2023-09-14 21:22:58
– Mobilization to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court
Brazilian President Lula must soon appoint a new judge to replace the current president of the Supreme Court, who is retiring.
Published: 09/14/2023, 11:22 p.m.
According to Brazilian media, President Lula’s two favorites for this nomination are white men.
AFP
Will Brazil’s Supreme Court soon have a black woman in its ranks, for the first time in its history? The decision rests with President Lula, but activists are multiplying initiatives to put “pressure” in this direction.
At the beginning of the week, one of the famous light screens in Times Square, in New York, repeatedly showed an spot calling for such a nomination, at the initiative of two Brazilian groups, the Institute for the Defense of the Black Population ( IDPN), a collective of lawyers, and the Coalition for Black Rights, an association defending racial equality.
Two favorite white men
In October, left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be able to appoint a new judge, following the retirement of Rosa Weber, current president of the Supreme Court. But according to Brazilian media, the two favorites for this nomination are white men.
The video broadcast in Times Square is taken from a short film which shows a little black girl saying that she might be a singer, a writer or a gymnast, taking examples from black Brazilian personalities. But when her mother tells her she might also be a Supreme Court justice, she says no one who looks like her has ever held that position.
Posters calling for the appointment of a black woman to the country’s highest court have also been placed on billboards in New Delhi, India, where President Lula recently took part in the G20 summit. A collective of 24 artists has also designed posters put up in recent days in several major Brazilian cities.
Two women out of eleven
In 132 years, only three black men have served as Supreme Court justices, which currently has only white people in its ranks, including only two women out of eleven. According to the IBGE statistics institute, 56% of Brazilians are black or mixed race.
And although black women represent more than a quarter of the total population, they make up only 7% of first instance judges and 2% in appeal courts, according to data from the National Council of Justice (CNJ ), a public body. The Amazon Indigenous Lawyers Network is also defending the appointment to the Supreme Court of Joenia Wapichana, Brazil’s first indigenous lawyer and currently president of Funai, a public organization for the defense of indigenous people.
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