Differential Access to Preparatory Courses in Brazil

Literature suggests that African-American high school students do not perform as well on the Scholastic Admissions Test (SAT) as white high school students. Scholars argue that one reason for this phenomenon is that African-American students, who are disproportionately poor, lack the resources to take SAT preparatory classes. Scholars argue that SAT preparatory classes can increase a student’s score on the exam significantly, and, as a result, white students, who more often can afford the preparatory classes, score higher on the exam. The net effect of this unequal access to SAT preparatory classes results in affirmative action for white students.

Like the above mentioned scholarship, literature suggests that Afro-Brazilian high school students do not perform as well on vestibular exams as white high school students. Vestibular exams are the exams students must take to enter Brazilian universities; each university has a its own vestibular exam, meaning students must take a separate exam for each university. I would like to research possible reasons for this trend. I hypothesize that like African-American students in the U.S., one reason Afro-Brazilian students perform less well on the vestibular exams is that they are disproportionately poor and lack the resources to take a year off from school and work to study for the vestibular exam or to take a cursinho pre-vestibular (vestibular preparatory class). If I find that my hypothesis is true, I will argue that the lack of resources Afro-Brazilians have available to study for the vestibular is a reason to retain race-based affirmative action in Brazilian universities.

To investigate the hypotheses in my proposal I plan on interviewing students at Brazilian high schools and universities. Most of my interviews will be informal because I feel that a relaxed, chatty approach will put students at ease and encourage open and honest communication. As I expect the language barrier to preclude effective communication, I will use the services of a translator.

Furthermore, if I find that my hypothesis is true, I would like to investigate whether a loan from the federal government or a microcredit organization, in addition to the student loans already provided by the government upon entrance to university, could provide Afro-Brazilian students with the resources to pay for a cursinho pre-vestibular and take a year off from school and work.

Welcome to Brazil!!!

When I first began this comparative work, I was worried that my project was too “obvious” or that, by now, the critiques of the anti-violence movement launched by radical women of color activists were practically axiomatic. However, the Brazilian context brings new life to this critique. My work stems from an old critique: that utilizing police apparatuses and positioning the state as ‘protector’ of women will not save women from violence. Because various arms of the state consistently and disproportionately commit violence against communities of color (for example, rampant police brutality, mass incarceration, racism, colonialism, economic exploitation) and because sexual violence has always been a tool of patriarchy, colonialism and racism, the state, through the criminal justice system, cannot effectively thwart violence against women of color because it simultaneously enacts it (Incite 2006). Instead, organizers and advocates must put forth intersectional remedies that assure safety for women yet do not expand the scope of repressive policing apparatuses. The Brazilian context is an appropriate site from which to begin envisioning possibilities for such remedies. How do we actually do this work, epistemologically, methodologically, and practically or “on the ground”?

Rather than address violence against women of color by adding a ‘multicultural component’ to the traditional sexual and domestic violence prevention model that was built with the interests of white women, radical women of color have called for an epistemological reframing of the movement’s central questions. They demand that we look to women of color’s experiences with violence as the starting point (or stand point) from which to imagine anti-violence strategies. By looking at the central articulations of violence that affect women of color, one is forced to examine state-sponsored violence – the type of violence inflicted upon them by state institutions. Although some of the most obvious institutions that sponsor violence are police, prison, and immigration officials, violence is also perpetuated by the welfare, health, economic, and education systems. Thus, INCITE!, the largest, multi-racial, grassroots feminist organization in the US claims:

[T]his perspective… benefits not only women of color, but all peoples, because it is becoming increasingly clear that the criminal justice system is not effectively ending violence for anyone. In fact, The New York Times recently reported that the effect of strengthened anti-domestic violence legislation is that battered women kill their husbands less frequently; however, batterers do not kill their partners less frequently. Thus, ironically, laws passed to protect battered women are actually protecting their batterers.

By starting from the standpoint of women of color we can build more comprehensive analyses and strategies that address the myriad and intersecting forms of violence facing women, as INCITE! suggests. What if, rather than asking, “what should an anti-violence program look like?” feminists and anti-violence organizers asked, “what would it take to END violence against women?” What would our strategies look like, even if they shared none of the features of the current movement (Incite 2006)? What is possible if we have no rules to adhere to?

This, I believe, is one site where the comparative US-Brazil project is especially productive. When I asked a Brazilian Fulbright scholar how the anti-violence against women movement has dealt with the tension [regarding relying on a repressive system to address violence], she said that she didn’t think that this issue was “on the table at all.” She suggests that the anti-violence movement has not looked beyond the single-pronged strategy of encouraging women to go the women’s police stations in search of safety and does she not believe that a professional network of shelters exists. Before this conversation I thought that these critiques had been put forth in Brazil (Santos). However, if this is true and if part of the US feminist’s inability to imagine intersectional remedies is because radical social justice critiques are disappearing through the increasing professionalization of the movement, then the absence of habitual strategies in Brazil might illuminate new radical imaginings of practical and utilizable restorative justice models (ones that might actually be useful rather than too “utopic.”). As an example of an enabling violation, the fact that Afro-Brazilians are subject to so much violence in the favelas and this violence is so often characterized in popular discourse (anecdotal evidence suggests that 1700 people have been killed by the police over the past year) the police’s inability to protect women may be a more convincing strategy. Over the next couple days, I will reframe my questions in an effort to see how this new possibility, born out of comparative study, might bring about useful ideas for intersectional remedies to violence in both contexts.

The Impact of the Brazilian Government's Hip-Hop Investment

I am investigating the impact of Brazilian government funding in hip-hop and social movements. The Brazilian government has recently implemented a cultural development program. Under this program, $13 million was used to fund music, including hip-hop, in 2007. Since 2004, the government has been giving money to NGO’s such as AfroReggae to fund programs spreading hip-hop culture throughout the country, mainly in favelas (slums). {see here} I wish to explore whether this funding has allowed groups with race conscious messages to strengthen their voice in Brazil. If so, can this funding be framed as an affirmative action program?

I find it interesting that currently there is no public backlash against these programs in Brazil. In the U.S., mainstream hip-hop music has been criticized for years over its controversial lyrics and alleged negative influences; recently, this scrutiny has intensified. Hip-hop music increasingly seems to be blamed for many social ills, illustrated by U.S. studies attempting to link it to everything from teen drug use to increased sexual activity among young girls. Furthermore, there were Congressional hearings on the genre’s content last year. It is true that most popular hip-hop in the U.S. over the past 10 years generally has carried a materialistic, gangster, or misogynistic message. Conversely, I have discovered that the more popular hip-hop in Brazil has a socially conscious message. I will attempt to get some of the Brazilian lyrics and the overall messages interpreted for comparison.

Today, we attended a mini-seminar in the afternoon with Professor Angela Paiva, Marco Pamplona and a few graduate students at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro­ (PUC-RJ). According to Professor Paiva, Brazilians would not frame the government funding of hip-hop as affirmative action because it is not in the education, employment, or political sector. I have not learned enough to challenge her statement, but I don’t think the programs are that simple. I look forward to my visit with AfroReggae tomorrow.

Affirmative Action in Brazil: What's it All About?

For my research project I strive to better understand the concept of affirmative action, as it currently exists in Brazilian society. The myth of racial democracy that has so long been legitimized in Brazil provides an image of racial harmony that masks over racial segregation, reducing the race issue to one of class conflict, which typically results in attempts to resolve the issue through race neutral income distribution policies. With the introduction and adoption of affirmative action policies in Brazil, the public debate has taken a shift in tone to reflect viewpoints standing in opposition to racial democracy.

I would like to conduct my research in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, and Salvador in Brazil on current understandings and perceptions of affirmative action, focusing in particular on education at the university level. My hypothesis supposes that the more people believe in the myth of racial democracy, the less they believe in racial barriers and thus, in the need for affirmative action. To test this theory, I aim to interview current students and administrators to get at the various interpretations of racial discrimination that are offered up. Putting my findings together, I’d like to assess where the affirmative action project resides and find ways to reframe the debate from that of a necessary evil, to one of positive policy.

Compared to affirmative action policies in the United States, or lack thereof, my hypothesis latches onto the color-blind politics that are in direct opposition to the implementation of affirmative action policies that are based on race. In the United States, affirmative action is currently illegal in three states and the popularity of such initiatives is increasingly starting to dwindle. In the state of California (one of the three states) alone, since the passage of Proposition 209, the number of minority students in higher education has significantly dropped, calling into question the intersectional link between race and class. Arguments opposed to race-based affirmative action policies tend to favor reform in the K-12 education levels. However, even after the diminution of race-based affirmative action policies in the aforementioned states, little effective reform has been made.

The inspiration for the particular focus of my project stems from a quote I stumbled upon in a 2003 issue of The Economist, where a Brazilian named Jose Vicente was quoted saying, “Brazilian racism is like a gun at the back of the head rather than one pointed between the eyes.” As I pondered about the meaning of his words, I was only further compelled to unravel the ways in which racism affects Afro-Brazilians everyday, and further, I was moved to use this information to unravel the myth of racial democracy, which I feel works to keep affirmative action policies from fully being embraced.

Race Consciousness and Support for Affirmative Action in Brazilian Hip Hop?

We’re in Rio! We arrived today and are starting our academic meetings with professors tomorrow. I am going to be researching the role of race and race consciousness in Brazilian hip hop. Specifically, I will examine the ways in which it exemplifies or challenges the supposed national ideology of racial democracy, and how it promotes or discourages affirmative action policies. My perspective is that hip hop culture is an important producer of critical approaches to daily norms and a way to understand the racial inequalities that are increasingly difficult to hide with the racial democracy ideology (the idea that the country is all about nationalism and democratic equality between classes and races in Brazil).

For my first question, my premise is that hip hop does challenge the purported national ideology of Racial Democracy. From what I have learned so far, it seems that Brazilian hip hop has a large political component that discusses race and inequality. One DJ stated that rap has been the most dominant aspect of hip hop culture in Brazil because of rap’s “incisive way of relating the reality of poor black people.” Such a statement is a direct challenge to the existence of racial democracy. I will also examine whether different types of hip hop deal with race in different ways. For example, a dissertation on hip hop and funk in Brazil observes that the white, more prosperous artists do not address race as explicitly as the music from the favelas. These differences might tell us something about how views on race diverge along racial and class lines.

I do net yet have a strong presumption for whether hip hop raises discussions and consciousness about affirmative action programs and creates more support for them. I’ve learned from initial conversations and research that the music in the favelas is different from the music coming out of more prosperous areas. There are also government programs with grants aimed at developing hip hop skills and culture in the favelas. If the hip hop in the favelas is race conscious and proposes remedies for the oppression of Black Brazilians, this might be an outlet for a perspective “from the bottom.” I want to examine the audience of this music and see if the favela musicians’ perspective can affect other peoples’ consciousness about racial inequality and the need for affirmative action programs. Music can be a powerful tool for creating cultural and political identities and beliefs – if hip hop addresses race and the need for state action to remedy inequality, and if people are responding to its message -- it can be a vital component of the movement for affirmative action.

I will compare my research in Brazil to Black music in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s that helped to advance ideas of Civil Rights and to shape Black identity as powerful and beautiful. This music was part of a cultural phenomenon of Black identity, expression, and influence in which artists stood up against white hegemony, specifically whiteness as the standard against which Black people had to judge themselves. Black American artists were proclaiming pride in their own identity while tying it their call for racial justice. I will see if this phenomenon is also reflected in Black Brazilian hip hop. For example, I will examine whether the overt discussions of race in Brazilian hip hop constitute a challenge to the whitening of Brazil and the related notion of racial democracy, and whether these expressions are linked to calls for racial justice that demand policies such as affirmative action.

Affirmative Action in the Brazilian Military

My project will focus on the lack of affirmative action programs in the Brazilian military. While affirmative action has been implemented in several sectors of the Brazilian federal government, such programs remain absent in its military. What is it about the military that separates it from other federal institutions and justifies a lack of affirmative action?

The Brazilian military has historically remained separate from civilian society. Considering itself an elite organization, the military established dictatorships at two separate periods in the twentieth century. The purpose of my project is to determine why affirmative action programs were never created for the military and what, if anything, has been done to achieve the goals of affirmative action absent such programs.

In contrast, the United States military has used affirmative action programs in its officer corps. Although affirmative action has been under so much attack and criticism, the military has stressed the importance of having a diverse officer corps. Why have the militaries in the two countries embarked on such divergent paths?

I plan on learning how and why civilians and military personnel view the military as distinguishable from other federal institutions, and how that perception plays out in the affirmative action context. The research will consist of interviewing civilians and military personnel about such issues. The interviewing questions will also focus on what impact interviewees believe affirmative action programs may have on the military and the resultant impact on national security. Would affirmative action help or hurt the military? How do people believe affirmative action would affect the composition of the military, i.e. the demographics at different rankings? I hope to answer these questions through my research in Brazil.

My Project

My project in Brazil will focus on Afro-Brazilian youth and the non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) that serve this community. Broadly, the project will evaluate how NGO's, such as AfroReggae, are interacting with the Brazilian affirmative action scheme. Specifically, this project will analyze the role of NGO’s in the Brazilian approach to race conscious remedies as they apply to Afro-Brazilian youth and educational access, equality and equity. I plan to compare this interaction with the affirmative action NGO system, or lack thereof, in the United States. My goal for this trip is to foster a meaningful exchange of information which will serve as a foundation for new ideas and approaches to combating racial inequity.