Being seen by a black doctor goes far beyond income redistribution, says economist

The implementation of the Quota Law, which will be ten years old in August, has a political and symbolic impact that goes beyond the economic, says Marcelo Paixão, economist and professor at the University of Texas.

“Being seen by a black doctor, as well as giving an interview to a black journalist, goes far beyond whether income distribution has increased or decreased. It concerns an immaterial structural dimension,” said de Austin, via videoconference, the Brazilian researcher .

According to him, by allowing more blacks to occupy functions and positions where they were not before, it has “a pedagogical role, whose measurement is much deeper than we could originally estimate”.

A cause-and-effect relationship that measures the impact on the country’s economy of the affirmative action policy has not yet been established, he says —both due to the lack of indicatives and the short time the quotas have been in effect.

Doctor in sociology from Iuperj, he says that the law helped to reduce racial and social imbalance in universities and public institutions, but alone it is not capable of combating the concentration of income in the country – one of the largest in the world.

The Quota Law can contribute to the best income sharing in Brazil? What impact can affirmative policy have on the economy? Quota policies have a structuring role in Brazilian society that go beyond mere economic measurement. It has a whole political and symbolic dimension of changes in occupations in Brazil.

Being seen by a black doctor, as well as interviewing a black journalist, goes far beyond whether the income distribution has increased or decreased. It concerns an immaterial structural dimension.

Because she works with the symbolic, with an implicit political dimension. Because, right now, we’re dealing with a subject that has been put under the dome, has been put under the rug for a long time.

It had an effect that I think was civilizing. I hope the economy improves, I think the economy will improve. I even suppose that at some point professionals will come who are so well qualified, so well prepared, with so much energy and with so much enthusiasm, which will generate a ripple effect in the Brazilian economy.

But the great gain that Brazil has is not economic, the gain is civilizing. Brazil has been headbutting for 140 years. The problem is not the lack of integration, the problem is the social injustice that occurs because of the color of our skin that has an effect on us, but that has an effect on the country. This effect is economical, too. But he is a much deeper effect.

Brazil, with affirmative action, found itself. This encounter with oneself is with history itself.

It is necessary to look at these relationships more deeply. Because at certain times the economic situation will not help. If the situation did not help, was the quota responsible? Not.

Quotas, in a way, will transcend these economic circles. They have an importance that will permeate if the economy is doing well. If the economy is doing well, quotas have helped. If the economy is doing badly, quotas have helped to keep it from getting worse.

It may happen that someone wants to play behind our backs: the economy is worse because you have now arrived. So, I say that the main objective is civilizing rather than just economic.

Obviously it will have some economic effect, as this translates into income deconcentration. But putting this hard dimension can bring us some pitfalls and it is good for us to deal with some prudence.

Mr. talks about the civilizing effect of the quota policy, but there are people who are still surprised when they see a black professional occupying an elite position. In your opinion, have there been any positive effects in these ten years? We can take as a reference the soap operas and the actors. Today there is greater black visibility. I remember Joel Zito Araújo’s film, “The Negação do Brasil”, which showed that black people on television were synonymous with slave and domestic servant.

Today, I realize that something different is already happening. It seems to me that this is indicative of a change that is taking place. The fact is that we are training more black professionals and, returning to your question, I want to measure whether the quotas were successful in this.

They said we would fail. But if politics were a failure, blacks would not be able to graduate and everything would be as it was before. I see that there has been this change. This has, again, a pedagogical role, whose measurement is much deeper than we could originally estimate.

How about a pedagogical effect? A greater number of black professionals occupying important positions has a pedagogical effect as people start to get used to it, they no longer feel surprised by the sight of black skins occupying spaces originally occupied by those who had non-black skins.

There is a discussion about the need for revision of the Quota Law. There are groups that defend the social quota and not the racial one. In this sense, what would be the damage to the achievements of blacks? Obviously, any change that comes to eliminate the racial criterion from policies will be extremely unfair.

Was the objective of the quota policy to favor the poorest? Was. But the fundamental objective was to change the racial composition on the Brazilian university campus. And if a policy that aims to change the racial composition of the Brazilian university campus removes this dimension, it obviously begins to show signs of failure.

Because, if young whites occupy the vacancies with greater intensity, we can even improve the distribution of social income as a whole, but from the racial point of view, we would be deepening the differences.

I think we should, at this moment, maintain the policy so that it can continue to give results. We have had 500 years of segregation, exclusion, discrimination and racism in Brazil. Shall we settle everything in ten? It’s a temporary rout. We have to maintain the policy and try, where possible, to increase its scope.

In your opinion, does the quota policy need adjustments? At this moment, we have to change the policy in a single plan: we need to give more resources to student assistance. It is evil to encourage and encourage young people to go to university and then find themselves failing because they don’t have what would be elementary.

We know that for a policy to work, you need to put in money. In this field, a change of scope is not necessary, but a change of financial contribution.

Later on, we will have to have a more serious discussion about the effects of racism on Brazilian society and start implementing measures that also provide for reservations of vacancies based on racial criteria, considering that this injustice permeates not only institutions from a generic social point of view. and general, but it also manifests itself through discriminatory racial practices against blacks in the various establishments, which jeopardizes their school progress.

Why is it still necessary to defend the Quota Law today? We black people have to show that we are capable twice, three times more than a colleague who is next door and has not gone through the same difficulties that we are going through, including from the point of view of racial discrimination that has accompanied us since the moment we were born. .

And let’s stop hypocrisy. I’m from a generation that caught that debate: “in Brazil nobody knows who is black and who is white”. Do not know? Just turn on the television. You don’t know why you need to have a quota policy, but when you turn on the television, everyone is white. You can see that there was some selection criteria there.

We need to stop hypocrisy and get straight to the point, we have no more time to waste. We have a country to build, or to rebuild, after the destruction of these last few years.

There are barriers for people who have dark skin. “Ah, but race doesn’t exist.” Dark skins exist, physical appearances exist. There are symbolic, cultural, social and political appropriations of these human physical forms, which end up creating barriers for millions of human beings in their process of social classification.

You have to face this problem. No country is built on hypocrisy. I always thought we could handle this rationally, whoever has the sharpest argument wins. But after Marielle’s death [Franco] it was stated that we are living in a moment in which Brazilian democracy is collapsing.

They are showing us the limits of democracy in Brazil. That there is no vacancy for us, there is no space for us. We are not obliged to accept. Let’s keep fighting so that we expand spaces and our rights. We know it’s okay.

X-ray

Marcelo Paixão

Doctor in Sociology from Iuperj, he is an economist and professor at the University of Texas associated with the Department of African Diaspora Studies (AADS) and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies. Before coming to Austin, he was a professor of Economics at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) for 16 years, the same place where he graduated. Between 2012 and 2013, he was Visiting Professor at Princeton University, where he was a member of the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (Perla).