The IACHR's report found that there are some 150 million people of African descent in the Americas- we make up some 30 percent of the total population in the hemisphere. However, studies by the World Bank show that a person's racial background continues to determine the social and economic stations they can obtain in the Americas. One long-lasting problem has been the tact that many Afro -Latinos in particular live in nations that perpetuate the myth that they are the citizens of racial democracies, "The idea," read the report, "according to which ... there is no racism because ... all races and cultures melted into a happy combination."
Barbara Carpenter, Southern's dean of international affairs, said the university is also acting as a "host school for the international Science Without Borders initiative, which intends to groom the next generation of young minds in the global scientific community. "People think we are a racial democracy in Brazil," da [Silva] said. "It's because the elites want to portray that. How can a country that received at least five million enslaved Africans and had slavery for three and a half centuries be a racial democracy?"
