196
• INCLUSION MATTERS
penetration of NGO-sponsored dispute resolution, and the movement toward legal empowerment of the poor has created new social and political dynamics. Elites and institutions are competing for spaces and spheres of influence. Traditional elites are reimagining themselves, and new elites are carving out their roles (Das and Maru 2011). Brazil: Changes in Framing Issues of Inclusion Afro-descendants (counted as the “negro” and “black” categories in the census) made up 7.6 percent of Brazil’s population in 2010. In the 1970s, at a time when the dominant discourse in Brazil emphasized tolerance and social harmony across racial groups, Thomas Skidmore, a sociologist from Brown University, wrote about discrimination against Afro-Brazilians. He focused on the “whitening thesis,” by which “Brazilian intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries managed their racial and nationalist anxieties by interpreting miscegenation as a dynamic process that would dilute Brazil’s black population” (Davila, Morgan, and Skidmore 2008). Skidmore’s analysis was met with negative reaction from what Skidmore termed the “elite” in Brazil, which comprised policy makers and academics alike. To them, Skidmore was attacking the very foundation of Brazil’s famed “racial democracy.” However, until recently, racially disaggregated data were only partially available from Brazilian official statistics. Using qualitative evidence, Skidmore argued that there are systematic differences in labor market and human development outcomes of AfroBrazilians and other Brazilians, most notably whites. These differences generated much interest in differential outcomes between blacks and whites in other arenas as well, leading in turn to a body of empirical evidence and simultaneous education of the Brazilian public and elite about these differentials as well as the discrimination that underlies them. Later, Telles (2006) carefully analyzed the differential outcomes in the labor market and in education by race. His main conclusion was that there is a high degree of social harmony across racial groups in Brazil, which is marked by deep and meaningful social interactions, intermarriage, interdining, and co-residence. However, this apparent social harmony masks high levels of inequality across racial groups. By the turn of the 21st century, there was increasing acceptance in policy circles in Brazil that Afro-Brazilians were discriminated against and deserved special treatment. In its 2003 report to the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Brazil recognized that “for many decades, the myth of a nationality characterized by