A few days before travelling to South Africa, the President received the African-American leader of the civil rights movement Jesse Jackson, who visited Brazil for the celebrations of Zumbi dos Palmares. Jackson also met with organized groups, Afro-Brazilian politicians, such as Benedita da Silva, Brazil's first female senator, and Celso Pitta, Mayor of São Paulo city, and with Afro-Brazilian artists and activists (Menezes, 1996, p. 1, 6; Munanga, 2003, pp. 124-35; Santo 2016, p. 103-17). He focused on discussions of racial identities, inequalities and affirmative actions.  
Discussion of racial identity in Brazil increased after the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, which brought together representatives of several nations in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Brazil attracted much attention as did the United States of America and the host country, South Africa. Delegates were selected from different entities to represent Brazil and to discuss issues related to inequality. Although in the last few years of the twentieth century the black movement against racism achieved a certain level of importance in Brazilian society by  
denouncing inequalities, Brazil still has a long way to go in recognizing the existence of racism and racial exclusion. While many Brazilians argue that the country has no segregation laws, has never forbidden biracial marriages or reserved jobs for "whites only", like South Africa and United States of America, statistics show that black people are far from having economic, social and political equality (Guimarães and Huntley, 2000). Influenced by the debate and the recommendations for action resulting from the Durban conference, the second National Human Rights Programme recommended the adoption of compensatory measures that could prevent racial discrimination and the promotion of access to education and employment for Afro-Brazilians (Domingues, 2005, pp. 164-76).