Inside the black box: affirmative action and the social construction of race in Brazil

Abstract

The recent adoption of race-targeted public policies makes Brazil an insightful place to study the social construction of race. This article estimates the effect of racial quotas in college admissions on patterns of racial identification. The authors collected data on persons who matriculated before and after the implementation of quotas at the University of Brasilia, which reserved 20% of admissions slots for persons who self-identified as black. A baseline survey was conducted during college and a follow-up survey was conducted post-college. In sum, the findings suggest that racial quotas had inspired a persistent shift in racial identification from non-black to black and from lighter to darker racial categories. As a whole, the evidence indicates that the policy induced race-making boundary effects, which broadly confirms the insights of social constructionist theories.

Keywords:

• racial identification
• racial boundaries
• affirmative action
• racial quotas
• educational policy
• Brazil

Notes

1 Exceptions to these patterns are individuals who identify as Indigenous or Asian. These groups make up a relatively small proportion of the population and are excluded from the statistical analysis.

2 It is estimated that less than 4% of those who matriculated during this period racially identified otherwise.

Additional information

ANDREW FRANCIS-TAN is Associate Professor of Economics and Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University.

ADDRESS: Department of Economics, Emory University, 1602 Fishburne Drive, Atlanta, GA, USA. Email: [email protected]

MARIA TANNURI-PIANTO is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Brasilia.

ADDRESS: Department of Economics, University of Brasilia, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Prédio da FACE Asa Norte, 70910-900, Brasília, DF, Brasil. Email: [email protected]