THE COLOR OF THE EDUCATIONAL TRAJECTORY: RACIAL INEQUALITIES, RETENTION, AND ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL

Abstract

This article investigates racial inequalities in Brazilian educational trajectories based on recent official data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira. The problem investigated is the following: how to understand the persistence of significant inequalities between the educational trajectories of white, black and brown people, despite the expansion of Brazilian schooling and the inclusion policies adopted in the last two decades? Based on documentary analysis of aggregated microdata from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey, Education 2024 module, and indicators from the Basic Education School Census, the article examines school attendance, age-grade distortion, completion of basic education and access to and completion of higher education, always disaggregated by color or race. The data show that, in the age group of 18 to 24 years, the net rate of attendance at the educational stage appropriate for their age was 37.4% among whites and 20.6% among black or mixed-race people, and that the age-grade distortion in the final years of elementary school reached, in a survey processed from the Inep School Census, almost double among black and mixed-race students compared to white students. The article argues, supported by the contributions of Cida Bento and Sueli Carneiro, that these data show structural inequality, cumulative throughout the school trajectory, and not the result of unequal individual choices, but warns against the attribution of causal relationships that the data, of a transversal nature, do not allow to support in isolation, distinguishing correlation, statistical association and causality, and situating affirmative action policies as a partial response to a phenomenon that goes beyond the educational system itself.