Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated October 29, 2004
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i10/10a04901.htm
João Bosco, a black businessman in São Paulo, got a nasty shock
recently when he showed up for an appointment at a corporation in the
city's main financial district. Rather than sign the prearranged
contract, he says, the company's white manager insulted him and then
showed him the door.
"He said 'I thought they were going to send the boss, not the office
boy,'" says Mr. Bosco, 47, a personnel consultant, who was so offended
he refused to respond. He declined to name the company, which he is
suing for racial discrimination.
Such stories are common in Brazil, despite the country's self-image as
a "racial democracy." The term is enshrined in the Constitution and has
long been a source of pride among the country's multiracial population,
the result of more than a century of intermarriage among the
descendants of African slaves, Portuguese colonizers, and immigrants
from throughout the globe. With 44 percent of the country's 170 million
people claiming African descent, Brazil has the world's second-largest
black population after Nigeria.
But recent studies show that skin color continues to play a major role
in determining Brazilians' access to jobs and education. Blacks earn
less than half that of white Brazilians with the same educational
background, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics, a government research organization. Even more striking:
only 2 percent of Brazil's three-million college students are black,
according to the 2000 government census.
A new business college in São Paulo is working to change that. By
reserving 50 percent of its seats for black students, the Zumbi dos
Palmares University of Citizenship seeks to train entrepreneurs like
Mr. Bosco to compete in the white-dominated corporate world. The
businessman is among 177 students -- 90 percent of them black -- who
made history when they began classes in February in a working-class
neighborhood of São Paulo.
Named for the 17th-century leader of a colony of escaped slaves, the
university is Latin America's first institution of higher education
designed to serve black students. It offers four-year degrees in
business administration, and plans to begin degree programs in history,
literature, and education in two years. The history and literature
programs will emphasize African-Brazilian culture, a subject little
studied in most of Brazil's public universities.
Eventually, administrators hope to enroll up to 10,000 students on
campuses scattered throughout São Paulo, a teeming metropolis of more
than 20 million people that serves as Brazil's financial center.
"This is one of the greatest developments for blacks in the history of
Brazil," says José Vicente, the university's rector. He founded Zumbi
dos Palmares with fellow activists at Afrobras, a nonprofit group in
São Paulo that seeks to expand educational opportunities for black
Brazilians.
"For 50 years we've been talking about inclusion, and people are still
discussing it," he says, in an interview in the five-story, modern
brick building that serves as the university's campus. "But we've
actually done it."
Quota Controversy
The university opened amid a nationwide debate over affirmative action.
Since 2002 several state universities have established quotas of
roughly 20 percent for black students, while a dozen more are
considering such measures. And the Congress is currently reviewing a
bill that would set racial quotas at all federally administered
institutions of higher education, in government jobs, and in television
casting.
"Ten years ago this would have been impossible," says Ruth Lopes,
executive director of Afrobras. "We are living a moment like that just
after the civil-rights movement in the United States, but without the
violence."
But those efforts are mired in controversy. The prestigious State
University of Rio de Janeiro, which led the way by instituting quotas
for black students and graduates of public high schools in 2002, is
facing legal challenges from hundreds of private school graduates who
claim they were unfairly denied admission under the new policy. The
students, many of whose cases are still pending in state courts, argue
that quotas at public universities are unconstitutional. The National
Association of Private Schools, acting on behalf of the students, filed
a broader complaint before the Supreme Court, which was later thrown
out on a technicality.
With the uncertainty surrounding the future of the quota system, Zumbi
dos Palmares is a bird in the hand, say its directors. "We've gone one
step further than the quota debate," says Mr. Vicente, noting that the
university's focus on black students goes beyond simple admissions
preferences.
Along with the quotas, Zumbi dos Palmares administrators have adopted
other measures to attract students who would otherwise be unable to
attend university.
Classes are held at night to enable students to hold down full-time
jobs. And the university offers subsidized tuition of $80 per month,
half that of the least expensive private colleges, the only
institutions accessible to most black students. Most of Brazil's
state-run universities, while free, remain bastions of the white elite,
since only students who can afford to attend private high schools have
much hope of passing the rigorous admissions test.
"It's not like in the United States, where racism is very open. In
Brazil everyone says there's no racism, but it exists," says Graziela
Alves, 23, who was drawn to the university both by its low cost and its
mission of promoting civil rights. "My father always told us we had to
work twice as hard as whites," says Ms. Alves, a light-skinned black
woman who dreams of a job in international finance.
Until last year, however, she wasn't sure she would even make it to
college. A graduate of a public high school, she failed to gain
admission to the prestigious Federal University of São Paulo. So she
spent several years working as an assistant in a stationery company,
for $240 a month, until she heard about Zumbi dos Palmares.
Mr. Vicente's organization, Afrobras, got its start in 1998 lobbying
for scholarships for black students in private universities, and says
it has since secured tuition-free spots for 382 students. But the
group's members felt the need to do more. So they came up with the idea
of creating a new university that would give priority to black students
while also offering spots for working-class whites.
Challenges Ahead
The decision to begin with a college of business administration was
both idealistic and practical -- helping black people sell to black
people. "There's an unknown Africa in Latin America, who want specific
products. So where should we prepare blacks to be? In the market," says
Mr. Vicente. He estimates annual sales from products geared toward
black consumers in the United States and Brazil at a staggering
$800-billion dollars; they include special beauty products, books,
music and clothing. "Our goal is to teach Afro-Brazilians to make
money. They don't even know how to count it, because they've never had
it."
By invoking the needs of black consumers, Afrobras was able to get
financial support from multinational companies such as IBM and Nestlé,
which donated several dozen computers, and Coca-Cola, which has
committed $25,000 per year to the program. The rest of the university's
annual $275,000 budget comes from grants from other private colleges in
São Paulo, for whom supporting Zumbi is good publicity, and from
student tuition, says Ms. Lopes.
Financial support remains a major challenge, however. Joshua Imoniana,
dean of the business college, earns $660 a month -- less than a tenth
the going rate at leading business schools -- despite his prestige as
Brazil's only black Ph.D. in accounting. The 13 professors earn a
meager $45 per class. But the professors, for whom the university is a
second job, are clearly not there for the money.
"For me, the important thing is to have the chance to take part in the
project," says José Camean, a white professor who teaches accounting
and business methodology. He was invited to teach by Mr. Imoniana, his
colleague at the local branch of the international accounting firm
Price Waterhouse, where the dean is among 1 percent of employees who
are black.
Not all the professors at Zumbi dos Palmares support the idea of a
separate college for black students. José Roberto Avelino da Silva, a
black bank manager who is the university's dean of students, worries
that the approach risks exacerbating racial divisions. "I want people
to know that I am José Roberto, not that I'm black," he says. He also
has conflicting feelings regarding the quotas. He notes that he was
able to become a successful banker without the help of affirmative
action, but adds that the quotas might be necessary to help more black
Brazilians get ahead.
Mr. Avelino argues that black people would benefit more from government
investment in public schools, where most black students study. He
estimates only 25 percent of the students at Zumbi dos Palmares could
compete with students at top universities.
Still, he says, the university serves a purpose in giving blacks the
confidence to compete in the white-dominated corporate world. "There's
a lot to improve," he says of the university, "but it's a start."
The Wrong Approach?
Mr. Avelino is not the only one ambivalent about the university's place
in Brazil. Some advocates of affirmative action question whether it can
help enough students to make a difference.
"It's a question of scale. To solve the problem of racial
discrimination, we need public policies that are far reaching and have
a big impact," says Pablo Gentili, director of a center that studies
race in education at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. "Zumbi's
goal of creating a black elite is fine. But you have millions of young
blacks who want to enter, and who aren't going to be leaders of
anything. You resolve the problem of 20 or 200 or 2,000, but the
problem remains for all those who are on the outside."
Mr. Gentili sees another potential danger in creating a separate
college for black students. "There is a big risk that people say,
'okay, they have their own universities,'" he says. "The goal shouldn't
be for blacks to have their own universities, but that they are assured
access to the best public and private universities, and that they can
study there for free."
Brazil's reformist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, agrees.
Frustrated by the prolonged congressional debate over his quota bill
for public universities, he issued a presidential decree last month
that requires private universities that receive government tax breaks
to set aside a share of seats for black students. The details of the
new decree are still being discussed. But since private universities
account for 70 percent of all college students, the new policy could
significantly increase black students' access to higher education.
Looking to the United States
One of the biggest challenges facing Zumbi dos Palmares is in
developing its history and literature programs to incorporate an
emphasis on African-Brazilian culture. In the absence of local models,
administrators have turned for some help to the historically black
colleges in the United States.
"It's so important. It takes us back to the beginning of historically
black colleges and universities in this country," says Hasan Crockett,
director of the Brisbane Institute at Morehouse College, in Atlanta,
who is helping Zumbi dos Palmares develop its history curriculum. "How
many brain surgeons, how many wasted minds have been lost over the
centuries because of the lack of adequate educational system for
Afro-Brazilians?"
Mr. Crockett says he got a glimpse of the need for affirmative action
in Brazil during a visit to São Paulo in July. He arrived at a
corporate cocktail party in honor of the new university and was
surprised to see the lobby filled with black businessmen. But the scene
of racial diversity was deceptive. "We found out they had bused them in
for us," says Mr. Crockett. "It was a show. They don't employ a lot of
blacks at this large corporation."
The fact that a Brazilian company would go to such trouble for black
academics, however, is a sign that affirmative action is gaining ground
in Brazil. The Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil's most
prestigious institution of higher education, announced plans in August
to reserve 10 percent of its spots for black students. And other
universities are expected to follow suit, with or without orders from
the government.
"Blacks got freedom in 1888, but black people never left the worker
shacks," says Mr. Bosco, the personnel consultant. "With Zumbi dos
Palmares, freedom has finally arrived."
http://chronicle.com
Section: International
Volume 51, Issue 10, Page A49