There is a strong division of opinion over an imminent legal ruling about
quotas, about legislating for supposed categories of black and of white in
Brazil.

How does one determine who is inside and who is outside a “racial” group? And
once the decision is made, what are the implications of favouring one group
above another?

In Brazil there are laws that criminalize racism. In 70 years there has not
arisen a single organized racist movement. But it seems possible that while
economic poverty knows no colour barriers, racial prejudice has simply gone
underground.

A group of 113 high-powered intellectuals, lawyers, businessmen and trade
unionists have signed (see below) an open letter expressing their concern that
the Federal Supreme Court may be about to entrench racism in Brazil. The issue
has boiled up over a bid for racial quotas to determine students’ admission into
universities. And the implications are far-reaching.

THE RACE MISTAKE


AN OPEN LETTER

One hundred and thirteen anti-racist citizens of Brazil

speak out against racial laws.

The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil will soon pronounce on two cases of
unconstitutionality (ADI 3.330 and ADI 3.197) which were brought by the National
Confederation of Teaching Establishments (Confenen). The first challenges the
ProUni programme (1) and the second the law of quotas in university entrance
exams of the state universities of Rio de Janeiro. These cases are of historical
importance, as they may well create jurisprudence concerning the
constitutionality of racial quotas, not only for the financing of the degrees of
higher learning offered by private institutions but also for entrance exams to
public universities and, more generally, for public sector hiring decisions
(concursos públicos). Further still: they could send a decisive message
concerning the constitutionality of the promotion of racial laws in general.

The undersigned – intellectual workers in civil society, trade unionists,
businessmen, and activists of the black people’s cause and of other social
movements, respectfully address the Ministers of the Federal Supreme Court that
has received from the people the prerogative of guarding the Constitution, in
order to offer arguments against the admissibility of racial quotas in the
political and legal order of the Republic.

We point to the Federal Constitution’s Article 19 which states: “It is
forbidden for the Union, the States, the Federal District or the Municipalities
to create distinctions among Brazilians or preferences among them”. Further
still, Article 208 declares that: “The duty of the State concerning education
will come into effect by means of a guarantee of access to the higher levels of
learning, of research, and of artistic creation, according to each one’s
capacities”. Following the principles and guarantees of the Federal
Constitution, the State Constitution of Rio de Janeiro, Article 9, § 1º,
determines that: “No one shall be discriminated against, diminished or given
privilege by reason of birth, age, ethnicity, race, colour, sex, marriage, rural
or urban work, religion, political or philosophical convictions, physical or
mental handicap, for having been in prison or for any other particularity or
condition”.

These words emanate from a Brazilian tradition—dominant since the
Abolition of slavery 120 years ago—not to condone racial laws or policies. To
justify the breaking of this tradition, the proponents of racial quotas maintain
that the principle of equality for everyone before the law demands that the
unequal should be treated unequally. Ritually, they recite the Oração aos Moços,
written by the famous nineteenth century politician and intellectual Rui Barbosa
who, inspired by Aristotle, explained: “The rule of equality consists purely in
parcelling out unequally the unequal, in the measure of their inequality. The
true law of equality is to be found in this social inequality which is
proportionate to the natural inequality.” This method of treating unequally the
unequal is, in fact, that which is applied with justice through certain policies
such as progressive taxation and income transfer. To invoke it to justify
sustain racial laws is nothing but a sophism.

The entrance exams for the most prestigious institutions of higher
learning (2), carried out “according to each one’s capacities”, are not
promoters of inequality. They do, however, operate in a terrain that is
permeated by prior social inequalities. Poverty in Brazil assails people of all
skin colours. According to the 2006 national census, of the total of 43 million
persons between the ages of 18 and 30 years, 12.9 million earned half or less
than half of the minimum wage per capita. Among this group of very poor people,
30% classified themselves as “whites”, 9% as “blacks”, and 60% as “pardos”
(mixed colour, lit. grey). Of these 12.9 million persons, only 21% of the
“whites” and 16% of the “blacks” and “pardos” had finished secondary schooling,
and very few, of any colour, continued their studies. Basically, therefore, what
limits access to higher learning is low income, with all that is associated with
it.

Presented as a way of reducing social inequality, racial quotas are
ineffectual; rather they contribute towards hiding the tragic reality
highlighted by these figures, shifting people’s attention away from the immense
and urgent social and educational challenges that confront our nation.
Furthermore, even among those young people who have a chance to enter a
qualified institution of higher learning, racial quotas do not promote equality.
Instead, they increase previous inequalities or produce new ones (3):

n Exclusionary racial quotas, as applied for example by the University of
Brasilia (UnB), offer the possibility of entrance with a lower score to a
candidate defined as “black” over one who is defined as “white”, even if the
former comes from a family with a higher income and has been educated in a
privileged private school and the latter comes from a family of lower income and
from one of our ruined public secondary schools. In the end, the system
attributes a privilege to middle class candidates arbitrarily classified as
“black”.

n Racial quotas combined with quotas for candidates that studied in public
secondary schools, as applied for example by the State University of Rio de
Janeiro (UERJ), separate out students coming from families with similar incomes
into two racially defined polar groups, thus creating a “natural” inequality
among people of equal social standing. The predictable result is to offer
privilege to candidates defined arbitrarily as “black” coming from better
schools to the detriment of their colleagues defined as “white” and all the
other students from secondary schools of lower quality.

The 2006 census states that 9.41 million students were in secondary schooling,
but only 5.87 million were in higher learning, of which only a minority of 1.44
million were registered in the public universities. The laws of racial quotas
have no effect over that and they do not promote greater social inclusion. They
merely select “winners” and “losers” on the basis of a highly subjective and
deeply unfair criterion, opening up deep scars in young people’s personalities,
at a moment when they feel extremely fragile, as they compete among themselves
for openings in public universities that will have a deep impact on their
personal future.

We want a Brazil whose citizens are free to celebrate their multiple
origins, coming together in the creation of a national culture which is open and
tolerant; instead of being obliged to choose and value only one of their lines
of descent before the others. What motivates us is not a fight against
affirmative action, if this is understood as an effort to follow the opening
declarations of the Constitution which advocate the need to reduce social
inequality. What concerns us is the manipulation of this doctrine with an aim
to racialize the social life of the country. The laws that offer opportunities
of employment to physically deficient people and grant quotas for women in
political parties are invoked as precedents to sustain the legal admissibility
of racial laws. This is also a sophism, but an even more serious one, as it
leads to the naturalization of race. There are no reasonable doubts as to who
are the women or the physically disabled among us, yet the
definition and demarcation of racial groups by the State as a political
undertaking can only be carried out against all the evidence that science
provides.

Human races do not exist. Genetics has proved that the visual differences
between the so called human “races” are superficial physical traits that depend
on a minimal percentage of the 25 thousand genes or so that form the human
genome. Skin colour, an evolutionary adaptation to varying levels of ultraviolet
radiation in different regions of the world, is expressed in less than 10 genes!
In the words of the geneticist Sérgio Pena: “It is, thus, scientifically proven
that ‘races’ do not exist. This fact must be taken into account by society and
incorporated into its convictions and moral attitudes. An adequate and
desirable posture would be the construction of a de-racialized society, in which
the singularity of the individual would be valued and celebrated. We must
assimilate the notion that the only biologically coherent division in the human
species is into billions of individuals, and not into a handful of ‘races’.”
(Ciência Hoje Online, Sept. 2006).

Racism was not produced by race; rather, racism produced the belief in
races. “Scientific racism” in the twentieth century accompanied the imperial
expansion of Europe into Africa and Asia, raising a “scientific” base for the
ideology of the “civilizing mission” of Europeans, famously expressed in “the
white man’s burden”.

So as to be able legally to separate the natives from the colonizers, colonial
powers were also led to distinguish natives among themselves, inscribing such
boundaries into their censuses. The distribution of privilege along ethnic and
racial criteria inculcated race into minds and policies, sowing the seeds of
tension and giving rise to conflicts that are still alive today. In South
Africa, the apartheid system separated out “whites” from “non-whites” and, in
its implacable logic, fragmented the “non-whites” into carefully delimited
ethnic groups. In Rwanda, in Kenya and so many other places, Africans were
subjected to meticulous ethnic classifications that determined differential
access to services and public employment. The political production of race is a
gesture that is not dependent upon the existence of objective differences in
skin colour.

When law assigns people to racial groups, this contaminates the whole of
society with racism – and, of course, the different access to rights determined
by racial criteria. In the United States — the model for all policies of racial
quotas — the abolition of slavery was immediately followed by the production of
racial laws based on the “one drop rule”. This rule, which counters the evidence
of biological and cultural mixing among humans, promotes a division of society
into legal, social, cultural and spatial ghettoes. According to it, people are
irrevocably “white” or “black”. This is the inspiration behind the racial quotas
in Brazil.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation in
which they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of
their character”. 45 years ago, in August, Martin Luther King opened up an
alternative horizon for North-Americans, anchoring it to the “American dream”
and to the political principle of equality for all before the law on the basis
of which their nation was founded. But the development of that post-racial
vision was interrupted by the racialist policies that, under the pretence of
repairing injustices, drank from the poisonous well of the “one drop rule”.
Since then, as is extensively documented by Thomas Sowell in Affirmative Action
around the World: an empirical study (2004), racial quotas in the United States
have not contributed in any way towards the reduction of inequality. On the
contrary, they have deepened the racial schism that cuts deeply into
North-American society.

“It is a racial impasse in which we have been imprisoned for many years”,
declares Senator Barack Obama in a speech delivered on 18th March, where he
picks up the thread that was tragically lost after the murder of Martin Luther
King. The “impasse” will not be overcome in the near future, as it depends on
the intrinsic logic operating inside racial laws. As Sowell noted, based on
examples from a large number of countries, the distribution of privilege
according to ethnic or racial criteria feeds back into racialized perceptions of
society. Pressure groups and political careers are inevitably articulated by
these perceptions.

Still, something seems to be moving in the United States. Recently, reflecting
upon a widespread disenchantment concerning racialism, the Supreme Court
declared unconstitutional those educational policies based on the application of
racial labels to people. In his argument, the presiding judge, John G. Roberts
Jr., wrote “the path towards the abolition of racially based discrimination is
to end racially based discrimination”. This reiteration has a clear intention:
to stress that the mere inversion of the signals of discrimination can only
consecrate race in the legal sphere, thus undermining the principle of
citizenship.

In that decision, Judge Anthony Kennedy aligned with the majority but wrote a
separate opinion containing the following protest: “Who exactly is white and who
is non-white? To be forced to live under a state-mandated racial label is
inconsistent with the dignity of individuals in our society. And it is a label
that an individual is powerless to change.” In the Brazilian censuses,
information concerning race/colour has always contemplated the possibility of
mixing. Racial laws in Brazil would change all that, by sticking onto people “a
label that an individual is powerless to change”. University entrance quotas,
for example, associate nominally a young candidate with one of merely two
bipolar “racial” categories, thus imposing irrefutable official identities.

Judge Kennedy goes further, recognizing the difference between a doctrine of
affirmative action and policies of racial quotas. He affirms the legality of
initiatives that aim actively to promote equality without distinguishing people
in racial terms. Referring to the persistence of the ghettoes that characterize
North-American society, he mentions among other things the need to select
racially segregated neighbourhoods for priority status in public investment on
education.

In Brazil, the seductive promise of the reduction of inequality at no cost by
means of racial quotas for university entrance seems to be making headway.
Nothing could be more erroneous: racial quotas merely hand out privilege to an
infinitesimal minority of middle class students and, behind this falsely
inclusive mask they preserve the structure of a bankrupt public system of
education.

Public education is in sore need of reform. It cries out for adequately
conceived policies and momentous investments. We must raise the general standard
of education of our nation. Above all, we must breach the abyss between the
schools of quality, almost always localised in middle class neighbourhoods, and
the devastated schools of our urban peripheries, our favelas, and our rural
areas. The redirecting of priority funding towards such spaces of poverty would
benefit young people of low income of all skin tonalities – and, of course, a
large proportion of those would turn out to be “pardos” or “blacks”.

The national aim should be to provide everyone with basic schooling of
quality, thus opening up realistically the access to universities. In any case,
there are a number of initiatives that could be undertaken immediately to
improve the situation of the young people of all skin colours who approach our
universities – for example, free courses for entrance exam preparation or the
elimination of inscription rates for public universities’ entrance exams. At the
Paulista State University (Unesp), in 2007, the Program of Free Short Courses
for University Entrance, targeted to students from public schools, reached 3
714 youngsters, of whom 1 050 were admitted to universities, 707 of these into
public ones. Such policies, to the extent that they do not separate out the
young people by means of abominable racial categories, address the problem
correctly and contribute effectively towards the reduction of inequality.

Brazilian society is not free from the plague of racism – this is
patent to anyone whose skin colour is just slightly darker, especially to young
people from low income families. Illegally and scandalously, skin colour counts,
especially in the labour market. Discrimination operates in a number of ways,
such as during police raids on peripheral neighbourhoods or on the application
of the legally dubious collective search and capture mandates used by the police
in the favelas.

Of course there is racial prejudice and racism in Brazil. Still, Brazil is
not a racist society. Since Abolition, instead of opting for the “one drop
rule”, Brazilians have worked out a collective system of identity based on an
anti-racist notion of mixing which has produced laws that criminalize racism. In
seventy years, the Republic has not witnessed a single organized racist movement
or any significant expression of racial hatred. Race prejudice is so shameful
that it has hidden itself in a series of oblique and ashamed expressions that
fear to come out into the open. This subterranean nature of racial prejudice
among us is a very positive sign that there is much that is positive in
Brazilian national identity, and not as proof of our historical failure.

“Who exactly is white and who is non-white?” – asks Judge Kennedy, causing
widespread puzzlement in the United States, where most people are certain that
they can tell each one’s “racial” identity. Still, to Brazilians, the question
strikes one as obvious. Among us, interracial marriages are not uncommon and
residential segregation is strictly related to income, not skin colour.
Brazilians are prone to dilute “racial” frontiers, both through mixing and
through their identity practices. This is patent when we look at the
significance and substantial increase of the number of “pardos” in the censuses:
from 21% in 1940 to 43% in 2006, with a concomitant reduction in “whites” (63%
to 49%) or “blacks” (15% to 7%).

The notion of mixing which Brazilians have internalized seems to be
confirmed by genetic studies. A well-known research project concerning the
ancestrality of Brazilians classified as “white” for census purposes carried out
by Sérgio Pena and his team at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, has found
out that intensive mixing has taken place. “In short, these phylogeographic
studies with white Brazilians show that the immense majority of the patrilines
is European, whilst the majority of the matrilines (over 60%) is Amerindian or
African.” (Estudos Avançados 18 (50), 2004). Specifically, DNA mitochondrial
analyses, which identify maternal ancestries, have shown that 33% of the
lineages are of Amerindian origin, 28% of African origin, and 39% of European
origin.

DNA research allows us to conclude that, in 2000, there were around 28 million
Afrodescendants among the 90.6 million Brazilians who declare themselves as
“white” and that, among the 76.4 million who declare themselves “pardo” or
“black”, 20% had no African ancestrality whatsoever. We need go no further to
understand that it is not legitimate to associate skin colour to ancestrality
and that the imaginary job of identifying “blacks” with slave descent and
“Afrodescent” is purely of ideological import. Similarly, genetic research
shows that classifying together into a single “black” (negro) category those who
classify themselves as “black” and as “pardos” for census purposes is
intellectually unsound.

The violence of such a move is not limited to intellectual considerations. The
laws of racial quotas are instruments of political engineering aimed at
fabricating or reproducing race. Whilst, individually, they give rise to
singular acts of injustice, socially they have the power to produce “official
races”. They do this by dividing young people into two polarised races. As in
Brazil we have no way of knowing who is and who is not “black”, committees of
racial classification had to be established by some of the universities that
tried out the quota system in order to separate people into opposing camps. The
line of separation could only be consolidated by the official validation of the
candidates’ own assessment. This gave rise to a sinister process where
university committees were set up to investigate and deliberate concerning the
“true race” of the young people, basing themselves on photographic images or on
interviews. The inevitable end result is that the principle
of racial self-declaration is cancelled out, being substituted by a process of
official attribution of racial identity.

At the University of Brasilia, a committee of racial certification made up of
professors and members of the black movement ended up classifying two identical
twins into separate sides of the racial frontier. In Maranhão, similar events
took place. Throughout Brazil, the very same candidates were certified as
“black” in one university only to be discarded as “white” by another one. The
proliferation of laws of racial quotas requires a uniform and universal system
of racial classification. This is the sort of logic that led the Ministry of
Education and Science to implement nominal and obligatory declarations of racial
belonging into the act of matriculation into the national system of elementary
education. On the horizon of the trajectory of racialization promoted by the
State is the establishment of a compulsory racial stamp on the identity
documents of all Brazilians. History is full of unacceptable barbarities
committed on the basis of this type of official racial
branding.

The widespread propaganda in favour of racial quotas has stressed that
students who enter universities on quotas perform as well as those who don’t. In
fact, data concerning this question are sparse, contradictory and not very
trustworthy. Besides, the issue is irrelevant, as informed critics of the quota
system have never claimed that quota students would be incapable or that their
presence would lower the standards of universities. Racial quotas have no effect
upon higher education as such. Rather, they are the more visible face of an
official policy of racialization of social relations that is threatening our
national cohesiveness.

Belief in race is the article of faith of racism. The fabrication of
“official races” and the selective distribution of privilege according to racial
labels inoculate the venom of racism into society’s veins, with its correlates
of rancour and hatred. In Brazil, this would constitute a radical revision of
our national identity and the renunciation of the possible utopia of the
universalization of effective citizenship.

When it comes to considering racial quotas, the Federal Supreme Court
is deciding not about a method of access to university education, but about the
meaning of our nation and the nature of our Constitution. Racial laws are no
threat to any kind of “white elite”, as racialists are today maintaining; they
merely erect a brutal barrier right through the middle of the absolute majority
of Brazilians. This dividing line would cut across the schoolrooms of public
education, the buses that take people to work, the roads, and the houses of the
poor. At the beginning of this new millennium, the institutionalizing of a
racialized State would be a way of telling our citizens that the utopia of
equality has failed and that all we can offer in its place is a sort of fragile
truce between nations separated from one another by the unsurpassable chasm of
racial identity? Is this really the future we want?



Notes

(1) Translator’s note: The ProUni programme provides finance for
impoverished students who study in public secondary schools at private
universities with quotas set aside for black students.

(2) Translator’s note: In general the public state-owned universities are
the most prestigious and of higher quality. They do not charge fees. Public
secondary schools, to the contrary, are generally of lower standard than private
ones. Thus, well off and even not so well off parents usually choose to send
their children to private schools in the hope that they will be able to enter
private non fee paying public universities.

(3) Translator’s note: In Lusophone countries, public secondary schooling is
usually of worse quality than private secondary schools. To the contrary, at
university level, public institutions (and especially those of the federal
system in Brazil) are of superior quality to private universities.



21st April 2008



Adel Daher – Director, Railway Workers Union of Bauru and MS

Adelaide Jóia – Sociologist, MA in Childhood Education, Catholic University of
São Paulo (PUC-SP)

Adriana Atila – PhD Cultural Anthropology, IFCS, Universidade Federal do Rio
de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Aguinaldo Silva – Journalist, television script writer

Alba Zaluar – Professor, Anthropology, University of the State of Rio de
Janeiro (UERJ); Reader, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP); columnist Folha
de S. Paulo

Almir Lima da Silva – Journalist, Black Culture Centre Macaé-RJ

Alzira Alves de Abreu – Researcher, CPDOC, Getulio Vargas Foundation

Amâncio Paulino de Carvalho – Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Ana Maria Machado – Writer, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters

Ana Teresa A. Venancio – Researcher, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Oswaldo Cruz
Foundation (Fiocruz)

Ângela Porto – Head Researcher, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

Antonio Cicero – Poet and essayist

Antonio Risério – Anthropologist

Arlindo Belo da Silva – Tax Advisor, National Confederation of Chemical
Workers (CNQ–CUT, trade union)

Bernardo Lewgoy – Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Federal University of Rio
Grande do Sul (UFRGS)

Bernardo Sorj – Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Bernardo Vilhena – Poet

Bila Sorj – Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Bolivar Lamounier – Political Scientist

Caetano Veloso

Carlos A. de L. Costa Ribeiro – Professor, Environmental Sciences

Carlos Pio – Professor, University of Brasilia (UNB)

Carlos José Serapião – Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ); Professor, University of the Joinville Region–SC

Celso Castro – Anthropologist, professor, CPDOC Getulio Vargas Foundation

César Benjamin – Editor

Charles Pires – Director, Union of Municipal Workers of Florianópolis

Cremilda Medina – Journalist and professor, University of São Paulo (USP)

Cynthia Maria Pinto da Luz – Lawyer, National Councillor, National Human
Rights Movement

Claudia Travassos – Head Researcher, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

Darcy Fontoura de Almeida –Emeritus Professor, Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro (UFRJ)

Demétrio Magnoli – Sociologist, Group for the Analysis of International
Affairs (Gacint), University of São Paulo (USP)

Diomédes Matias da Silva Filho – Director, Teachers’ Union of teh State of
Pernambuco

Domingos Guimaraens – Poet and artist

Edmar Lisboa Bacha – Economist

Eduardo Giannetti – Economist

Eduardo Pizarro Carnelós – Lawyer, ex-president, Lawyers’ Association of São
Paulo and of the National Council for Criminal and Prison Policy of the Ministry
of Justice

Elizabeth Balbachevsky – Professor, Political Science; researcher, Nucleus for
the Study of Public Policy, University of São Paulo (USP)

Esteffane Emanuelle Ferreira – Student, Coordinating Committee, Students’
Union, Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT)

Eunice Durham – Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Pjiloosphy and Human Scienes,
University of São Paulo (USP)

Fernando Gomes Martins – Neighbourhood Association of Parque Bandeirantes; Hip
Hop Movement, Sumaré-SP

Ferreira Gullar – Poet

Flávio Rabelo Versiani – Professor, Economics, University of Brasilia (UNB)

Francisco João Lessa – Lawyer, Direction PT-SC

Francisco Johny Rodrigues Silva – Fórum Afro da Amazônia (FORAFRO)

Francisco Martinho – Professor, History, University of the State of Rio de
Janeiro (UERJ)

Francisco Mauro Salzano – Emeritus Professor of Genetics, Federal University
of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)

George de Cerqueira Leite Zarur – International Professor, Latin American
Social Science Faculty (FLACSO)

Gerald Thomas – Playwright, Companhia de Ópera Seca

Gilberto Horchman – Researcher, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

Gilberto Velho – Professor of Anthropology, National Museum, Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ); Brazilian Academy of Sciences

Gilda Portugal – Professor ofSociology, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP)

Gilson Schwartz – Professor, School of Arts and Communication, University of
São Paulo (USP); coordinator, Cidade do Conhecimento

Glaucia Kruse Villas Bôas – Professor of Sociology, Institute of Philosophy
and Social Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Gursen De Miranda – Professor, Federal University of Roraima (UFRR);
President, Brazilian Academy of Agrarian Arts

Helda Castro de Sá – Coordinator, Association of Caboclos e Ribeirinhos of
Amazônia

Helena Severo – Researcher, social scientist, Nucleus for Research and Studies
(NEP), Fiscal Court, Rio de Janeiro

Helga Hoffmann – Economist, Group for the Analysis of International Affairs
(Gacint) University of São Paulo (USP)

Heloisa Helena T. de Souza Martins – Professor of Sociology, University of São
Paulo (USP)

Isabel Lustosa – Researcher, Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation

João Rodarte – Businessman

João Ubaldo Ribeiro – Writer

José Álvaro Moisés – Professor of Political Science; Director of the Nucleus
for Research on Public Policy, University of São Paulo (USP)

José Arbex Jr. – Journalist and professor of journalism, Catholic University
of São Paulo (PUC-SP)

José Augusto Guilhon Albuquerque – Professor of International Relations,
Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of São Paulo (USP)

José Carlos Miranda – National Coordinator, Black Socialist Movement

José Goldemberg – Former rector, University of São Paulo (USP)

José de Souza Martins – Professor of Sociology, University of São Paulo (USP)

José Roberto Pinto de Góes – Professor of History, University of the State of
Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)

Karina Kuschnir – Professor of Anthropology, Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro (UFRJ)

Leão Alves – President, Brazilian Pardo-Mestiço Movement

Leonel Munhoz Coimbra – Analyst of External Control, Specialist in Public
Policy and Government Management, National School of Public Administration

Lourdes Sola – President, International Association of Political Science;
professor, University of São Paulo (USP)

Luciana Villas-Boas – Director, Record Editorial Group

Luciene G. Souza – MA in Public Health, National Health Foundation

Luiz Alphonsus –Artist

Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte – Professor of Anthropology, National Museum,
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Luiz Werneck Vianna – Professor, Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ)

Lya Luft – Writer

Manolo Garcia Florentino – Professor of History, Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro (UFRJ)

Marcelo Hermes-Lima – Professor ofMedical Biochemistry, University of Brasilia
(UNB)

Marcos Chor Maio – Researcher, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
(Fiocruz)

Margarida Cintra Gordinho – Editor

Maria Alice Resende de Carvalho – Sociologist

Maria Cátira Bortolini – Professor, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
(UFRGS)

Maria Conceição Pinto de Góes – Professor, Graduate Centre in Comparative
History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida – Political Scientist

Maria Laura Viveiros de Castro Cavalcanti – Professor, Institute of Philosophy
and Social Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Maria Sylvia Carvalho Franco – Professor, University of São Paulo (USP), State
University of Campinas (UNICAMP)

Mariza Peirano – Professor of Anthropology, University of Brasilia (UNB)

Maurício Soares Leite – Professor, Nutrition, Federal University of Santa
Catarina (UFSC)

Moacyr Góes – Theatre director and filmmaker

Monica Grin – Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Nelson Motta – Musical producer, journalist, writer

Patrícia Vanzella – Professor of Music, University of Brasilia (UNB)

Pedro Paulo Poppovic – Businessman

Peter Henry Fry – Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Reinaldo Azevedo – Journalist, revista VEJA; editor, “Blog do Reinaldo
Azevedo”

Renata Aparecida Vaz – Coordinating Committee, Black Socialist Movement São
Paulo –SP

Renato Lessa – Professor of Political theory, Research Institute of Rio de
Janeiro (IUPERJ); Federal Fluminense University (UFF); President, Instituto
Ciência Hoje

Ricardo Ventura Santos – Head Researcher, National School of Public Health
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation; Professor, National Museum, Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Roberta Fragoso Menezes Kaufmann – Public Prosecutor, Federal District; MA in
Law; Professor, Constitutional Law, University of Brasilia (UNB)

Roberto Romano da Silva – Professor, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP)

Rodolfo Hoffmann – Professor, Economics Institute, State University of
Campinas (UNICAMP)

Ronaldo Vainfas – Professor, Federal Fluminense University (UFF)

Roque Ferreira – Coordenating Committee, National Federation of Rail Transport
Workers–CUT

Ruth Correa Leite Cardoso – Anthropologist

Serge Goulart – Secretary, Marxist Left, Workers’ Party (PT)

Sergio Danilo Pena – Professor of Biochemistry and Immunology, Federal
University of Minas Gerais (UFMG); member, Brazilian Academy of Sciences

Simon Schwartzman – Researcher, Institute for the Study of Work and Society
(IETS)

Simone Monteiro – Researcher, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos – Political scientist

Wilson Trajano Filho – Professor of Anthropology, University of Brasilia (UNB)

Yvonne Maggie – Professor of Anthropology, Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro (UFRJ)

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