1. The United States and Brazil have their differences in slavery. Slaves in Brazil tended to die younger than North American slaves. Defining the children of slaves as slaves was not as economically important as it was in the United States. Long time Portuguese immigrants to Brazil were mostly male. Also, creating a clear “black-white” dichotomy was not as important as it was in the United States.

2. There are several ways that whitening was pursued. One way is that they encouraged and subsidized the immigration of European workers and completely banned black immigration. Whitening in Brazil also included active encouragement of racial intermarriage to improve black genetics with white genes. Those few blacks who were able to crawl up the class ladder were also whitened. The third way is that the whitening policy also allowed what was called the mulatto escape hatch. Most poor blacks viewed their difficulties in terms of class, not race.

3. The most dramatic recent change in Brazil’s racial policies was the government’s official endorsement of a quota-based affirmative action program. Those who opposed affirmative action argued that it is impossible to determine who is truly black and therefore deserve preferential treatment.

4. One way that Brazil’s weak political parties are becoming stronger lately is that legislatures voted with their parties to a higher degree than has been assumed. They suggested that party leaders were able to marshal their troops in favor of their preferred policies. Another reason is the presence of the PT. The PT was a different kind of party from the start. It refused to play the rules of politics as usual in Brazil. Finally, the party’s discipline and success led other parties to become somewhat more disciplined in imitation.

5. The PT recognized only those candidates whom it vetted as supporting its ideology.