apresentacao_parte escrita_ações_afirmativas

8/3/2019 apresentacao_parte escrita_aes_afirmativas

1/13

In 2001, on the heels of the United Nations Conference on Racism in Durban, South

Africa, several Brazilian institutions established race-based affirmative action for the

first time ever in that country. Affirmative action represented a major step in Brazils

process of democratization and nation-building, which ran against Brazils long-held

ideology of racial democracy. Racial democracy was a belief since the 1930s that

racism and racial discrimination were minimal or nonexistent in Brazilian society in

contrast to the other multiracial societies in the world. By the 1990s, ideas of racial

democracy were being slowly eroded as Brazil democratized and a small but active

black movement denounced the popular idea of racial democracy, as it alleged that

racism was widespread and pointed to official statistics showing Brazils tremendous

racial inequality.

From the 16th through the 19th century, Brazils economy was based on agriculture and

mining, which depended on a large African-origin slave population. During more than

300 years of slavery, Brazil was the worlds largest importer of African slaves, bringingin seven times as many African slaves to the country compared to the United States. In

1888, Brazil, with a mostly black and mixed-race or mulatto population, became the

last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Abolition in Brazil, though, did not

create a rupture in the countrys racial inequality or its beliefs about black people.

Miscegenation and the fluidity of racial classification in Brazil throughout much of its

history has largely been used as proof of its racial democracy. During slavery and

colonialism, Brazil experienced greater miscegenation or race mixture than the United

States, which resulted largely from a high sex ratio among its European settlers. In

contrast to a family-based colonization in North America, Brazils Portuguese settlers

were primarily male. As a result they often sought out African, indigenous and mulatto

females as mates, and thus miscegenation or race mixture was common. Throughout

its history, there were no anti-miscegenation laws like those found in the United States

or South Africa. Today, Brazilians often pride themselves on their history of

miscegenation and they continue to have rates of intermarriage that are far greater

than those of the United States. Relatedly, there were no classification laws nor was

there racially-based violence. The absence of classificatory laws and a high rate of

miscegenation resulted in a racial continuum with racial categories from black to white

and going through intermediate colors that shaded into each other. Thus, the racial

classification of some Brazilians is ambiguous, at times varying according to the

classifier and the social context.

Today, most Brazilians of all colors now acknowledge that there is racial prejudice and

discrimination in their country, despite miscegenation and fluid racial classification.

Based on statistical analysis of censuses and surveys along with other kinds of


2/13

evidence, we know that racial inequality is high and racial discrimination in the labor

market and other spheres of Brazilian society are common. Nonwhites are the major

victims of human rights abuses, including that from widespread police violence. On

average, black and brown (mulatto or mixed race) Brazilians earn half of the income of

white Brazilians. Moreover, television and advertising portray Brazilan society as one

that is almost entirely white, even though nearly half of the population identifies itself

as nonwhite. Despite the historical and contemporary absence of race-based laws and

Brazilians historical denial of racism, Brazilians are not surprised when others make

racist jokes or a racist comment.

Most notably, the middle class and the elite is almost entirely white so that Brazils

well-known melting pot only exists at the working class and poor levels. The near

absence of Afro-Brazilians in the middle class is closely related to their poor

representation in Brazilian universities. Nonwhite Brazilians were rarely found in

Brazils top universities, until affirmative action began in 2001. Because of this,university admissions may be the most appropriate place for race-conscious

affirmative action. By 2008, roughly 50 Brazilian universities have established some

type of race-based affirmative action policy.

Affirmative action has also led to a commonplace discussion of race and racism in

Brazil, for the first time, whereas the racial democracy ideology treated any talk of race

as racist itself. There was little formal discussion of race in Brazilian society, while

other societies were thought to be obsessed with race and racial difference. Only

explicit manifestations of racism or race-based laws were viewed as discriminatory and

thus only countries like South Africa and the United States were seen as truly racist.

Traditionally, Brazilian universities depended on a standardized test, known as the

vestibular, as the only criteria for admission. Many leading universities are now

mandated to admit a fixed percentage of nonwhite students while others use a point

system that awards additional points to Afro-Brazilian students. Many of these

universities also have quotas for indigenous people, for the disabled and those that

attended the poorly funded public schools that the middle class tend to avoid, or

award points based on these social disadvantages. Nevertheless, the focus of efforts to

repeal affirmative action have been on the quotas for Afro-Brazilian students.

Affirmative action policies represent a new stage in Brazils effort to combat racial

inequality and they are not without controversy as a backlash against them has been

mounting. Detractors of these policies include much of the media, private school

students, their parents and the schools themselves, scholars and artists who value the

racial democracy ideal and even black students who believe in meritocracy. They claim,


3/13

among other things, that class-based policies and universal reforms such as improved

public education would have the same effect without having to define Brazilians on the

basis of race or color, that affirmative action violates Brazilian principles of meritocracy

and universalism, that affirmative action admits unqualified students to the university,

that high levels of miscegenation often make it impossible to distinguish blacks from

whites, that affirmative action divides Brazilians into black and white for the first time

and thus will create racial hostility, and that poor whites continue to be excluded from

university education. Furthermore, they claim that affirmative action is a U.S. import

that is out of place in Brazil, even though affirmative action began in India in 1948 and

has been used in several other countries. Legal challenges to university-based

affirmative action are now before the Brazilian Supreme Court. A statute of racial

equality, which would institutionalize affirmative action in all Brazilian universities as

well as in public contracts and in public employment, passed the Brazilian senate and is

now pending before the Chamber of Deputies, and has come under particular scrutiny

by opponents of affirmative action.

Defenders of racial quotas continue to argue that race conscious remedies, together

with universalist policies, are needed to significantly reduce Brazils high levels of racial

and class inequality and that prior to affirmative action there was little concern for

redressing racial inequality or even for reforming the poor state of public schools. The

end of racial democracy thinking, a national debate about race and racism and the

beginning of serious policy attempts to reduce racial inequality represent a new stage

in Brazil. Brazils affirmative action experiment is still in its early stages and so far the

concerns of its detractors have not been borne out as Afro-Brazilians often do as wellor even better than the regularly admitted students, and race relations have not

become hostile. At the same time, an unprecedented number of Afro-Brazilians have

begun to graduate from top universities, which is certain to diversify Brazils middle

class and create positive role models for Brazils large Afro-Brazilian population.

Affirmative action refers to policies that take "race, color, religion, sex or national

origin"[1] into consideration. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and

education to public contracting and health programs. Affirmative action is actiontaken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of

employment, education, and business from which they have been historically

excluded.

Brazil. Some Brazilian Universities (State and Federal) have created systems of

preferred admissions (quotas) for racial minorities (blacks and native Brazilians), the

poor and people with disabilities. There are already quotas of up to 20% of vacancies


4/13

reserved for the disabled in the civil public services.[6] The Democrats party, accusing

the board of directors of University of Braslia of "nazism", questioned the

constitutionality of the quotas the University reserves to minorities on the Supreme

Federal Court.

Racial Mixture and Affirmative Action: The Cases of Brazil and the United States

THOMAS E. SKIDMORE

For me, as a historian of Brazil, North America's "one-drop rule" has always seemed

odd. No other society in this hemisphere has defined its racial types in such

absolutist terms. David Hollinger, like many American historians before him, is

clearly intrigued by this apparently unique "approach to the question of ethnoracial

mixture."1 How can we account for it? How could such a different racial

classification have arisen in North America and not in any of the many other

European colonial experiments in the New World?2

Hollinger cites three features that in combination allegedly made U.S. racial

evolution different. The first is a regime that tolerated slavery and thereby

produced a significant population of slave descent. The second is massive

immigration that enriched American society. The third is survival of an Indianpopulation, even if only in token numbers.

2

But Hollinger examines the influence of these three factors on racial attitudes

and behavior in the United States alone. If we add one other country, Brazil, to the

picture, we find something rather startling.3 All three of Hollinger's conditions also

obtained in Brazil. Yet they did not produce the one-drop rule. Something else must

have been at work.

3

If I had been writing this commentary a half century ago, I would have stressed

the enormous difference between the two countries in the racial status given to the

offspring of mixed unions.4 Throughout the United States (multi-racial societies

emerged in Charleston and New Orleans, but only temporarily), the one-drop rule

defined mixed bloods (even the lightest mulattos) as black. In Brazil, by contrast,

racial attribution depended on how the person looked and on the particular

circumstances of that person, which led to the racial fluidity for which Brazil is

famous.5

4


5/13

My account would have given several reasons for this, based on a strong

consensus of scholarly opinion in both countries, epitomized by Charles Wagley (the

dean of U.S. anthropologists specializing in Brazil) and Gilberto Freyre (Brazil's most

famous articulator of his country's racial identity). Both men argued that the milder

race relations in Brazil reflected contrasting historical, social, cultural, and moral

traditions in the two countries.6 These were the daysthe 1950swhen bothBrazilians and Americans believed that Brazil had "solved" its race problem. The

explanations were several. One argument was that Brazil had achieved abolition in

the 1870s and 1880s, not through the chaos and destruction of a civil war but by

negotiation and successive legislative compromises (with legislation in 1871, 1885,

and 1888). If, by the twentieth century, those of color seemed to be at the bottom,

the standard explanation was lack of education.

5

Carl Degler, in his pioneering comparative analysis of race relations in Brazil and

the United Stateswhich argued that the greater mobility of the mulatto in Brazil

was centralreasoned that the differing status of women in the two cultures was

crucial in explaining why the free mulatto did not appear in numbers in the United

States. The Anglo-American white wife, who allegedly enjoyed higher social status

than her Luso-Brazilian counterpart, was enabled by her status to prevent her

philandering husband from legitimizing his mixed-blood offspring.7

6

Another possible explanation emphasized social values, especially the English

colonists' attitude toward sexual behavior. This was expressed as a fierce defense of

the sanctity of marriage, especially when accompanied by racial endogamy.8 What

was the basis of this early racial preference in marriage? Winthrop Jordan has

documented Elizabethan England's phobia about all things black.9 Could this racial

preference in marriage have combined with the family nature of English settlement

of North America? To facilitate racial endogamy, English colonists came with their

wives, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese colonists arrived without wives or

other family. Thus Anglo-American wives were in a better position to enforce racial

endogamy.

7

A third possible explanation was demography. Brazil had a smaller percentage of

Europeans than Anglo America. Fifty years before abolition, Brazilian free coloreds

already outnumbered the slave population. The Brazilian mixed bloods could

therefore find more "economic space" in which to emerge as a free colored class.10

According to this explanation, Brazil had generated a de facto multi-racial society

before the campaign to abolish slavery even began.

8

As of the 1940s and 1950s, both nationsbut especially Brazildefined their

race-relations system in terms of what it was not. The Brazilians pointed to the

United States, with its segregation and anti-intermarriage, as an example of the

9


6/13

institutional extremes to which white Americans carried their Negrophobia (with

lynching a violent manifestation of the same). The hypocrisy of the U.S. claim to be

a model democracy was much criticized from abroadespecially from France, still

the spiritual home of the Brazilian elite. This critical stance was reinforced by the

worldwide anti-American campaign unleashed in the early Cold Wara climate that

helped give the Brazilian elite a feeling of moral superiority toward the UnitedStates. Brazil may have imported more African slaves than America, the feeling

went, but it had not created a society that created excuses (political belief as well

as race) for dehumanizing measures of exclusion. E. Franklin Frazier, the noted

African-American sociologist trained at the University of Chicago and expert on the

U.S. African-American family, described this contrast in 1942: "Whereas in Brazil

white, Brown, and black people know each other as individual human beings, white

people in the United States only know the Negro as a symbol or stereotype ... While

we may provide Brazil with technical skill and capital, Brazil has something to teach

us in regard to race relations."11

The Brazilian elite's favorable view of their country's race relations was

strengthened in the international world by several events in the cultural history of

the 1950s. The first was the publication in English of Gilberto Freyre's classic The

Masters and the Slaves (1956, originally published in Portuguese in 1933), which

had become the bible for those who attributed to the Portuguese a uniquely

benevolent system of race relations. For the next decade or so, Freyre was feted

and praised in academic circles in the United States and Western Europe.

10

Freyre's image of Brazil as the polar opposite of the racist United States was

reinforced when UNESCO, the de facto official arbiter of culture in the Third World,

chose Brazil for a case study in how a thoroughly mixed racial population could live

in harmony. The researchers were French, American, and Brazilian, thus underlining

the project's international flavor.

11

Such argumentation seems much less conclusive when viewed through today's

lens.12 It is certainly true that Brazil lacks the history of racial hatred that

characterizes the United States. But lack of racial hatred does not turn out to have

led to lack of racial discrimination. That part of the story was first revealed by the

UNESCO study. Begun as an investigation of an ideal environment for racial

relations, its findings in fact documented the presence of racism in differing forms

throughout most of the country.13

12

Beginning in the 1960s, a consensus grew among a small number of Brazilian

academics and writers that the conventional explanations for Brazil's race relations

were no longer convincing.14 But none of these writers made much of an impact on

Brazilian elite opinion. Leading cultural spokesmen, almost invariably white, simply

13


7/13

ignored attempts to enlarge the space for Africans in Brazilian consciousness. The

nation's most prominent sociology department, at the University of So Paulo,

devoted virtually no effort to research and teaching on Brazilian race relations

during the 1970s or 1980s. The same could be said of the sociology departments

throughout the country. Discussion of the subject was generally limited to

departments of anthropology, and then only approached in qualitative terms ratherthan quantitative measurement of discrimination.

In the 1990s, however, opinion began to shift in Brazilian universities, with

debates about the lack of Brazilians of color among the student bodies and about

possible measures to compensate Afro-Brazilians for past discrimination.15 In the

mid-1990s, the president of the country, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, officially

acknowledged the existence of racial discrimination in Brazil, which he followed up

by appointing a national commission to propose remedies.16 Most dramatic of all,

the federal government of Brazil adopted racial quotas. Several universities, such as

the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, have also set quotas for minority

admissions. In looking for some mechanism to decide which candidates are eligible

for a system like Affirmative Action, they have actually adopted the one-drop rule!

Brazilian specialists in race relations have found themselves lost in the crossfire of

these debates. As two organizers of a 2000 conference on race confessed, "either

we are totally alienated or we are living in a social paradise."17

Recent trends in the United States have been dramatically different, with the

one-drop rule losing its grip. Although ethnic and racial prejudices persist and

discrimination still mars American democracy, non-white Americans have

experienced significant upward mobility since the 1950s. Previous lines of racial and

ethnic distinction have blurred, as identities, particularly of the younger generation,

have been created anew.18 Affirmative Action as a redress of previous injustice is

out, disallowed by the federal courts. And Affirmative Action to promote diversity is

under serious legal siege. Incidentally, this distinction among differing rationales for

Affirmative Action has not been appreciated in most Brazilian discussions of this

subject.

By 1992, one American specialist on Brazil had written that a comparison of

Brazil and the United States based on official data showed the United States to be

the more racially equal of the two: "While most measures of racial inequality had

declined markedly in the United States, the same measures in Brazil had tended

either to remain stable, or in some casesmost notably vocational distribution

actually to increase. As a result, by 1980 the two countries had reversed position,

with the United States now ranking as the more racially equal of the two societies."

The same scholar noted elsewhere that "Brazilian race relations thus appear far

more bi-polar than has traditionally been thought; conversely, black/white


8/13

dichotomy in the United States is breaking down in the face of both massive

emigration from Latin America and Asia and of new multi-racial identities."19 Race

relations are still more conflictive in the United States and, at least on the surface,

more humane in Brazil. But it is not unusual to hear Afro-Brazilians saying they

prefer the situation as they now see it in the United States to the frustrating

ambiguities they still face in Brazil.

Present-day African-American scholarly opinion is represented in a book by an

African-American sociologist who spent ten months of field research in a relatively

small Brazilian community in 19921994. The title of her book is revealing: Racism

in a Racial Democracy. The subtitle is even more revealing: The Maintenance of

White Supremacy in Brazil.20 It could not be farther from E. Franklin Frazier's

enthusiastic endorsement of the traditional Gilberto Freyre view in the 1940s.

How far Brazil will go down the road of quotas is impossible to say. Obviously,

many conditionssocial, cultural, ideological, economicin Brazil differ sharplyfrom those in the United States. But it is also worth remembering that quota

systemsof whatever contentare now widely used in India and other nations of

Latin Americaeven as they have become illegal here.

Has Brazil come full circle in its racial practice? Are Brazilians now beginning to

embrace the very measures they once denounced as inappropriate for Brazil's

"racial democracy"?21 It is too soon to say. As a foreign observer, I would guess that

white guilt over past discrimination is weaker in Brazil than in the United States.

This may mean there will be stronger resistance to racially oriented remedial action

than has proved the case in North America.

The embrace of Affirmative Action in Brazil will certainly generate a backlash,

especially among many of the white elite. They will continue to argue that any

racial preferences violate the merit-oriented standards (as validated by

examination) that are needed to modernize their society. And they are already

charging that advocates of Affirmative Action are servants "of cultural imperialism

engaged in pitting Brazilians against Brazilians in order to destroy our confidence in

the high value of our interracial culture."22 As one can see, much has changed, but

not the penchant for comparative analysis.23

http://www.vibrant.org.br/downloads/v5n1_oliven.pdf

There are more people of African descent in Brazil than in any country

outside the African continent itself, but the higher you go in Brazilian

society the less evidence there appears to be of that reality.


9/13

Critics say part of the blame lies with a system which has often failed to provide

equality of access to third-level education, though recent years have seen some

improvements.

To try to address the problem, many Brazilian universities have adopted affirmative

action policies or quotas to try to boost the number of black and mixed race

students, or more generally those from poor

backgrounds.

It is a controversial approach which some argue is

necessary to end decades of inequality, while others fear it threatens to introduce

racial tension in a society which has been largely free of such problems.

Gisele Alves lives in a poor neighbourhood in Nova Iguacu on the outskirts of Rio de

Janeiro, and says she doubts she would have got to college without a helping hand

from the state.

She is studying at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), which was one of

the first to adopt quotas.

"I thought I was going to finish school, find work in a little shop, get married and

pregnant and that would be it. I didn't expect much more than that," she says.

"But with the system of quotas I started to think I could go to university. My

parents couldn't pay privately - if I wanted to study it had to be at a public

university."

Giselle got her place in part due to Rio's controversial quotas system which sets

aside 20% of public university places for poor black and indigenous students, and

the same number for students educated in the much criticised public school system.

Legal challenge

Those parents who can afford it often opt to have their children educated in moreexpensive private schools, giving them a considerable advantage when it comes to

highly competitive university entrance exams - especially for prestigious courses

such as law and medicine.

It is a process which works against poorer students -

which in Brazil often means black or mixed race.

"When you consider the way things are in Brazil, you can see that poverty has a

colour," says Lena Medeiros de Menezes, vice rector at the State University.

"It will take a long time for investment in primary and secondary education to bring

about equality. How do I see quotas? It's a way to change things and change them

rapidly."

But in Rio de Janeiro a question mark hangs over the quotas system after a legal

challenge mounted by state congressman Flavio Bolsonaro.

He argues the approach is a form of reverse discrimination.

"What are you going to say to a teenager who goes to do a university entrance

exam and gets a high mark, but doesn't get through, but another teenager has

passed with a much lower mark because they have a dark skin?" he says.


10/13

"What would be the legacy of that for future generations?"

White or black?

Rio's Federal University (UFRJ) does not operate a system of quotas, though the

issue has been widely debated.

Professor Marcelo Paixao, who lectures there, says it is

clear that in Brazil those of African descent are largely

absent from many key professions.

"Here the percentage of black people holding jobs - such as doctors, engineers,

economists, lawyers - is very low," he says.

"When you have universities - principally the most prestigious ones which are the

public ones - so closed to presence of the Afro-descendent population, this means

these professions will also continue to be exclusive to a certain group of people for

a very long time."

The debate in Brazil is further complicated because of the sometimes uncertain

definition here of who is white, black or mixed race - official surveys let people

classify themselves.

Hundreds of years of racial mixing means that many Brazilians regard themselves

as neither black nor white but something in between, and recent surveys suggest

some people have even changed their view of how they should be described.

Racial equality law

Some argue that quotas even partly based on race introduce a tension that never

existed in Brazilian society in the way it has in the United States, while others say it

simply recognises the obvious link between being poor

and black.

"I think the main issue has to do with poverty and the bad quality of basiceducation," says Simon Schwartzman, senior researcher at the Institute of Studies

of Work and Society in Rio de Janeiro.

"People who are poor don't have access to good education; they have more

difficulty in having access, in particular to the more prestigious courses. It is a

question of poverty not of race.

"There are good reasons to be against race quotas in Brazil - I don't think it makes

any sense at all. For people who are poor and didn't have a good education, I think

there is a good argument for that, provided you do it properly.

"You can not force a racial identity in a population where a large percentage of the

population don't have a clear racial identity and don't want that. If you look at the

population and ask people 'what is your race?' - many people won't know exactly

what to answer.

"That is not to say that you don't have prejudice, that the fact that you are black

you don't suffer, because you do. You should do specific things about that, but not

to institute a kind of national policy based on race," Mr Schwartzman says.


11/13

For a future generation of students this complicated question has still to be finally

resolved.

A long-debated law on racial equality only recently passed an important stage in

congressional approval by avoiding controversial issues such as quotas.

It appears the final word may be left to the country's Supreme Court which is due

to give its views on the matter in the year ahead.

Um acordo com a bancada ruralista garantiu ontem a aprovao do Estatuto da

Igualdade Racial na Cmara dos Deputados, depois de uma tramitao de quase dez

anos. Na prtica, o estatuto abre mais espaos institucionais para os negros. Para

destravar a proposta, o deputado Antnio Roberto (PV-MG), relator do projeto,

aceitou excluir do texto final um artigo que tratava da regularizao de terras para

remanescentes de quilombos.

Na viso da bancada ruralista, o artigo abria brechas para futuras ocupaes por

quilombolas de reas com produo agrcola. "Na minha avaliao, no havia qualquer

problema. Mas como a Constituio j trata do assunto dos quilombolas, preferi

negociar o acordo poltico retirando o artigo e garantindo a aprovao do estatuto",

explicou Antnio Roberto. Com o acordo que excluiu a regularizao de terras para

remanescentes de quilombos, a bancada ruralista aceitou apoiar a votao do estatuto

em carter terminativo. Ou seja, permite sua ida direta para o Senado, sem

necessidade de aprovao pelo plenrio da Cmara.

Pelas regras do estatuto, os partidos polticos passam a ser obrigados a destinar aos

negros 10% de suas vagas para candidaturas nas eleies. Tambm passa a exigir do

sistema pblico de Sade que se especialize em doenas mais caractersticas da raa

negra, como a anemia falciforme. Na Educao, passa a ser obrigatria a incluso no

currculo do ensino fundamental aulas sobre histria geral da frica e do negro no

Brasil. Outra novidade o incentivo fiscal que o governo poder dar para empresas

com mais de 20 funcionrios e que decidirem contratar pelo menos 20% de negros.

"Esse estatuto como um bico de arado. Ele no um ponto de chegada. um ponto

de partida", afirma o relator, que branco.

A excluso de alguns itens polmicos que compunham o texto original do Estatuto da

Igualdade Racial, aprovado nesta quarta-feira (16), definitivamente no agradou os

representantes das comunidades negras brasileiras. Porm, ainda que com diversas

ressalvas, a aprovao do texto, aps sete anos de tramitao no Congresso Nacional,

foi considerada um avano na luta pela igualdade de direitos.

Para o diretor de Proteo ao Patrimnio Afrobrasileiro da Fundao Palmares,

Maurcio Reis, o Estatuto poderia ter aguardado mais tempo para ser votado no


12/13

Senado. Assim seria possvel garantir maior apoio aos pontos considerados polmicos,

como as cotas para negros em universidades e as polticas de sade, que ficaram fora

do texto aprovado.

Poderamos amadurecer, no fazer da forma que foi feito, no votar [agora].

Poderamos garantir que os pontos ditos polmicos no ficassem de fora, disse Reis.Para ele, as cotas de acesso universidade fariam com que "essas pessoas tivessem

xito no mercado de trabalho e que pudessem estar qualificadas para competir de

igual para igual".

Para a coordenadora do Movimento Negro Unificado (MNU) do Distrito Federal, Jacira

da Silva, a deciso de suprimir alguns pontos vai na contramo da histria e na

contramo da sociedade brasileira.

Nesta sexta-feira nosso movimento completa 32 anos. muito triste, aps trs

dcadas combatendo a discriminao racial e propagando a conscientizao da

populao, receber este estatuto como presente, lamentou Jacira em entrevista aoUOL Notcias.

Ns do MNU defendemos que foram retirados itens inegociveis, que formavam a

espinha dorsal do Estatuto. Com isso, no estamos dizendo que a aprovao no tenha

sido um avano. Foi, sim, uma aprovao importante aps anos tramitando no

Congresso, mas a retirada destes itens vai representar uma grande perda na vida de

ns negros, completou a coordenadora.

Rebatendo o argumento de que a aprovao das cotas aumentaria o dio racial, Jacira

afirma que dizer isso faz parte da estratgia que alguns usam para barrar a aprovaode direitos para a classe negra. Todas as reivindicaes dos negros tm sempre um

seno.

A luta continua

Para o ministro da Igualdade Racial, Eloi Arajo, o projeto servir de base para que o

Executivo crie medidas afirmativas e para respaldar a defesa de aes que tramitam

hoje no Supremo Tribunal Federal -de inconstitucionalidade das cotas no ensino

superior e da demarcao de terras dos quilombolas.

Segundo ele, uma das aes do governo federal poder ser a criao de mecanismos

que ampliem a presena de negros na administrao pblica.

Para o ministro, a lei aprovada pelo Senado extraordinria e uma vitria

fantstica. Com esse estatuto ns colocamos uma argamassa poderosa na

consolidao e sedimentao da nossa democracia. Fora do ambiente democrtico,

ns no teramos condies de discutir esse tipo de matria sobre a incluso de negros


13/13

e negras. Com a incluso de negros e negras damos um passo definitivo na

consolidao da democracia, avaliou.

O senador Paulo Paim (PT-RS), autor do projeto original, disse, em entrevista Agncia

Senado, concordar com o ministro Eloi Araujo.

"Ele [o estatuto] tem um valor simblico que ilumina o caminho dos que lutam pela

igualdade de direitos e por aes afirmativas", disse o senador, acrescentando que o

estatuto dar "conforto legal" para que se avance na busca da regulamentao das

cotas raciais.

Porm, Paulo Paim lamentou que o relator da matria, senador Demostenes Torres

(DEM-GO) tenha retirado artigo pelo qual o poder pblico estaria habilitado a

conceder incentivos fiscais s empresas com mais de 20 empregados que mantivessem

uma cota mnima de 20% de trabalhadores negros.

O senador considera como pontos positivos do Estatuto o reconhecimento ao livreexerccio de cultos religiosos e o direito dos remanescentes de quilombos s suas

terras.

Para a senadora Serys Slhesssarenko (PT-MT), que votou pela aprovao do texto,

ainda que com algumas ressalvas, a garantia de igualdade entre todos princpio

fundamental para a existncia de uma democracia de fato e de direito. Devo admitir

que o projeto no o ideal, mas ainda assim, est prximo de aes mais

contundentes de combate ao racismo. Estamos mais prximos da reparao de

injustias histricas que afligem a raa negra, disse durante a votao.

A coordenadora do MNU-DF ainda rebateu as declaraes dos que avaliaram de forma

positiva a aprovao do Estatuto. Eles [os polticos] dizem que com a aprovao tudo

vai melhorar l na frente. Bom, isso a histria vai dizer, mas enquanto isso no

queremos ficar de braos cruzados. Vamos continuar lutando pelos nossos direitos.

Queremos aperfeioar o Estatuto com ajuda de toda a sociedade civil.

O Estatuto da Igualdade Racial foi aprovado nesta quarta-feira (16) no plenrio do

Senado, em sesso extraordinria. Mais cedo, o texto havia sido aprovado na CCJ

(Comisso de Constituio e Justia) e passou sem alteraes no plenrio da Casa. O

projeto segue agora para sano presidencial.

apresentacao_parte escrita_ações_afirmativas

Documents

Transcript of apresentacao_parte escrita_ações_afirmativas