IO DE JANEIRO, April 4 — The Brazilian government, responding to
demands to improve the lot of the black population, has begun
imposing racial quotas for government jobs, contracts and
university admissions. But that has unleashed an acrimonious
debate in a country that traditionally prides itself on being a
harmonious "racial democracy." The initial battleground is a
pair of public universities here, which have just accepted a
freshman class that is 40 percent black. As in the United
States, though, white students who were not admitted despite
scoring higher on entrance examinations have challenged that
action in courts. They contend that they are being denied the
"equality of access to schooling" guaranteed by Brazil's 1988
Constitution. Civil rights advocates in this nation of 175
million, which has the largest black population of any nation
outside of Africa, predict that the debate is likely to
intensify even further as a result of a sweeping Racial Equality
Statute now before Congress. That bill, suppor