Minority Students in Brazil

Brazil is located in the south of the American continent. The country was colonized by Portugal and endured 350 years of the slavery of Black Africans and a whitening process (called Black genocide by the Black Brazilian scholar Abdias do Nascimento). This history resulted in a large Black and mixed-Black population that amounts to 51% of the total inhabitants according to the 2010 Census. The indigenous population amounts to 0.4% after a colonization process that killed millions. Today, the official number of those registered as native Brazilians is 300,000.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics works with the following race/skin color categories: White, Yellow (Asians), indigenous, Mixed (pardo, i.e., mixed-Black), and Black. In Brazil, mixed race and Black people constitute the Black population of the ...