Affirmative actions are social measures that seek to democratize the access to jobs and education. In Brazilian higher education, those actions consist of programs of vacancy quotes in universities for historically excluded social groups. The issue is complex in relation to defining ethnical and/or social criteria. The aim of this article, using state-of-art literature review, is to contribute in the discussion about affirmative action in Brazilian higher education, based on the survey of the state of the art in the last five years. Electronic data bases were used (SCOPUS and Jstor) and Bardin's (1977) content analysis was carried out. The results were organized into three analysis units: (a) a dichotomy existing between articles for and against the measures; (b) improvement on the debate about "diversity"; and (c) a dialectical, more integrated and reflective view. The findings contributed for elucidating the current state of Affirmative Action in the Brazilian context of devising public policies for higher education.
State-of-art; affirmative action; higher education