Hello, I'm David Baker, and thank you for downloading this podcast of assignment.

You know, I've spent a lot of time in Brazil, and one of the things I really like about the place is the racial diversity you find there.

You can walk along the street and you see so many

different skin colours and facial features. It really feels like a diverse nation. And then

earlier this year I came across a news story that really struck me.

It was about 24 students have been thrown off a course in a university in the south of Brazil

for pretending to be black. They'd applied under a quota system that reserved places on the

course for non-white applicants. And looking at some of the photos, I have to say a lot of

them looked very white to me.

So I wanted to go back and investigate.

And what I found was more than just a story about higher education.

It was something that touched the very heart of Brazil.

Its self-identity is a rainbow nation and it brought up

what it meant to be black in a country that likes to pretend that race doesn't exist.

Enjoy the program.

My afro is a piece of my identity.

Welcome to assignment here on the BBC World Service.

We're in Brazil where black people's hair is becoming political.

All my life I used to trim my hair because here we are always told

crespo the kind of hair.

Curly hair.

Yeah, curly hair. A bad hair. I decided no, it's my hair.

...