Opinion – Samuel Pessôa: Congress must renew the quota law

Several arguments justify affirmative action policies. Diversity in the university environment is a value in itself. It helps to build a sense of belonging for everyone to society and collaborates to develop empathy between the different.

Associated with the race are stereotypes that have been built up over centuries. Structural racism is a very persistent balance of self-fulfilling expectations.

Suppose society is made up of two types of individuals, the green and the blue. If everyone, including the green ones, think that the green ones are worse under some criterion, for example, that they are less productive at work, the behavior of everyone, the blues and greens, will be such that the initial hypothesis will be validated. Everyone will behave as if in fact the greens are worse and therefore the greens will be worse.

For example, suppose that greens are believed to be more likely to rob taxis. Potential green users of non-burglar taxis will be embarrassed by the situation and will, on average, tend to use other modes of transport. At the end of the day, green taxi users will be more likely to rob.

Arguments like these are elaborated simply and elegantly in Glenn Loury’s “The Anatomy of Racial Inequality”, unfortunately untranslated.

Affirmative action policies encourage the creation of positive examples, that is, that contribute to the construction of professionals who serve as models and help to break the balance of self-fulfilling expectations.

There are, however, meritocratic arguments. The dispute, as occurred before the law of quotas for places in universities, did not guarantee the selection of the best candidate. The vacancy was defined exclusively on the basis of the grade. The grade is not a good criterion to predict the academic and professional performance of the student if the conditions of preparation for the entrance exam between people have been different.

An average student who has had numerous opportunities to prepare may have a better grade than a better student, but who studied in worse schools, facing numerous difficulties. In this case the racial and social quota works in the same way as the rating system for oceanic sailing yachts of different designs.

The winner will not necessarily be the first to cross the finish line, that is, the blue ribbon. The blue ribbon may have reached the front, for example, due to the greater sail area. This problem does not occur in Olympic regattas as the sailboats are identical.

There is a second possible reason, derived from the previous one, of improving efficiency as a result of quotas: a more egalitarian dispute can stimulate the effort of all, the favored and the disadvantaged, for quotas. In a very stratified society there are no stimuli. The vacancy is almost given by the living conditions.

For Brazil, there is strong evidence that quotas have increased the participation of blacks and pardos in federal universities. And there is evidence that other affirmative action measures that are racially neutral will not be as effective (see 2019 study by Renato Schwambach Vieira and Mary Arends-Kuenning).

For these reasons, I think that the National Congress should renew the racial quota legislation.

A slightly different version of this text appeared in Revista Conjuntura Econômica in December 2021. I return to the topic for the public of sheet for the importance of its being treated in public debate from the point of view of standard economic theory.