Institutional Racism in the Legal System

Legal relationships exist in our daily lives and are often closer than we think. They come from buying a shoe packaged in the store with the wrong numbering, abusive fees charged to the bank account, the collision of a car or the death of a loved one.

These relationships are possible not exactly because of the Law, but because in the real world, between being born and dying, people work, acquire knowledge, produce wealth, make income, buy assets, become unemployed, have unforeseen contingencies of the most diverse natures and face other common life situations.

Therefore, people look for the legal system, which often involves the provision of services by a professional: the lawyer or even a public defender. There is no doubt that those involved in this legal system have the most diverse beliefs, education, opinion, religion and worldviews. But, when does race come into question?

Considering the 56% self-declared black, the contrasts observed between jurists and the Brazilian population demonstrate that structural racism has penetrated Brazilian legal institutions. This phenomenon is called by intellectuals “institutional racism”. Which means that in legal careers it doesn't take much effort to see racial inequality.

Unfortunately, the Brazilian Bar Association, which covers the national territory, does not disclose or carry out a census showing the number of black lawyers and interns who are active, leaving the private sector to observe this inequality.

In 2018, the Centro de Estudos das Relações de Trabalho e Desigualdades - CEERT, in partnership with the Aliança Jurídica pela Equidade Racial e a Fundação Getúlio Vargas, heard 3,624 people from the nine largest offices in São Paulo. The survey revealed that less than 10% of trainees at these law firms are black, further demonstrating that at the levels of junior, full, senior and partner lawyers the number of blacks does not reach 1%.

Likewise, in the Judiciary the numbers are not encouraging. According to the Conselho Nacional de Justiça, the National Council of Justice in Brazil, the last Census of the Judiciary, held in 2013. In the higher courts, racial disparity is evident, since 91.11% of the ministers are white compared to 8.9% blacks.

Regarding the prosecutors, the Center for the Study of Security and Citizenship - CESC of the Public Prosecutor's Office showed that 70% of the prosecutors and prosecutors are men, and of these 77% are white, against 22% blacks. The survey showed that the level of education of the prosecutors' parents is high. According to the survey, 60% of the fathers and 47% of the mothers of the interviewed prosecutors nad an university degree, in contrast to the average of the Brazilian population aged 50 and over, in which this proportion drops to 9% for men and 8 , 9% for women.

As a conclusion, we point that the Legal System are not similar to 56% of the Brazilian population. Although blacks are present in social, economic, legal and political relations, the structural condition of racism distances them from access to institutions and decision-making positions. For this reason, affirmative action, including in the public sector, is still the most effective way to reduce racial inequality in institutions, especially in the Legal System.

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