SAO PAULO
Brazil's new education minister defended the use of affirmative action in an interview published Monday.
Janine Ribeiro said measures would remain in place while Brazil continued to struggle with racism.
"Quotas are meant to be a temporary measure: there will be quotas while racism endures. When you have true ethnic equality, with no one of black, mixed race or indigenous heritage being discriminated against ... you will no longer need them," he told the G1 news site after completing a month in the role.
Ribeiro said racism against blacks and indigenous peoples was still an "empirical truth" and that affirmative action, where quotas actively promote university and college candidates of black, mixed and indigenous races and impoverished backgrounds, was a "very important" way of correcting this wrong.
It is the first time the new education minister has commented on what is a controversial topic in Brazil.
Some autonomous universities, which are not legally bound to allocate space according to the federal law on quotas, have followed suit, but Ribeiro said those schools had a long way to go, singling out Brazil's leading university -- the University of São Paulo, or USP -- as being "timid" in its approach.
USP students have mounted a number of protests in recent weeks to draw attention to the issue of under-representation of non-white students.
The education system in 2012 introduced racial and social quotas to SISU, the country's unified national application system for higher education institutions.
A year later, federal universities and technical colleges began applying the changes, initially reserving 12.5 percent for students from state-funded schools -- where poorer students are far more likely to study -- of which a percentage is given to poorer students and a further percentage of that quota assigned to candidates identifying as black, mixed race and indigenous.
The state school quota now stands at 37.5 percent, and by 2016 is set to rise to 50 percent. Universities are being encouraged to adopt the changes as early as possible.
Last year, a study revealed that students from state-funded schools would only have been approved in 11 percent of SISU courses, were quotas not used.
Affirmative action has faced criticism from students not from these backgrounds, however, who argue they are being discriminated against.
According to the last census in 2010, only 47.3 percent now identify as being "white," meaning that for the first time more than half of Brazil's 200 million population is now defined as "non-white" -- with black, mixed race, Asian or indigenous groups most numerously represented.
