The introduction of a system of quotas that favours the access of self-identified ‘black’ students to Brazil's public universities has raised a heated debate since 2003. Behind the decision for the implementation of this policy there has been a paradox: only relatively wealthy students from elite private high schools have generally been able to pass the entrance examinations to the high-quality public university sector in Brazil, particularly in those subjects that lead to well-paid jobs such as dentistry, medicine, law and journalism. Although this kind of affirmative action aims to redress social inequality by counteracting the relegation of Afro-Brazilians to the very depressed sectors of Brazilian society, such measures have entailed huge controversy for practical and ethical reasons.

Fifteen years after their first introduction, controversy around quotas is not fully resolved, even though the tones of the debate have significantly calmed now that affirmative action has gradually been extended to different sectors of Brazilian society. Some critics have worried that a simplified treatment in the entrance examination for some students will lower the standard of public universities. Others, rather, have been more concerned with the palliative nature of affirmative action, as they predict its inefficiency in redressing structural class inequalities in Brazil. That said, what has raised the most public and intellectual debate in the Brazilian context is the racialised character of some kinds of quotas. This choice has seemed to be particularly problematic in a country where notions of mixture and racelessness have been central for national identity. Important questions, in this sense, have concerned whether racial quota measures would be an imported model from countries with a different story of race relations (namely the United States) and whether they would racialise Brazil while creating new forms of discrimination (for example against the white poor).

Expanding on her previous work on the same subject, Penha-Lopes’ study engages with the topic of Brazil's affirmative action some time after the turbulent phases that immediately followed its introduction. The book, besides providing a comprehensive overview of affirmative action, includes references to a considerable quantity of literature in the field of race relations and social inequality in Brazil. More crucially, it adds recent information about Brazil's political situation and legislation that previous literature had no time to incorporate. The case study that Penha-Lopes chooses for her book, the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), is a significant one. UERJ, in fact, was the first state university to implement a system of racial quotas in Brazil, paving the road for further extension of affirmative action by Brazil's federal legislation. The decision to compare the implementation of quotas in two different courses, dentistry and social sciences, is also significant, as it is a reminder that not all university courses would bring the same opportunities for students’ social mobility. Equally important is the symbolism that lies behind the authorship of this book: Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil is written by an internationally established black, female Brazilian academic, on a topic that has disproportionally been covered by white, male, and often foreign, intellectuals.

Penha-Lopes balances scientific objectivity and analysis with her more direct experience as a black Brazilian woman and academic, without being too coy about her own view of affirmative action. As a further merit, Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil places the UERJ case study within the more general overview of affirmative action in Brazil's higher education, providing some reference to the situation seen in other universities. From her pool of data Penha-Lopes clarifies that the academic performance of quota students is more than adequate in comparison to other students, while their drop-out rates are not dramatic. The interviewees who contributed to Penha-Lopes’ study, on the other hand, help show how affirmative action impacts on the users’ lives. In addition, the interviews set out the importance of the gender variable and of the racial identification process within the affirmative action context, while exposing elements of both satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the experience of students in relation to affirmative action. An identified shortcoming, for example, is that only a relatively small number of quota students achieve their aim of social mobility due to the lack of those economic and social resources that would help them pursue their dreams during and after higher education. On the very symbolic level, by contrast, the author appreciates the value of affirmative action (and the debate around it) in questioning oversimplified notions of Brazilian ‘racial democracy’, revealing the significance of race as a key variable for the discussion of social inequality in Brazil. In her balanced conclusions, the author contends that, despite the practical and symbolic importance of affirmative action, its chances of improving racial inequality are limited without the enforcement of a serious programme of social redistribution both in Brazilian society at large and at the pre-university schooling level.

While the results of the research and the opinions expressed by the author are well presented and reinforce other research in this field, what is less convincing about Penha-Lopes’ study is the small size of the research sample (only 22 students) by virtue of the sociological approach chosen, which explores race mainly through interviews. The research would have benefitted from a larger sample, particularly considering that the small number of interviewees is not balanced by any ethnographic methods, which could at least provide a deeper insight in students’ life and identification processes. Although the author is clear about the derivation of the book from her previous work, another weakness of this work concerns the year of publication when compared to the year of research. The study, in fact, was carried out ten years prior to publication, when there was still little way to assess the impact of affirmative action on the mobility of black students. The questions for future work on affirmative action should certainly look more closely (and surely have started doing so) at the insertion of quota students in the job market, as well as at the implementation of affirmative action in other sectors of Brazilian life. That said, this book remains an important and useful reference for students and researchers who aim to achieve a comprehensive overview of race relations and affirmative action in Brazil.