Public School, Private School, Everywhere Discrimination

Today I wanted to write about what I learned from my visits to the public and private high schools. The first school was a public school, but a nice public school, in a nice part of town, with relatively successful students for a public school. From this particular public school, with about 200 graduating students every year, about 50-60 ended up going to university. With 9 students making it into the prestigious state university, no students at the federal university, and over 25 students at other private universities. About 6 of these students said that they would study for the vestibular in order to get into a college, although more than 2/3 of the students said that if they could, they would go to college, yet the biggest issue for them was the financial hit they would take in order to get into the school. They also said that the universities are far and difficult to get into, and that it is hard to stay in universities once they get there, they also said that it would make more sense to get a technical degree which would cost much less. When asked how they felt about affirmative action, many in the class said that they think that it is bad because it assumes that blacks are dumb and can’t make it on their own. They also said that it was discrimination against non-blacks. They said that they thought that public high schools should be better, but that this might not happen because society is apathetic about change. One girl in the class (one of the few afro-brazilians) told us a story about how she was discriminated against by a white clerk while waiting at the mall to buy shoes, and then after an hour and a half she demanded to see a manager and then threatened to sue the store for discriminating against her and got her shoes for half off. Other discrimination that was mentioned was discrimination about clothing, and that the bus driver discriminates against them as public school kids because the bus drivers don’t get as much money from them since their ride is subsidized.

Even though it was a good public school, the private school was significantly nicer. The class size was smaller, rooms were nicer, and resources much better. Many of the students were bilingual, and it was hard not to notice how much lighter the skin of these students. They all waited to speak only after spoken to, and were much more calm and attentive to our presence. The class we walked in on was one about cultural diversity and ethnohistory, so they clearly had a head start on the other children. When asked how many of these students were going to study for the vestibulars by taking a prep course, surprisingly, only 6 raised their hands, the exact same number as in the public school. The difference was that all the other children at this school felt so comfortable with the material that they didn’t need to study in order to get into the top universities. At the public school, the kids not studying for the vestibular were not applying to college. Not a single one of these kids had a job, though many of them volunteered. All of them wanted to go to a public school. All their parents were engineers, lawyers, and professors. There were only 5 afrobrazilians in the entire school. I asked them why they thought this was, and they said it is because of slavery, and that the solution (repeated often) is to have better public schools. One kid specifically said that he does not want to consider race because he has a black grandparent and thinks everyone should be Brazilian and only Brazilian. I said that if you do not think about race then how can you remedy the disparities, they repeated better public school education for everyone. One student said you could tell an afrobrazilian by their skin color and their nose… I asked whether they thought that they are being deprived of a better education because of the lack of diversity, and they said yes. They also said that they would be scared to sit next to some people on the bus, and included if they were black in describing the types of people that make them scared, one student said he would never be scared of a white person on a bus.

There was a lot to take in on this day. The students were all very attentive and helpful and I learned a lot about perceptions of diversity and prestige that will help me with my project. Probably the most disconcerting was the differences between the have’s and the have not’s, though the disparity is worse in Los Angeles. I learned a lot today about the dynamics of race in Brazil, it is omnipresent, but not in the same way as in the States. Race is always somewhere in people’s minds here in Brazil, but doesn’t seem to have the same affect on people as it does in the US, I know I am not being very specific, but it is a very complicated thing and hard to pin down exactly what I am talking about. The children were so helpful, and I am concerned about how culturally sensitive the group is at times. Sometimes I worry that we take to much without offering enough in return, I mentioned this in our debriefing last night, and many agreed. We have to give our comparative analysis up front so that people know where we are coming from, and we have to ask questions with more humility and respect. I think this came through last night and I think everyone is going to behave responsibly in the future.