Brasília, December 30, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - "It is necessary to face up to the situation of chronic racial inequality in higher education," according to the document delivered to Minister Cristovam Buarque by the Interministerial Work Group (GTI), coordinated by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies (Seppir). The document contains proposals to help Negroes gain access to and remain in courses of higher education, as well as an X-ray of Negroes' presence in Brazilian universities.
Ethnic and racial integration has become a must for all Brazilian public educational establishments, for at least two reasons. The Brazilian government has already acknowledged the existence of racial and ethnic discrimination in the country, and for this reason it created the Special Secretariat for Promotion of Racial Equality Policies. In second place, at the III World Conference against Racism, Xenophobia, and Similar Types of Intolerance, in Durban, in August, 2001, Brazil assumed a commitment to implement affirmative actions specifically for universities.
According to the document, racial inequality is greater in courses which imply more social status and economic position, amounting to over 80% in Medicine, Dentistry, Law, Administration, Communication, Arquitecture, and International Relations. The greatest proportion of the Negro minority ends up in courses with lower market value, such as those which prepare secondary school teachers.
The document is based on government studies. One of them, published in 2002 in the book "The Negro in the University," was done in five federal universities (Bahia, Maranhão, Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, and Paraná), emphasizing the socio-racial profile of undergraduate students. According to the study, using the states' racial breakdown as basis of comparison, Negro students are under-represented at those universities. Their representation doesn't even amount to 30% of the university population.
Also according to the document, over the past decade, when there was the greatest increase in the number of university students in the history of the country, racial inequality in higher education remained practically the same. "In fact, the situation got worse for the Negroes, insofar as the white population fell 2%, from 1991 to the present day, and the number of whites among university students declined only 0.3%. This means that there was a worrisome drop in the presence of Negro students in undergraduate courses in the country." (DAS)
