Black and brown Enem candidates jump from 51% to 60% in 6 years, says study

A study conducted by Inep researcher Adriano Senkevics pointed out that the proportion of blacks and browns among Enem candidates jumped from 51% to 60% from 2010 to 2016. During the same period, the share of whites decreased from 43% to 35%.

In an interview with CNN Radioat the CNN in Education, he explained that he sought to understand the reasons for these numbers identified by the study.

According to Adriano, there are three main factors. “One of them is the change in the profile of new applicants, young people applying for the first time. This profile is increasingly composed of blacks and browns.”

This happens, according to the researcher, because “High School has graduated these young people more, in addition to the incentives that now exist, such as affirmative action policies, such as quotas, and the expansion of universities.”

Another issue is the fact that black and mixed-race applicants take the Enem test more often than whites: “From the third time they take the exam, there is an accumulation of profile of young black people, possibly due to the difficulty of entering the University education.”

The third factor is the “racial reclassification process”. “There was a change in the perception that the individual has. Applicants may nominate a race divergent from other editions that have applied. We have seen an increase in whites who reclassify themselves to pardos and pardos to blacks.”

Adriano explains that this is a “change in subjectivity that has also contributed” to the increase in black and brown candidates.

The researcher stressed that this same trend has been observed in different surveys, including the IBGE census.

“After the 90s, with a greater politicization of racial identities, policies of historical reparation, young people have felt more comfortable to assume black and brown identities, this youth is the generation most susceptible to this cultural change”, he added.

The expert also said that the pandemic represented a delay in the quality of education in general, including inclusion, which should be a challenge for the next few years.