Black lawyers advance, but inequality prevails – 04/23/2023 – Politics

The presence of black lawyers in large São Paulo law firms went from less than 1% in 2019 to 11% in 2022. The advance reflects the adoption of inclusion policies in a career dominated by the upper-class white male profile.

The data is part of a survey by Ceert (Center for the Study of Labor Relations and Inequalities) with the Legal Alliance for Racial Equity, formed by 12 of the largest law firms in São Paulo (BMA, Demarest, Lefosse, Machado Meyer, Mattos Filho, Pinheiro Neto, TozziniFreire, Trench Rossi Watanabe, Veirano, Cescon Barrieu, Felsberg and Stocche Forbes).

Daniel Bento, director of the study center, says that these companies guided the theme of racial equity through hiring focused on black professionals, internships, training in human resources and discussion groups.

This inclusion, however, does not exemplify a change in the culture of offices across the country. Bento claims that the gap between the number of graduates and those hired shows that newsstands still have a rigid view of racism.

“Common sense associates racism with episodes of racial discrimination, but this is one of the forms. Racism is a system of oppression, which hierarchizes lives according to their ethnic-racial belonging”, he says.

Discussion on the topic should be part of the structure of the entire company, rather than being restricted to “a ghetto”.

There are about 1.34 million lawyers in the country, according to OAB data. Of the more than 635,000 professionals registered since 2011, 170,000 declare themselves brown and 41,000 black. Together, they represent 33%.

The percentage of black professionals who joined the Order before is unknown.

The lack of understanding about structural racism is repeatedly seen by lawyer Thayna Yaredy, founding partner of Gema Consultoria. The company formed by women provides services in the field of equity compliance.

She claims that several companies still maintain the single black thinking, with the hiring of only one black man and one black woman. “There is difficulty in understanding that the expansion benefits the company as a whole, which needs to be institutionally incorporated for it to be something structuring.”

For Estevão Silva, president of Anan (National Association of Black Advocacy), there is a pre-established black person profile for hiring. “If the person wears a turban or bandana, they don’t accept it. Offices prefer the bald black.”

Lawyer Ana Carolina Lourenço, who is part of the civil litigation area and the diversity and inclusion committee at the Machado Meyer office, says that before joining the company, she spent years straightening her hair to be accepted, something crucial for low self-esteem.

“There was never another black person in the same place as me. The legal environment was not one of belonging, but of exclusion. It is no use just bringing in interns without making this an environment that values ​​the black person. It is necessary that the offices understand that black hair it’s also good looking.”

The office did not disclose the total number of employees, but said that 19% are black.

Yaredy, from Gema, draws attention to the intersection of prejudices in hiring.

“There is a profoundly uninitiated debate about recognizing the difficulty of access, especially for dark, fat black women who are not from the South East, in the workspaces and leadership positions of large offices.”

Silva, from Anan, adds that exclusion appears in the distribution of more visible processes, which are not given to black lawyers. There are also few black professionals who come to court to make oral arguments. “This inclusion is only inside the door. And in the back room”, he says.

A common bottleneck is the requirements in terms of training. He states that preference is given to graduates from USP, FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas), PUC (Pontifical Catholic University) and Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, but most black professionals come from other institutions.

Fluent English as a prerequisite and the appreciation of training abroad are other factors that hinder both the admission and the rise of these lawyers.

President of the OAB São Paulo Racial Equality Commission, lawyer and doctor of law Irapuã Santana calls these demands “false use of meritocracy”.

“There are two different rules, one for people the firm knows, the so-called IQ, and another for those who do not have this network in the legal market. This formal barrier is placed under the cover of meritocracy. For friends, we give everything , for the enemies, the law”, he says.

Lawyer Fabiane Silva da Silva says that she grew up in a favela in Porto Alegre (RS), the daughter of a single mother, and was told that the right was not for her. A black woman with no family in between, she would be “a jailhouse lawyer”.

She started another graduation, through quotas, but in the academic environment she realized that she could indeed be a lawyer and took the entrance exam again. In the class at UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), in 2015, she says she was the only black woman among 70 students.

“It was five years of resisting. Missing classes because of the curfew in the community and because I didn’t have a school ticket.”

During her internship at the Court of Justice, she was the only black woman on the floor, mistaken for the elevator operator or someone from the cleaning staff. Graduated, in the selection processes she was the person who faced extra steps to prove her ability.

For over a year, Fabiane has worked in the labor area at RMMG Advogados, where she is part of the diversity, inclusion and sustainability group. She defends the creation of hiring quotas and says that diversity benefits everyone.

“White people in big offices live in bubbles. When we start to break that bubble and make the environment more diverse, they start to know other stories, understand that the world is not just what they live in and contribute to those differences diminish”, he says.

The office gave lectures on the subject and launched a booklet on inclusive terms. Eugênio Hainzenreder Júnior, one of the partners and creators of the project, recognizes that progress is still needed. Of 109 banking professionals, four are black.

At graduation, lawyer Alessandra Benedito was also the only black student in the room. Today she is a professor and coordinator at USP of the Include Law Project, created in 2016 by Cesa (Center for the Study of Law Firms), in partnership with Mackenzie, to prepare black students for selection processes at law firms.

The project has an interracial team and was created by white lawyers, one of them Carlos José Santos da Silva, president of Cesa’s board. He claims he was alerted to the existence of bias in the offices. “We hire equals, promote equals and develop equals.”

The project had 230 students in public and private universities in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul. For Benedito, the offices that want to hire these students need to go through a process of racial literacy to promote equity.

“There are offices that were not used to receiving black people and that means that we are challenged every day. Those who receive them need to understand that they arrive with a suitcase full of possibilities for building an office with broader and more diverse ideas” , it says.