Mobilizing to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court
Brazilian President Lula must soon appoint a new judge to replace the current Supreme Court chief who is retiring.
According to Brazilian media, two of President Lula’s favorites for the appointment are white.
AFP
Will Brazil’s Supreme Court soon appoint a black woman to its ranks for the first time in its history? The decision rests with President Lula, but activists are multiplying initiatives to “press” in this direction.
At the beginning of the week, one of the famous light screens in Times Square in New York repeatedly displayed an advertising spot calling for such a proposal, at the initiative of two Brazilian groups, the Institute for the Defense of the Black Population (Institute for the Defense of the Black Population. IDPN). , a coalition of lawyers and the Alliance for Black Rights, an association that defends racial equality.
“It is unacceptable that there are no black women in this court,” IDPN lawyer Karen Custodio told AFP on Thursday. “Though the current government is progressive, we see no sign of a black woman being appointed. We must press for this to change,” he asserted.
Two favorite white men
In October, leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could appoint a new judge after the current president of the Supreme Court, Rosa Weber, retires. But according to Brazilian media, the two front-runners for the nomination are white.
The video that aired in Times Square was taken from a short film that showed a small black girl saying she could be a singer, writer or gymnast, citing examples of black Brazilian personalities. But when his mother says he could be a Supreme Court judge, he says no one who looks like him has ever held that position.
Billboards in New Delhi, India, where President Lula recently participated in the G20 summit, have also been plastered with posters calling for the appointment of a black woman to the country’s Supreme Court. A team of 24 artists designed the posters that have been put up in several major cities in Brazil in recent days.
Two of the eleven are girls
In 132 years, only three black men have served as Supreme Court justices, and its ranks are currently white, with only two women out of eleven. According to the IBGE Statistics Institute, 56% of Brazilians are black or of mixed race.
Although black women make up more than a quarter of the total population, they make up only 7% of first-trial judges and 2% of appellate courts, according to data from the National Council of Justice (CNJ), a public body. The Amazon Indigenous Lawyers Network defends the Supreme Court nomination of Joenia Wapichana, Brazil’s first indigenous lawyer and currently president of Funai, a public organization for the protection of indigenous peoples.
AFP
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