Professor of Sociology
Vânia Penha-Lopes, Ph.D.
As young as five years of age, I would answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” as “A scientist, an English teacher, and a writer.” I don’t know where my prescience came from, but I am indeed all three. As a sociologist and anthropologist, I am a social scientist; I am trained as a teacher of English as a foreign language; and I started writing poems when I was eight years old.
At age 14, I decided to become an academic when I learned I could be paid to read and write. Before that, when I was about 11 years old, my mother planted in my head the idea of going to the U.S. for graduate work, after I had become proficient in English. She was keen on our getting a great education. She enrolled my sister and me in English lessons when we were pre-teens. When I was about 19 years old, I learned of a contest for a scholarship for study abroad, sponsored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica do Brasil; I was the youngest contestant among the winners. After I graduated with honors from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, I moved to New York City to enroll in a master’s program in anthropology. By the time I got to the U.S., I had won awards as the best student in all of the City of Rio de Janeiro at the English school we went to.
My Books
"The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation is a sociological analysis of the similarities between the elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, based on biographies, academic sources, newspaper, television, and reports published in the United States and Brazil between 2014 and 2021".
Praise for the book
G. Reginald Daniel, University of California, Santa Barbara
Race relations in Brazil and the United States have been premised on White supremacy. Yet, Brazil’s racial democracy ideology historically helped gloss over this fact given the somewhat more veiled racial discrimination in Brazil compared to the more explicit White supremacism that underpinned legalized segregation in the United States. The elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro are game changers in that regard. Trump has brought about a resurgence in White supremacy long thought to have vanished in the US with the formal dismantling of segregation and implementation of civil rights and other initiatives in the latter half of the twentieth century. Jair Bolsonaro has brought White supremacy out in the open and sought a return to the racial democracy ideology in a way not seen in Brazil since the military dictatorship in the 1960s after the subsequent return to democratic rule as well as initiatives to address the very real racial inequality that exist in Brazil. This book provides a masterful comparative analysis of these fateful and not surprisingly intertwined developments, including their implications for race relations and antiracist organizing, by extension, in both countries.
David N. Smith, University of Kansas
Charles A. Gallagher, La Salle University
"Vânia Penha-Lopes has performed a service for all of us. Viewed in isolation, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro could appear to be entirely idiosyncratic. Each is a larger-than-life figure with a unique persona, bordering on the cartoonish. Neither is readily intelligible outside his own distinctive context. Yet, as Penha-Lopes shows with nuance and sociological flair, Trump and Bolsonaro are, in fact, representative figures. Beneath the trademarked recklessness of their far-right personas is a long, reptilian history of White supremacism, of which they are the latest incarnations. What does White supremacism look like in extremis, when it has been fiercely challenged? Look no farther than Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro -- and the parallel constituencies and histories they reflect, which Vânia Penha-Lopes brings to vivid life."
"Race relations in Brazil and the United States have been premised on White supremacy. Yet, Brazil’s racial democracy ideology historically helped gloss over this fact given the somewhat more veiled racial discrimination in Brazil compared to the more explicit White supremacism that underpinned legalized segregation in the United States. The elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro are game changers in that regard. Trump has brought about a resurgence in White supremacy long thought to have vanished in the US with the formal dismantling of segregation and implementation of civil rights and other initiatives in the latter half of the twentieth century. Jair Bolsonaro has brought White supremacy out in the open and sought a return to the racial democracy ideology in a way not seen in Brazil since the military dictatorship in the 1960s after the subsequent return to democratic rule as well as initiatives to address the very real racial inequality that exist in Brazil. This book provides a masterful comparative analysis of these fateful and not surprisingly intertwined developments, including their implications for race relations and antiracist organizing, by extension, in both countries".
Choice Reviews
Using extensive media and online accounts as well as secondary academic sources, Penha-Lopes fortifies the frequent media observations of similarities between former US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, nicknamed “Trump of the tropics,” with sound analytic and empirical grounding…. With its highly readable description of two traumatic presidential elections won by outlandish and disruptive leaders, this comparison serves well as an informative, thought-provoking entrée into the contemporary challenge of rising authoritarianism.Recommended. General readers through faculty.
"Using affirmative action to decrease racial inequality is the latest chapter of a long tradition of comparing Brazil and the United States with regard to race. Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quota Students and the Quest for Racial Justice is timely for both countries as they struggle with racial justice in higher education.
This book responds to the United States’ dismantling of affirmative action programs and a belief that they have run their course. Data show that, while affirmative action policies have contributed to a significant increase in the representation of non-Whites in the U.S. middle class, other segments of the population have yet to take full advantage of such policies. In Brazil, this book engaged with the need to understand the first results of a public policy expected to promote major social change, as it represents the first time that country admitted the existence of racial inequality in its core and took measures toward combating it despite any subsequent controversy or dissent."
Praise for the book
G. Reginald Daniel,
University of California
"The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union " Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how race is constructed and experienced in Brazil and how endemic racism is currently being challenged"
James N. Green, Brown University
Vânia Penha-Lopes's book is a path-breaking analysis of contemporary affirmative action programs in Brazilian universities. Written in a clear, accessible style, Dr. Penha-Lopes focuses on a recent cohort of graduates of one of these programs. She analyzes these students' lived experiences as well as their attitudes towards the programs and concludes that, contrary to the expectations of some of the program's detractors, these " quota students, " for the most part, have done as well academically as their non-quota peers.
Maxine L. Margolis,
University of Florida
University Quota Students and the Quest for Racial Justice is timely for both countries as they struggle with racial justice in higher education. This book responds to the United States' dismantling of affirmative action programs and a belief that they have run their course. Data show that, while affirmative action policies have contributed to a significant increase in the representation of non-Whites in the U.S. middle class, other segments of the population have yet to take full advantage of such policies. In Brazil, this book engaged with the need to understand the first results of a public policy expected to promote major social change, as it represents the first time that country admitted the existence of racial inequality in its core and took measures toward combating it despite any subsequent controversy or dissent.
American Journal of Sociology
“Vânia Penha-Lopes uses original interview material, administrative university data, and a wide range of academic research and media sources to provide a detailed picture of what affirmative action looks like in Brazil, the meanings it acquires to different localactors, and the consequences of the policies to the policy’s beneficiaries, the quotistas. The most interesting material. . . offers a window into how these students understand and experience race, racism, and affirmative action. Also valuable are the book’s use of administrative data to highlight quota students’ performance at UERJ and its review of Brazilian research on quota students’ performance in Brazilian universities more broadly, organized and made accessible to an English speaking audience here for the first time.”
"O novo e revolucionário programa de ação afirmativa do Brasil, que visa a integrar os afrodescendentes em suas universidades públicas, é brilhantemente analisado pela autora. Inserindo o programa no contexto da sociedade brasileira contemporânea e da desacreditada ideologia da democracia racial, a dra. Penha-Lopes analisa os papéis da raça e das classes nos argumentos controversos sobre as causas da desigualdade social e econômica daquela nação. Convencida de que as verdadeiras experiências de v ida dos estudantes cotistas estavam sendo ignoradas nos acirrados debates sobre as políticas de ação afirmativa, ela pesquisa as consequências desses programas para os próprios primeiros universitários cotistas.
Ela quer saber as opiniões desses estudantes sobre seus anos na universidade, como eles lidaram com aqueles que pensavam que eles não tinham o direito de frequentá-la e, mais importante, o quanto a ação afirmativa levou à expansão de oportunidades para ascensão social. Em prosa clara e a cessível, a dra. Penha-Lopes convincentemente demonstra a importância dessas políticas e as lições que elas nos deixam."
