How does racial violence occur on the internet? How do these cases end up in the Brazilian justice system? These are two of the questions we have been trying to answer through a jurisprudential research that is part of a larger project: “Security of the Black Brazilian population: how does the Judicial system respond to individual and institutional episodes of racial violence“. The project was created by the Núcleo de Justiça Racial e Direito da Faculdade Getúlio Vargas de São Paulo (Racial Justice and Law Center at the Getúlio Vargas University of São Paulo) and is a partnership with Afro Cebrap and InternetLab.

Starting from the assumption that racial violence, whether in the form of racist discourse, racist insults, or institutional racism, is a consequence and a reiteration of the racial inequalities that mark the Brazilian reality, we understand that the way the justice system deals with and addresses episodes of racial violence exposes the dynamics of structural racism in the Brazilian Judiciary. The internet is thus an important field to be observed, hence the need to pay attention to how the Brazilian justice system has perceived these cases.

The research project adopts a quantitative-qualitative approach to analyze databases from state and federal courts to discover patterns regarding the treatment of racial issues by the Judiciary. The research is organized into four axes of analysis: the application of anti-racism legislation (racial insult and racism crime); judicial debate on the concept of reasonable suspicion in police stops and searches; compensation for racial insult cases; and the judicialization of cases of racism on the internet.