RIO DE JANEIRO -- Rafaela Silva hoped to get an Olympic gold medal four years ago in London. Instead she got racial abuse.Disqualified in her Olympic judo match and eliminated from the chance of winning a medal, Brazils Silva thought shed find refuge in sympathetic text messages from fans in her country.Instead, heres what she found: The place for a monkey is in a cage. You are not an Olympian.The messages said I was an embarrassment to my family, so they really hurt, said Silva, who won gold in the world championships a year after London, and is among the favorites for gold when the Rio de Janeiro Olympics open in just over a week.Silva is one of many athletes familiar with the sting of racism in a country where most of the poor are brown and black. Though a nation of rich diversity -- 51 percent identify as non-white, brown, black or mixed race -- racism still runs deep.On the one hand, Brazil is thoroughly mixed. On the other, there is searing racial inequality in a place often portrayed as a racial democracy, or race-blind. The myth of a race-blind country has been losing force, but theres still a yawning gap between black and white.Behind the apparent peaceful melting pot theres a lot of tension and not much open talk about race, Marta Arretche, a political scientist who studies inequality at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press.Diversity and inequality will line up side-by-side at the Olympics, just as they did at Brazils World Cup two years ago. Visitors will see the countrys racial politics play out in ways that are subtle, yet clear.Magazine covers seldom feature a black face. The very popular soap operas feature mostly white actors, although black actors are now getting roles other than drivers, cooks or doormen. Upscale restaurants and suburban shopping malls are almost all white. Waiters in top restaurants are seldom black. And the only black faces at the airport are the hired help, or black women caring for white children in the airline lounges.All shades sunbathe on most Rios beaches, though Ipanema and Leblon tend to be more white. Vendors selling trinkets and drinks on all beaches are usually black.It will also be apparent in the crowds at venues, an issue that began with the World Cup two years ago. White fans bought the pricey tickets, and the black and brown were priced out.Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes promised during the World Cup that the Olympics would be different, pledging to supply 1.2 million free tickets to schools and the poor. In the end, he came up with 47,000 Olympics tickets -- 4 percent of his promise.The cheapest Olympic tickets cost 40 Brazilian reals ($12), though the average price is 100-200 ($30-$60). The top ticket for the opening ceremony is listed on the official website at 4,600 ($1,400). By comparison, the government-mandated monthly minimum wage is 880 reals (about $270).Blacks earn about half of what whites do, and among the wealthier the gap jumps to 2.5 times less.The root of the problem starts with slavery.Brazil imported about 5 million African slaves -- about 10 times more than the United States. Slavery ended in 1888, which was 25 years after the United States. Brazil was overwhelmingly black at the time, which triggered a government policy to whiten the country with poor European immigrants, Japanese and others to replace slave labor.Its difficult to define whos black. Most Brazilians self-identify, which means that two people of similar skin colors may identify differently -- one as white and one as black.In a case at the University of Brasilia, identical twins applied for admission under an affirmative-action program. Only one was judged to be black.The Brazilian government in a household survey in 1976 asked people to describe their color. It came up with 136 descriptions from morena (brown), to canela (cinnamon), to trigo (wheat) and 133 other shades, an exhaustive list explained by Brazilian anthropologist Lilia Moritz Schwarcz .Barcelona soccer star Neymar has been the subject of many reports about his skin color. A mix-raced Brazilian, photos show his skin tone has lightened since hes become world-famous and a marketing success. He frequently appears in TV ads for dandruff shampoo, foot cream and electronic products.The bias against being black shows up almost everywhere, Arretche said.Brazils 400 Olympic athletes represent all colors and shades, easy to see in photos on the website of the Brazilian Olympic Committee . The same website carries a group photo of the BOCs administration standing in front of the headquarters: the members are almost all white headed by IOC member Carlos Nuzman.The same is true for the local Olympic organizing committee, which Nuzman also leads -- virtually all white from CEO Sidney Levy on down.Michel Temer, the acting president of Brazil, has only white men in his cabinet -- no women and no blacks. Temer has the honor of declaring the Olympics open at the opening ceremony on Aug. 5.There was a strong silence in Brazil about race, a taboo, said Marcia Lima, who studies the subject at the University of Sao Paulo. That was the most powerful way for the white elite to control black people; that nobody talked about race. We dont have a race problem here would be the response, so we didnt need to talk about it.Mortiz Schwarcz cites a Brazilian study in which 97 percent said they were not prejudiced, but 98 percent said they knew people who were.Its not so open, not institutional as it was in the south in the United States, Arretche said. The racism is much more disguised.---Stephen Wade on Twitter: http://twitter.com/StephenWadeAP .His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/stephen-wadeCheap Devils Jerseys Authentic . The 26-year-old Ireland striker, who has four goals this season, has signed a three-and-a-half year contract with his new club. Cheap New Jersey Devils Jerseys . 1, meaning problems for the doping controls at both major international sports events next year. 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Hampshire 319 (Wheater 102, McManus 56, Wood 3-53) and 106 for 1 lead Nottinghamshire 245 by 180 runsScorecard Discovering Nottinghamshire hanging around at the wrong end of the First Division is like finding the flash guy with the top-of-the-range BMW drinking in the cheapest pub in town. No matter how much you remind yourself he is loaded you cant avoid noticing in the corner of your eye the unexpected scrambling for enough change for another bag of pork scratchings.Nottinghamshire are heading for Twenty20 finals day on Saturday. Among the most glamorous of county crickets limited-overs side they finally have a chance to claim a T20 trophy that has long seemed overdue. But four-day cricket is a less endearing story. It is entirely possible they could go to Edgbaston uncomfortably placed at the bottom of the Championship.Midway through this match, Hampshire lead by 180 with nine second-innings wickets intact, a position made more secure in the final session by Jimmy Adams unbeaten 68.The plan now is bat and bat, said Liam Dawson. Well look to bat all day and see where it takes us. They might be bottom but that they have the capacity to grind out a batting day is beyond doubt.A Hampshire victory would send them above Notts in the table. Such an outcome would not just cause shivers in the East Midlands. Hampshire have long presumed to be relegation fodder and a victory would cause consternation for Surrey, Lancashire and Durham. Suddenly, the First Division relegation outcome would look likely to be contested deep into September.Quite how Nottinghamshire succumbed for 245, 74 behind on first innings, must have been a mystery for their combative captain, Chris Read, whose counter-attacking, unbeaten 70, full of attractive off-side drives, prevented total calamity. It was Family Fun day at Trent Bridge but only Read seemed to want to do much colouring in. He seems to have been staving off Nottinghamshire collapses for a lifetime and, by rights, his boyish dash should have been exhausted years ago.To make matters worse, Nottinghamshires morning collapse, in which they lost five for 77 in decent batting conditions, was engineered by Andy Carter, whose gangling pace bowling used to be at Notts service until he rejected a new contract and decamped to Derbyshire at the end of last season, only to abandon that in disgust after half a season because of his lack of Championship opportunities to join Hampshire, who at that point had so many injured fast bowlers they were almost reduced to looking for solutions in a Tesco bargain bucket.Read considered a bad day with consummate understatement. One day he will surely crack, grab everybody by the throat and promptly announce his retirement. Until then he merely said: It was a disappointing morning sessiion and ultimately, although it was a good fightback to get to 245, we were somewhat lacking in first innings runs.ddddddddddddndy Carter bowled nicely. We all like Andy here at Notts and weve fond memories of his time with us. Unfortunately for us he chose this moment to bowl a good opening spell. Weve not batted well all season; its one area we are trying to improve. We are working exceptionally hard behind the scenes to put things right but again we came unstuck.Hampshire went into the match with only Ryan McLaren taking his Championship wickets under 40s, but Carters debut gave them a bowler eminently capable of a hot spell or two, his Derbyshire return of six wickets for 73.33 best overlooked. An incisive pre-lunch spell underlined that as he removed three former team-mates for six runs in 12 deliveries.The nightwatchman, Jake Ball, hit his first delivery to Adam Wheater at midwicket, Riki Wessels found a bouncer from a former team-mate irresistible and holed out, fourth ball, at deep square leg, and Steven Mullaney chopped a rising delivery onto his stumps. Wessels has had an eye-catching one-day season and strange things can happen to an attacking player met by an old team-mate who bangs one in and suggests: Go on then, try to hit that for old times sake.When you need to dig in, Brendon Taylor is not your man. Neither does he immediately strike you as the sort of high-profile signing you want in a relegation battle. Since abandoning an unpredictable international career with Zimbabwe for the security of county cricket, he has produced the occasional destructive innings alongside rather too many lax dismissals to earn admiration in his new homeland.He fell to a good catch by Mason Crane at midwicket, off Gareth Berg, and soon afterwards Notts were 91 for 6 when Samit Patel was lbw, struck on the boot by Brad Wheal and hobbled off. He was the hero of Notts NatWest Blast quarter-final win and the crowd rose to him with great fondness, which was nice to see, but the sense will forever remain that it is impossible for Samit to cross the road without the intervention of a couple of moments of tragi-comedy.That left Read to find support from Michael Lumb - a restrained innings ending when he edged an attempted pull and became a fourth wicket for Carter - and some tail-end spanking from Luke Wood and, more unexpectedly, Imran Tahir, helped by a missed stumping off Dawson. Wood was unhinged by a short ball from McLaren which deflected off bat and helmet. Carters simple catch in the leg-side allowed Dawson to wrap up the innings with wickets in successive balls. Hampshire are still kicking for all they are worth. ' ' '