 Some political theorists assert the role of the police in keeping the inhabitants of Brazil's many "favelas" from encroaching on the lives of middle- and upper-class Brazilians is key to maintaining this state of apartheid.Professors of anthropology Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Daniel Hoffman describe this discrimination against and exclusion of slum and street children as "Brazilian apartheid", and state that "[t]he hidden and disallowed part of the discourse on Brazil's street children is that the term is, in fact, color coded in 'race-blind' Brazil, where most street kids are 'black'.