Racial Discrimination in Portugal: The Shame Numbers
Despite the characteristics attributed to national and international organizations, there is no ethno-racial data in Portugal. Even so, several investigations and reports have been showing that structural and institutional racism in our country translates into various inequalities.
According to the European Social Survey – Portugal, 2020, 55% of the Portuguese express some form of racism, considering that there are races superior to others. Furthermore, 71% of Portuguese people have a pro-white bias, that is, they associate more positive feelings with white people more automatically than with black people (racial prejudice around the world, Coutts, A., 2020).
However, an ICS / ISCTE survey, from 2020, shows that 52% of the Portuguese believe that, in Portugal, there is less ethnic-racial discrimination than in other European countries.
notwithstanding the UN recommendation to do so, the associations of Afro-descendant associations, and the calls of the Left Block in this regard, there is no ethno-racial data in Portugal. This absence prevents us from having information about the discriminations they are subjected to as racialized people in Portugal, as well as guidelines that can, to avoid, fight this scourge.
Even so, despite the lack of official statistics on ethno-racial origin in Portugal, several investigations and reports have shown that structural and institutional racism in our country translates into various inequalities.
Racialized people are over-represented in jobs that are less socially valued, with lower wages and more exposed to labor exploitation processes, as in the case of the cleaning sector, civil construction, etc.
Data from the National Institute of Statistics for 2011 show that twice as many people with PALOP nationality were unemployed. The report of the Being Black in the EU: 2nd Survey on Minorities and Racial Discrimination, 2019, points out, in turn, that 26% of Afro-descendants worked in low-skilled professions, which show physical effort.
According to the 2011 Census, there are four times more Portuguese in positions of representation of power, leaders or managers, and five times more Portuguese in intellectual or scientific activities than PALOP citizens. In the first case, it is 3% against 0.8% and, in the second case, 6.1% against 1.3%.
O 2nd Inquiry on Minorities and Discrimination in the European Union – Roma, FRA, 2016, explains that 74% of Portuguese Roma had “great subsistence difficulties”.
Colonial logics of city organization persist, which are also reflected in the territorial segregation of racialized people, concentrated in peripheral neighborhoods where the presence of the Welfare State is scarce or non-existent. In these spaces, they often occupy unhealthy dwellings. Neighborhoods are served by transport that, practically, only serve to travel to and from the workplace. For example, it is necessary to take, early in the morning, the black women who are going to clean up the cities. And at night it is necessary to ensure that racialized people do not occupy urban public spaces.
O National study on Roma communities, of 2014, it was reported that 27.5% of Portuguese gypsies live in tents or tents. Based on data from the National Institute of Statistics for 2011, seven times more people with PALOP nationality live in “rudimentary” broadcasts.
In a 2014 Migration Observatory study that uses data from the last Census, it is shown that the percentage of Portuguese homeowners was 75%, compared to 35% of citizens of Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP). There is also “the over-representation of immigrants in precarious, overcrowded areas, without basic and mandatory infrastructure in run-down and stigmatized neighborhoods”, the document adds.
The report of the Being Black in the EU: 2nd Survey on Minorities and Racial Discrimination, 2019, reveals that 29% of Afro-descendants in Portugal live in a situation of housing shortage, while the European average is 5%.
As far as education is concerned, the majority of African secondary school students are only oriented towards vocational courses, thus barred from entering higher education. A 2016 study shows that 80% of PALOP students are referred to vocational education at secondary level and that five times fewer African descendants of Cape Verdean, Guinean and Santomean origin access higher education, compared to white Portuguese me.
The presence of blacks in the academy is practically nil.
According to data from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance of the Council of Europe (ECRI), 90% of children leave school before completing compulsory education (often between 10 and 12 years of age), while the rate of dropout is 14% for the general population. already the 2nd Inquiry on Minorities and Discrimination in the European Union – Roma, FRA, 2016, reports that 91% of young Roma (18-24) in Portugal leave education and training early and that 69% of Portuguese Roma over 45 have not completed any level of formal education.
Ten times more PALOP citizens over 16 years old are stuck in portugal, compared to the number of Portuguese (1/736). “There are jails, like Linhó, where there are practically only black inmates and many are Portuguese”, recalls sociologist António Pedro Dores, who has already made several allegations of human rights violations in prisons. “Everyone understands that the police, as well as the courts and prisons, make a distinction between groups of people, namely Africans.”
Furthermore, 6.8% of African prisoners are sentenced to a maximum sentence against 3% of Portuguese. Conversely, 12.4% have a sentence of one to three years, while this percentage for the Portuguese is 25.3%. Magistrates and other agents of the judicial system recognize that there are two courts, one for blacks and the other for whites.
These are particularly glaring cases such as the 23-year-old Danijoy Pontes, sentenced to six years in prison for theft of mobile phones on the subway. It was the first time that Danijoy had committed a crime. The events leading to his conviction took place within the space of just 15 days. Or the case of Éder Fortes, who was imprisoned from 18 to 24 years old in the establishment in Caxias, in Oeiras, because the court wrongly convicted him of the theft of a cell phone. O “Express” newspaper he called the judgment “biased and racist”. The young man was only released on Christmas 2010, after a pardon from Aníbal Cavaco Silva.
Despite all this evidence, 80% of complaints for discrimination in education, housing and security security made to the Commission for Equality and Against Racial Discrimination (CICDR) were filed between 2006 and 2016ii.
i Afro-descendants in the Portuguese education system, Roldão, C., Abrantes, P., 2016