But the debate over the quota system — racial quotas in particular — continues to inflame passions in a country that has long considered itself a racial democracy.
That country could not be the United States, because our media and academic standard setters and the leaders of our governing party never tire of telling us that (and apologizing to the world because) we suffer from endemic, pervasive structural racism. And, of course, it is not the United states; it is Brazil, as just sympathetically described in a Chronicle of Higher Education article this morning.
Since 2003 more than 1,300 institutions of higher education have adopted quotas for Afro-Brazilians and graduates of public high schools. The government has also created 10 public universities and dozens of new campuses in poor areas in an effort to expand access to higher education for the underprivileged.
Quotas, however, are not so easy to implement, in part because
centuries of racial intermixing, which was initially encouraged by Portuguese colonizers seeking to whiten the population, have made it famously hard to classify Brazilians by race.
Take the case of Alan and Alex Texeira, identical male twins who applied for admission to the federal University of Brasilia in 2007 under the racial quotas. After analyzing photos of the brothers — a required step for accessing the university’s quota system—separate “race boards” determined that one was black and one was white.
Nor is the United States the only country with some citizens who continue to believe in their Constitution’s prohibition against racial discrimination.
“You’re not discriminated against because you’re black, but because you’re poor,” argues Flávio Bolsonaro, a state legislator in Rio de Janeiro. He filed a legal challenge after the State University of Rio de Janeiro adopted the country’s first quota for higher education, in 2003. In June a state tribunal upheld Mr. Bolsonaro’s claim that the measures violated Brazil’s Constitution, which outlaws all forms of discrimination, and ordered the university to halt its affirmative-action measures.
The government, of course, is appealing, but unlike the United States it does not disguise its true purpose with politically correct drivel about “diversity.”
State officials have vowed to appeal the court ruling. “The quota program values the public-school education and makes reparations from a racial point of view,” Sérgio Cabral Filho, governor of Rio de Janeiro state, told reporters recently. “Contrary to what some say, it is not a racist program. Brazil has a duty to the blacks, and it’s about making reparations.”
Much has been made of President Obama’s rejection of the idea of American exceptionalism, of his belief that it is presumptuous and morally arrogant for the United States to impose its values on, or even recommend them to, other nations. Nevertheless, the United States has come to stand for a value and a practice that He strongly endorses and thus presumably does not mind others emulating: “many critics of the quota system argue that forcing Brazilians to identify themselves by race [is] a practice the critics say may be appropriate in the United States, but not in Brazil….”
The United States, the South Africa of the New World. Thank you, Democrats (and timid Republicans).
One racial quota in American History that was abolished:
On October 3, 1965, Pres. LBJ signed the Hart-Celler Act, which formally abolished national origin quotas and race based restrictions in immigration law. The Chinese quota was 105 per year.
http://www.chineseamericanheroes.org/why/history.asp?hid=240000022
HISTORY
In particular, Chinese American History – October 3, 1965
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested and Congress repealed the 15 statutes excluding immigrants from China, popularly known as the Chinese Exclusion Acts. They replaced it with a system giving Chinese a minimal immigration quota (105 per annum) and finally made Chinese aliens eligible for naturalization as US citizens. The trick was that the US Government still made it nearly impossible for a Chinese person to legally immigrate to the United States with only 105 chances each year. This restriction applied to all Chinese, even those that were citizens of England, South Africa, Panama, Thailand, or anywhere else in the world, making it even less likely that those who applied would be picked.
On October 3, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act, which formally abolished national origin quotas and race based restrictions in immigration law. The immigration quota was upped to 20,000 per year for each nationality, which is the norm for people from European and Western Hemisphere nations. Spouses, parents, and unmarried children of American citizens could also enter as non-quota immigrants. Chinatowns across America that had been rapidly dying out before 1965 soon became filled with new life and activity as new immigrants arrived and the unfamiliar sound of Chinese children filled the streets.
After formal diplomatic and immigration ties were established with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, the quotas for Chinese were increased again, providing another yearly quota of 20,000 for Taiwan and 600 for Hong Kong. The new annual immigration quota for China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong became 40,600. With the change of immigration law in 1965 and quota increases after 1979, the population of Chinese in America grew from the 1960 census count of 236,084 to the 2006 count of 3,497,484 – an increase of almost 1,500 % in 46 years.
In 2008, the OCA and the Asian American Studies Department at the University of Maryland published “A Portrait of Chinese Americans” which provided a snapshot of the current Chinese American population. It described them as highly diverse. 29.4% are native born and 70.6% are foreign born. Among the foreign born, 70.6% were born in Mainland China, 15.9% born in Taiwan, and 9.4% born in Hong Kong. The small percentage remaining are from the Chinese Diaspora that includes all other countries. 70.2% of Chinese Americans are American citizens.
In education, the attained level of education varies between the countries of origin. Chinese Americans originating from Taiwan and Hong Kong are mostly college educated, at 68.95 and 53.75 percent, respectively. Chinese Americans from Mainland China and the Diaspora have both high and very low levels of education. Because education is consistently emphasized in traditional Chinese culture, Chinese Americans in general have better overall education than White Americans.
The incomes of Chinese Americans are generally slightly higher than the general population, but Chinese Americans consistently earn less than the non-Hispanic White population at every level of education. However, Chinese American women with higher than high school education earn substantially more income than non-Hispanic White women. Chinese girls have demonstrated extraordinary academic achievements in many high schools across the nation. At Lowell High School in San Francisco, a few years ago, the top two graduates were Chinese American girls with 4.7 and 4.5 cumulative GPAs.
10.6% of Chinese Americans are now multi-racial, with 6.2% married to other Asians, and 4.3% married to non-Hispanic Whites. Tracking the developments among multi-racial Chinese Americans will require more effort in the future as surnames will no longer reveal many people with partial Chinese ancestry.