Brazil's invisible blacks: legalised segregation has never existed in Brazil. And yet black Brazilians remain invisible citizens. The only areas where blacks are visible are in music and sports.

Brazil has the biggest black population outside Africa. It is estimated that about half of the country's population of 178.4 million (UN, 2003) is of African ancestry, and yet, the blacks are almost totally absent from positions of power. You can hardly find blacks in Congress, Senate, the judiciary, and the higher ranks of the civil service and the armed forces. Even in Salvador, which was the capital city of Brazil and major slave port for nearly 300 years, very few blacks are found in government even though they constitute about 80% of the population of the city.

Racial democracy is a theory advanced by the Brazilian sociologist Gilbreto Freyre in the 20th century, which postulates that a history of extended miscegenation (interbreeding of races) has created a cultural melange in which all races are equally valued in Brazil. However, the results of modern research have proved him absolutely wrong. The vast majority of Brazilian "TV presenters and broadcasters are white. Currently, there is only one black TV presenter called Netinho who is held in high esteem as a model for Afro-Brazilians.

Brazilian soap operas feature mainly white actors and actresses, and the few blacks that are seen in the soap operas play minor roles like domestic servants. Also the cover pictures of the popular magazines in Brazil are mainly of white or white-ish Brazilians. From the look of things, informal racial solidarity among the white middle class has tended to exclude blacks from certain positions, especially in the TV industry.

The constitution of Brazil criminalises racial discrimination and also provides for the direct incorporation of international human rights instruments into the domestic legal order, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Despite these constitutional provisions, it is clear that more efforts are needed to deal with the yawning economic gap between blacks and the whites. Race in Brazil is a profoundly complex issue because of the extraordinary range of skin colour, which is the legacy of generations of miscegenation and because each shade has a different social weight in the Brazilian context. Brazilians are a mix of indigenous people, Africans, Europeans and Asians, particularly Japanese. Intermarriage is very common and a lot of Brazilians have mixed racial heritage.

Blacks are at the base of the social pyramid. Consequently, rarely will someone assume an identity as black. In the last census, just 6% of Brazilians declared themselves black. People prefer to be identified as "Moreno" (brown), "bronzeado" (tanned), etc. The weak sense of racial identity of many African Brazilians has prevented, to a large extent, organised resistance to the inequalities between whites and blacks. Many Afro-Brazilian organisations exist, operating at local or regional levels, but so far none has grown into a national mass movement.

For most Brazilians, being black is not a positive thing. In the schools, the complete lack of educational material about Afro-Brazilian history and culture reinforces the negative image of blacks. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has called special attention to the high illiteracy rate among black Brazilians, relegating many of them to employment in low paying jobs such as street sweepers, shoe shine boys, domestic workers, etc.

The majority of slum dwellers in Brazil are black, and racial stereotypes make the police more suspicious of black Brazilians than other races. Blacks are more likely to be shot or arrested as crime suspects. Additionally, most street children in Brazil are of African ancestry. Legalised segregation has never existed in Brazil. And yet black Brazilians remain invisible citizens. The only areas where blacks are visible are in music and sports. The legendary Pele, the greatest footballer of all time and one-time minister of sports, remains an inspiration to black Brazilians.

It is argued that Jim Crow laws in USA galvanised African-Americans into action and inspired them to wage a relentless struggle against racial inequality. And now, they have people like Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and others in positions of power. As for black Brazilians, a false sense of racial equality pioneered by Gilberto Freyre rendered many of them docile and lethargic for over a century.

Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery in 1888. And the question that begs an answer is: Why is it that 150 years after slavery was abolished, African Brazilians are still very poor and marginalised? A lot of people believe that 150 years is more than enough time for black Brazilians to rise above poverty, and that unofficial racial discrimination is the only persuasive explanation for the plight of Afro-Brazilians.

Recognising the need for political action to improve the lives of blacks and mulattos, the Brazilian government is now considering an affirmative action policy designed to reserve a minimum number of places in the public universities for black and mulatto students. Critics of the quota system argue that it would compromise the quality of education, but supporters contend that only political action can help to bridge the gap between the whites and blacks. NA