Conference to look at Brazil as a model for affirmative-action policies in Latin America

Leading American and Brazilian scholars will gather at Rice University March 5 for a conference on “Beyond Multiculturalism? Brazil as a Model for Affirmative-Action Policies in Latin America.” The conference will be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Fondren Library’s Kyle Morrow Room.

According to conference organizers, in the past few years Brazil has implemented trailblazing, yet controversial, affirmative-action policies that have turned attention to racial discrimination and exclusion in the country’s political, economic and educational spheres. The conference will examine the historical trajectory of race-based policies in Brazil, affirmative action vis-à-vis multiculturalism as a model for racial justice in Brazil and the United States, the extent of everyday violence and racial exclusion in rural black Brazilian communities and affirmative action as a way of reclaiming a “birthright” for Afro-Brazilians.

The conference is free and open to the public and hosted by Rice’s Humanities Research Center, Americas Research Center, the Dean of Humanities and Race Scholars at Rice, a program of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. For more information, including the full conference agenda, see http://hrc.rice.edu/hrcconferences.