Political parties are hostile environments for black people. The observation made by Vanessa Nascimento, executive director of the Instituto de Referência Negra Peregum ( Peregum Institute of Black Reference), takes into account the difficulties encountered by those who are part of this group and decide to join an association.
"Particularly those who come from the black movement and act according to the logic of social movements", he says.
Among the problems faced is campaign financing. "The distribution of resources is clearly very uneven when we take the race factor into account."
A survey carried out by Uerj (Rio de Janeiro State University), in partnership with the Peregum Institute, points out that white men, who correspond to 21% of the total population of the country, have won 65% and 61% of the spots for state deputy in 2014 and 2018, respectively.
In the running for federal deputy, white men were elected four times more than black men, six times more than white women, and over 20 times more than black women.
"As we often repeat, as long as there is racism, there will be no democracy. It is necessary to understand who is this democracy that Brazil talks so much about made for", says the director.
Translated by Cassy Dias