I was very aware of this, but wow, only 18% less than white women yet 70% less than white men?! Throw sexism into the long list of issues. My understanding from a series I watched on Brazil and it's first pathetic attempt at affirmative action was that women and men attend college at about the same rate. Why are they earning so much less?

Brazil has fewer blacks in government today than in the Jim Crow-era south. Consider that people who qualify as "black" (in their country based on appearance, not necessarily ancestry) make up 50% of the population.

This is what colourblind ideology can do.

What's more ridiculous is that a lot of the black people believe it

I would just like to add that the definition of "black" and "white" there is different than it is here. For example, a person like Alicia Keys could be classified as "white" instead of "black."

Ike, no. A person like Jennifer Beals would be classified as white because she looks white, not multiracial or ethnically ambiguous. A person like Alicia would not be classified as black or white. They have lots of other terms for the visibly multiracial and ethnically ambiguous.

…and I say this because Adriana Lima supposedly isn't considered white in Brazil because she's naturally tan. Meanwhile, Gisele who is German is considered white and tans to look brownish but because she has to spray tan, she has higher status in that society even though both of them have "good appearance."

PBS ran a documentary sometime ago about students in Brazil who had to racially qualify to be accepted into higher quality schools:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/widean.....index.html

Brazil, for all intents and purposes, is the Americas version of South Africa without it being explicitly said so.
A damn shame

Funny you should post this. Brazil was one of the countries I went to on my honeymoon and we had two distinct convos with ppl who said something along the lines of 'you're lucky b/c your babies will be light' or would ask if mixed race ppl are considered black, white or a different race in the States. The women who made the comments were light skinned or mixed race women who clearly thought that "white is right".

This is news…All of Latin america is messed up…period. The entire South america, Central America and Caribbean islands. Some of the countries began breaking this down in recent decades but racism and colorism is extremely pervasive.