One of the main reasons why affirmative action was a transformative policy is because it "signalled the definitive failure of the myth of racial democracy and [revealed] the existence of racial segregation of work" (Nascimento, 788). Forcing Brazil to recognize the lack of black representation in universities has revealed the overall inaccuracy of a myth that has kept blacks in a vicious and unacknowledged cycle of poverty and violence. While opponents might argue that affirmative action policies have created a problem outside of race because they have created a black versus white society, I argue that this tension between the two races has always existed in Brazil. If race has never been a factor in Brazil, why have the most controversial affirmative action policies been “when the beneficiaries are Afro-Brazilians” (Santos, 146)? Race-related hardship cannot be recognized only when the privileged lose their advantage