After decades of poor representation in the Brazilian judiciary, there is now a bold campaign to get President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to nominate the first-ever Black female justice to Brazil’s highest court.
Black Women Decide, an organization fighting the underrepresentation of women of color in institutional politics, is leading the campaign to right what has been described as a “historical injustice” against Black women.
Tainah Pereira, political coordinator of Black Women Decide, said it is mind-boggling that women make up 51% of the population, and Afro-Brazilians 56%, but no Black woman has ever sat on the highest court.
“It’s absurd to think that in a country that is more than 50% Black, and where Black women are almost a third of the population, there has never been a Black female justice,” she said.
Her organization and other civil society groups are worried that both demographics have been chronically underrepresented in state institutions, especially in the upper levels of the judiciary.
In its 132-year history, the Brazilian supreme court has only ever had six judges who weren’t white and male – three white women and three Black men.
Lula da Silva will soon nominate a new judge to the country’s top tribunal after Chief Justice Rosa Weber reaches the compulsory retirement age of 75 in October.
Experts believe that addressing the appalling lack of diversity on the majority-male, all-white bench would allow the court to better serve all Brazilian citizens.
A criminal attorney and executive director of the Black Female Lawyers organizatoins thinks it is nearly impossible for South American country to judge a majority-Black population with no representation in the courts.
Another legal expert, Ingrid Farias, who is coordinating a campaign for representation at the highest echelons of Brazil’s judiciary spearheaded by the Black Coalition for Rights also believes the absence of diversity in the Brazilian judiciary has a practical impact on the Black population’s lack of access to rights.
