E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.1 page 12 36. Was the Special Rapporteur himself equally captivated? In reply, he feels it best to refer once again to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, whose relevant provisions are quoted above. Is social preference in Brazil not based on colour? Perhaps racial prejudice has been replaced by colour prejudice? Or is there not an ambiguous relationship between these two forms of prejudice? III. MANIFESTATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND INCIDENTS 37. As the previous chapter attempts to explain, racism and racial discrimination in Brazil are not easy to pin down because they become lost among the complexities of the country’s population and are influenced by official pronouncements. For some, these phenomena are "invisible" 11/ but remain present in the political, economic, academic and scientific fields. The Special Rapporteur sought manifestations of these phenomena in daily life, in education, employment, housing and the administration of justice. He turned his attention to police violence, the situation of women "of colour", violence against children, problems of access to land for indigenous people and the Black descendants of the founders of the quilombos. 12/ A. An ambivalent attitude towards miscegenation 38. Brazilians are said to feel no racial prejudice, although they apparently have a keen awareness of colour, which is reflected in an ambivalent attitude towards miscegenation and which barely conceals a certain ideological preference for whiteness. Miscegenation, which at one and the same time carries an integrationist message - "we are all half-castes" is a common statement - and is a basis for exclusion, appears as an extension of the denial of the presence of Blacks. 13/ The word "Negro" or even "Black" is offensive and it is courteous to treat people as being whiter than they actually are. In the 1990 census, the Brazilian Geographical and Statistical Institute (IBGE) thus identified more than 100 shades of colour which the individuals questioned used to describe themselves out of a desire to distance themselves as far as possible from the colour black. This has given rise to an identity crisis of such magnitude among Black people that certain members of the Pentecostal Church refuse to be described as Black or Mulatto. 14/ Blacks and Mulattos are virtually absent from Brazilian iconography and from the media, 15/ so much so that when, in 1995, the O Globo television channel for the first time broadcast a series featuring Mulattos and Blacks it was regarded as a major event. Several Mulatto and Black activists informed the Special Rapporteur that carnival is extremely important to Afro-Brazilian culture because it is the only time of the year when Blacks and people of mixed parentage can show themselves without attracting the disapproval with which they have frequently had to contend over the centuries. 39. Moreover, the correlation between social stratification and the different shades of skin colour is so close that it cannot be without significance. Otherwise, how could one account for the fact that, in a country whose authorities claim it is the "second black country in the world, after Nigeria", and in which people of mixed parentage make up the majority, the Special Rapporteur met no Blacks or people of mixed parentage in positions of