Afro-Brazilian woman now Brazil's minister of human rights and citizenship

Newly appointed Human Rights and Citizenship Minister Luislinda Valois is Brazil's first black judge, and also the first to have issued a ruling based on the Racism Law. Before occupying her position, she was a teacher at the Military School of the Army in Paraná, and also a prosecutor at the government agency now called National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT).

Born in 1942 in Salvador, state capital of Bahia, Valois is the daughter of a motorman and an ironing lady and washerwoman. Her grandmother was a slave. Valois says that once, as a little girl, a teacher requested students to buy drawing material, and, poor as her family was at the time, her father could only buy cheap, low-quality material. Valois says the teacher saw her supplies and said she should “quit studying and start learning how to make feijoada in the house of white folks.” She wept, but allegedly answered: “I'll be a judge and have you arrested!”

Career in law

At that point, somehow she decided to pursue a career in law, which she was only able to begin in 1984, when she passed a public examination in Bahia, which saw her sent to the judicial district of Paramirim. Since then, she has served in 17 state judicial districts. When she was transferred to Salvador, she devised projects such as the Itinerant Justice, by land and sea, as well as the program Justice, School, and Citizenship.

In 2009, Valois launched the book O negro no século XXI (something like “Being black in the 21st century”), a collection of articles on culture, education, public policies, social justice and religion, permeated with the black experience in post-emancipation Brazil. Valois was promoted to appellate judge at the Justice Court of Bahia in 2001, becoming the first black woman to reach this post in Brazil. In 2012, she was awarded with the title of Ambassador of Peace by the UN.

Career in politics

A member of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) since 2013, she was appointed in 2016 as head of the Special Secretariat of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR), already under Temer. The secretariat has recently undergone an overhaul and was turned into the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship.

Among her priorities as a minister are the full implementation of the Statue of Racial Equality and Law 10,639/2003—which brings the Afro-Brazilian history and culture into the mandatory school curriculum—and the adoption of initiatives aimed at raising awareness about respect to religions originated in Africa, the inclusion of black men and women in high government posts, and a reduction in the number of black young people murdered in impoverished communities.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira