Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The flawed racist policy

If someone wants to go to college or be a public employee in Brazil, s/he usually needs to take a tough test. For college admittance we call this test "Vestibular".

Everyone has to get through this test, and score enough to be in the top. But a federal law, that is up for some years now, has been giving African-Brazilians an unfair edge in this competition. About 20% of every public college's seat and every government job position is saved to African-Brazilians.

Let me explain why that isn't fair. The argument is that most of the poor people is African-Brazilian, and the government says that we must give them a chance to educate themselves or have a good-paying job. So far, so good. What they fail to say is that not ALL poor people is African-Brazilian, specially in the Southern regions.

If they want to help the poor, they should not come up with racist laws. It would be simpler (and a lot less controversial) if they saved these positions to poor people alone. Why does the color of the skin matter?

Also, this quota idea is flawed from the beginning: the reason poor people don't get through the "Vestibular" is simply because they didn't have a good education as a child. The largest part of the government education fund goes to universities and not to schools, and this is worsening the problem.

Conspiracy theorists say that the government doesn't want to educate the masses, that it is easier to manipulate them if they are stupid uneducated people. I'm tending to agree with this theory!

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