In addition, non-Whites earn between 40 and 44 percent of what Whites earn, and students of African descent achieve educational levels consistently inferior to those achieved by Whites from the same socioeconomic level. The cumulative effects of these educational disparities are reflected in illiteracy rates for non-Whites, which are double the rates for Whites.
Telles recommends that Brazilian social justice reformers seek not only class-based policies to address the general problems of poverty, but also race-conscious policies like affirmative action. In fact, in 2001 Brazil became one of the first Latin America countries to institute race-conscious affirmative action.
However, the desirability for race-conscious policies is not without social and legal opposition in Brazil. This is why Race in Another America could not have come at a better time. With Telles’ demonstration of how racial inclusion and exclusion simultaneously exist in Brazil as matters of both class and stratification, Brazilians may be able to stop talking past each other and instead work together to actualize the equality they all symbolically value.
— Tanya Hernandez is professor of law and justice at Rutgers University Law School-Newark.
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