The Sharpeville massacre that resulted in the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

On March 21, 1960, more than 20 South Africans were taking part in a peaceful protest in the Sharpeville neighborhood of Johannesburg when police opened fire on protesters, killing 69 people and injuring 186. The reason for the protest: the Pass Law, which forced all black people to carry a booklet containing the places they could go.

The brutal violence of the episode, which became known as the Sharpeville Massacre, gained great international repercussion and a wave of repudiation of the Apartheid regime — which only ceased to exist in 1994.

historical reparation

In 1979, the United Nations (UN) established the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in honor of the victims of the massacre. Every year, the United Nations defines a theme for reflection on the subject. This year, the theme chosen was the urgency of combating racism 75 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Seventy-five years ago, for the first time the international community agreed on a set of common values ​​and recognized that rights are inherent to each human being and not granted by the State”, says the UN text.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone is entitled to all rights and freedoms, without distinction of any kind, such as race and color, among others. However, racism and racial discrimination continue to affect people around the world.”

Racism in Brazil is evident in political representation

A series of indices that measure income, employment, education, access to healthcare and mortality, among others, show that there are still stark differences between the black, indigenous and white populations. The same happens in relation to electoral representation.

In São Paulo, according to the 2021 National Household Sample Survey, carried out by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), 58,4% of the state's population declares themselves white, 32,8% mixed race and 7,2% % black.

In the last Census, in 2010, 63,9% of São Paulo residents declared themselves white, 29,1% mixed race, 5,5% black, 1,4% yellow and 0,1% indigenous. However, in the 2022 elections, according to data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), of the 70 federal deputies who were elected for São Paulo, 59 (84,3%) declared themselves white; brown, 5 (7,1%); black, 3 (4,3%); indigenous people, 2 (2,9%); and yellow, 1 (1,4%).

Furthermore, of the 1.031 candidates who declared themselves white, 5,7% were elected. Among the 484 brown and black candidates, this percentage was just 1,6%. White candidates had 80,54% of the more than 22,3 million votes in the state. Brown women obtained 7,53%, black women 6,6%, yellow women 1,93% and indigenous women 1,39%.

These numbers may indicate both the racial prejudice still latent in society and the lack of formation, on the part of political parties, of more competitive black candidates.

“Black people make up a huge part of our society, but we realize that there is no equivalence in representation in the Legislature. I think this happens not because of a lack of social representation, as there are several sectors in which they are represented, such as the arts, unions and others. But there is difficulty in transforming these leaders into candidates, and this involves political parties. It is difficult to overcome this bottleneck in political organization”, says the president of TRE-SP, judge Paulo Galizia.

(Source: TRE-SP)

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