MAYARA SAID: "I’m tired of having to show the OAB to enter the fórum every day".

I went to college to study the course of my dreams: LAW. The third year of college I became a legal trainee and I frequented the criminal court and tribunals [fórum] of the justice system. Right away those first days I noticed the obvious absence of Blacks and, even more obvious, Black women in these spaces that decide and are all the time more influential in society. The hours of the fórum are from 9:00am to 7:00pm for lawyers and trainees with an OAB [Brazilian bar association] card, and from 12:30pm to 7:00pm for the general public. Because at the beginning I didn’t have the OAB and I only went during general hours, when I was able to get the OAB trainee card I started to go during the exclusive hours because it was faster and saved time. But, even always going to the same fórums that I had already frequented and always having the same security guards there, every day they asked to see my alforria [Br. act that permitted liberation of slaves] card, that’s to say, my card from the Bar. Maybe it seems strange that I’m complaining that I have to show my documentation to enter the place that is exercising its capacity, but the question is this, the rule should be for everyone. In a sample of 10 white lawyers, 2 (I’m guessing high here) present their Bar cards to prove they should be in the area at whatever time, and with the same sample with black lawyers we observe that the reality is not the same. We don’t question that we have to show the card that gives us so much pride, and yes everybody should have to show it, not only as a way of legitimizing the presence of a black woman in the halls of justice. Last week I was barred by a cop who, aside from the fact I was well-dressed, told me that the end of the line to enter the fórum for the general public at 12:30 was at the left.  OK, if it’s hard for them to imagine me as a law student, imagine now with a lawyer’s card that is already in our hands?!?!