Antiracism legislation in Brasil: approaching the application of the law in the Brazilian courts

Abstract

The paper presents the main results of an empirical research on decisions in cases concerning racism, racial discrimination and racial slander handed down by Brazilian Appeal Courts. We analyzed 200 decisions from 1998 to 2010 that are available on the online databanks of the Appeal Courts of nine Brazilian Federal States (Acre, Bahia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Rondônia, Rio Grande do Sul e São Paulo). The data presented allows us to discuss the current diagnosis about how the Brazilian Judiciary deals with racism and racial discrimination and to understand the potential and limitations of the existing legal instruments to confront the social problems of racism in Brazil. In the introduction of the paper, we present a brief explanation about the history of Brazilian punitive antiracist statutes, and we discuss the existing research in this field. Afterwards we explain our methodological choices used to construct this research and how we interpreted the data collected. In section three, we present our main quantitative findings. Finally, we discuss it critically and make some considerations about the strategy of the social movements involving the juridification of racism via criminal law. We also raise some questions for a future research agenda.

Keywords

• legislação antirracismo
• movimento social
• movimento negro brasileiro
• juridificação de demandas sociais
• pesquisa empírica em decisões judiciais