THIS ARTICLE deals with mixed ancestry, the condition of afro-descent and the official classification of races in Brazil, and includes brief considerations on the concepts of race and ethnicity, on racial/ethnic identification, and on sex/gender- and race/ethnicity-specific affirmative action policies. According to convention adopted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), a black person in Brazil is anyone who claims to be black or brown, inasmuch as the black population is deemed as the sum total of all blacks and mulattos. In political terms, a black person is anyone of African descent who identifies him/herself as such.