This article presents and discusses data obtained with the application of a questionnaire focused on variables for racial classification and opinion about the policy of quotas for blacks; the questionnaire was applied to a sample of 476 pupils from the last year of secondary education of the public school system of a peripheral town in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro. We have tried to understand the elements that shape the classifications of color or race, as well as the stance these pupils were taking before a policy of quotas that could help them in their attempts to have access to a public university. It must be noted that the pupils interviewed would soon be facing the possibility of competing for a place in higher education via an entry exam with racial quotas to a public university that keeps a campus in the same town where they live and study. This problem and this kind of investigation seem to us fundamental nowadays, because quotas for blacks have been put in place since 2003 at several institutions of higher education, and have been subjected to criticism and undergone juridical dispute, as a result, among other things, of the forms of classification proposed. In the study conducted here it was possible to advance in the discussion of how the options of racial classification used so far in these policies are related with the forms of self-identification and identification of the other commonly present in the daily lives of the schools researched, and also to observe how the idea of a racial quota is evaluated by its potential beneficiaries.
Higher education; Quotas; Racial classifications
