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There is an important public conversation going on in Brazil. Affirmative action quota policies are being implemented in some Brazilian universities*. The debate will heat up in the coming weeks as Congress considers a new law (law project nº 3627/2004) that would establish a system of reserving places for public school students — particularly blacks and indigenous people. The new law will establish and regulate affirmative action as an official government policy.

Had this situation happened a decade ago, the debate would be restricted to the universities and to congress. We would have had to count on the good will of mainstream media to give the issue the deserved visibility. Today, with the help of online forums, group lists, and mainly blogs, the debate has greater participation and media democracy is growing broader and deeper. The open network of interested people takes charge of expanding the reach of the quotas debate, generating new and diverse players, manifesting new and effective policy and adding perspectives that would not have been on the radar before.

The proposal sent to congress by the government requires the federal universities and technical schools to reserve 50% of the places for students who attended high schools in the public system. From this percentage, afro-descendants and indigenous people will have its places reserved in proportion to the respective population rates from the last census (1991) in each state.

The Brazilian online community has been debating the issue for some time, and the arguments present details and nuances that go beyond simplistic, polarized positions. At this moment, the new law under consideration in congress, primarily regarding the public school students in general, has introduced an augmented focus on social quotas over racial ones. What could be seen as simple percentages in the text of a law turns out to be a more nuanced change of the public policy. And this tests the capacity of the open network in keeping the interested players updated and ready to participate.

Here are samples of Brazilian voices debating quotas on the web: Read the rest of this entry »