Brazilian Ethnoracial Classification and Affirmative Action Policies: Where Are We and Where Do We Go?

Abstract

The present chapter was inspired by an article (Prewitt 2005), which aimed to examine the future of the racial classification in the censuses of the USA. With the longest statistics tradition in that matter – more than two centuries of ethnic and racial categorisation of its population – the USA dared to implement a radical change in the census of 2000, allowing respondents to identify officially with as many racial groups as they saw fit (Williams 2006). Although only a few countries in the Americas include in their statistical surveys the ethnic origin of its inhabitants (Allan 2001), there is wide consensus about ethnicity, race, colour or origin as a key variable for understanding current societies. Its measurement became an indispensable resource for the detection of racial inequalities and, consequently, for the creation of compensatory policies.