Gaspari defends affirmative action policies for Black people.

247 - In an article published today in Globo and Folha, Elio Gaspari argues that the quota policy should be validated by the Supreme Federal Court. This is also the position of 247. Read Gaspari's article below:

Quotas have debunked the bad luck, an article by Elio Gaspari.

Anyone who followed the debates in the Chamber of Deputies in 1884 could have heard the reading of a motion from farmers in Rio de Janeiro: "No one in Brazil supports slavery for slavery's sake, but there is not a single Brazilian who does not oppose the dangers of disorganizing the current labor system."

If the blacks were freed, the cities would be invaded by "ignorant mobs," "people resistant to work and eager for idleness." Production would be destroyed and the safety of families would be threatened.

Abolition came, the Apocalypse was postponed, and Brazil improved (or does anyone doubt it?).

Ten years after the start of the debate surrounding affirmative action and the use of quotas to facilitate access for Black people to Brazilian public universities, it is fortunately possible to see the consistency of the arguments presented against this initiative.

Initially, there was a warning that quotas would exacerbate the racial issue. This threat is about to turn 18 years old, and no significant cases of exacerbation have been recorded. There are about 500 injunctions in the Judiciary, but this is nothing more than the free dispute over the right.

Alongside this came the superstition that it wouldn't catch on. Today, there are around 60 public universities with quota-based admission systems, and in the last five years, approximately 10 young people have graduated thanks to the initiative.

There was another argument: without preparation and without the resources to support themselves, black students would enter universities, would not be able to keep up with classes, would disrupt the courses, and would end up dropping out of school.

Between 2003 and 2007, the dropout rate among quota students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro was 13%. Among non-quota students, this rate was 17%.

Regarding academic performance, at UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University), students who entered through affirmative action quotas in 2003 achieved slightly better results than other students. At the Federal University of Bahia, in 2005, quota students achieved equal or better performance than non-quota students in 32 out of 57 courses. In 11 out of the 18 most competitive courses, quota students performed better in 61% of the areas.

Of all the curses cast against quotas, the cruelest was the one that raised the danger of discrimination by colleagues against quota beneficiaries.

This is a case of pure transference of prejudice. There are no reports of tensions on campus. Even so, it would be naive to believe that black people didn't receive disapproving looks. Fine, but they got into universities funded by public money.

Both Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor, a daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants appointed to the Supreme Court, still remember the disapproving looks they received upon entering Princeton University. Michelle addressed the issue in her thesis. She didn't get into Princeton through quotas, but because of affirmative action policies, which began in 1964. This was the same university where, in 1939, Radcliffe Heermance, its powerful director of admissions from 1922 to 1950, told a Black student who had been admitted accidentally that the school wasn't the place for him because "a student of color will be happier in an environment with others of his own race." In the letter in which he wrote this, the doctor explained that neither he nor the university were racist.