Chamber of Deputies approves the Statute of Racial Equality
The special committee that analyzed the Statute of Racial Equality (PL 6264/05) approved, on Wednesday (9), the final writing of the substitute amendment of the rapporteur, deputy Antônio Roberto (PV-MG). The text foresees measures such as the stimulus for hiring black people in companies, the acknowledgement of capoeira as a sport, the detention of up to three years for those who practice racism in the Internet, the free practice of religious cults of African origin and the stimulus for productive activities of the black population in the field. The proposal was the result of more than six years of discussion in the Congress.
The substitutive was approved with amendments regarding the original text. Among them, there are the reduction from 30% to 10% of the proportion of black candidates that parties shall have in the elections; the removal of the compulsory reservation, in public universities, of seats for black students from public schools, in the same proportion as that of this ethnic group in the population; and the suppression of the item that defined who remained from quilombos.
Another amendment was the removal of the “equality” expression from the provision related to the hiring of black actors in artistic productions. Even with the amendments, Antônio Roberto emphasized: “The essence remains the same: the insertion of the black Brazilian people in the power spheres”.
The bill is analysed in conclusive character and will be sent to the Senate. One of the points of the agreement was that no appeal would be presented so that the bill was voted on the Chamber of Deputies’ Floor.
Acknowledgement of the inequality
According to the president of the special committee, Deputy Carlos Santana (PT-RJ), the amendments in the text are not significant. According to him, the fact that there is the acknowledgment of the black population inequality condition is already a conquest. “For those who are in slums, institutions, because there we are a majority, this is a victory”, he affirmed.
Participant of the negotiations that enabled the agreement, the Minister for Promotion of Racial Equality, Edson Santos, also greeted the acknowledgement of the inequality: “This document gives visibility to the presence of the black person in society, to the conditions in which he remained after the abolition of slavery and to the rights of which he was deprived”. We will be able to speed the repair of these problems by means of State public policies”.
Author of the first version of the statute bill in the Senate, in 2003, Senator Paulo Paim (PT-RS) celebrated the approval. He said he understood the amendments made in the bill: “The possible text was approved here, and that was what the social movement, very intelligently, knew how to do”.
Whereas Deputy Damião Feliciano (PDT-PB) complained of the amendments and said that “many conquests”, such as the education quotas, were prejudiced. “We are approving a dehydrated statute”, he evaluated. He stated that, initially, a quota of 20% of black actors was provided in the means of communication, percentage that was kept out of the final version.
From the Newsroom
Edition – Rosalva Nunes