-Brazilians access to education through different programs that offer pre-vestibular training and fellowship assistance to students to make it possible for them to finish their studies at the university.  Not only are the programs successful at increasing the representation of Afro-Brazilians at the university level, but most importantly “they have implemented a dream.”  The implementation of a dream was something that everyone at the meeting continually reinforced as one of the most important accomplishments of these programs.  Not only are these programs benefiting the Afro-Brazilian youth of the favelas, but the families and friends of these students have also begun to participate in the programs, getting pre-vestibular training and going to back to school.  The director of CEAFRO told us that these programs were working for Afro-Brazilians on various levels, giving them a chance to reclaim that which are and have been denied.  I reflected on this idea of providing the Afro-Brazilian community with a dream and in relaying this back to the United States, I feel like providing a dream is an extremely important part of the work.  Like the Afro-Brazilian youth in Brazil, minority youth in the U.S. are systematically discouraged from continuing their education after high school.  At least in the Los Angeles public school system, the high schools located in lower socio-economic areas are overcrowded and students aren’t required to take the minimum curriculum that is required for admission to a public university.  Arguments against affirmative action fail to recognize this type of systematic discrimination, and furthermore, when they do the problem is reduced to one of class, again failing to recognize the systematic discrimination that works to keep minorities in these lower socio-economic communities.