Brazil's Crackdown on Racist Speech: Social Media Figure Faces Record 8-Year Prison Sentence

Few countries are as aggressive as Brazil in prosecuting racist speech. Between 2020 and 2023, the number of cases soared fivefold, from 794 to 4,871 prosecutions, according to government crime statistics. This shift reflects Brazil's strict legal approach, which treats racist speech as a crime, unlike in the United States, where such expressions often fall under free speech protections. Brazilian law also bans personal attacks that offend someone's honor and threats to democracy, prioritizing human dignity over unrestricted speech.

This legal framework recently led to the country's harshest penalty for racism. Day McCarthy, a 35-year-old social media provocateur, was sentenced in August to eight years and nine months in prison for racist remarks made in 2017. Her comments targeted Títi, the adopted Black daughter of two prominent Brazilian actors, Bruno Gagliasso and Giovanna Ewbank, parents of three children, including two adopted from Malawi. McCarthy referred to the child as a "monkey" and questioned how a Black girl could belong to "White people with blue eyes."

McCarthy, who lives in Paris, is appealing the sentence, and no arrest warrant has been issued, as reported by The Washington Post. Still, the verdict underscores a growing judicial commitment to holding individuals accountable for discriminatory speech.

"This crime has historically been met with minimal consequences, like community service," said Lívia Vaz, a prosecutor in Bahia state focused on racial intolerance. "Now, we're seeing more arrests and prison sentences."

The rise in prosecutions aligns with broader societal changes in Brazil. Once considered relatively free of racial tension, the country has begun confronting its legacy as the primary destination for enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. The 2020 global reckoning on race, spurred by George Floyd's killing in the U.S., further galvanized efforts to address racism domestically.

Cases like McCarthy's are part of this shift. After her video circulated online, Gagliasso filed a police report, compiling evidence of McCarthy's remarks. In court, he described the profound impact on his family, emphasizing that such attacks extend beyond individual victims to society at large.

McCarthy acknowledged that her comments were racist, explaining that she understood the pain caused by abusive language because she had experienced it herself. "This is what people told me when I was a kid," she said to the media outlet. "I was bullied because I was overweight, because I was the daughter of a Black man, because I didn't have any money, because I came from a poor neighborhood."

Years later, McCarthy used social media to provoke celebrities and target their children with harsh criticism. She compared one celebrity's daughter to the horror movie doll Chucky, insulted the son of a television broadcaster, made baseless claims about Brazilian singer Anitta, and burned the Bible.

Brazil's stance mirrors global trends. In South Africa, a man was jailed for racist speech, and Spain recently sentenced three men to eight months for taunting a Brazilian soccer player. In Brazil, the creation of specialized police and prosecutorial units has reinforced enforcement. For instance, in Bahia, a state with a predominantly Black population, a specialized military police unit now patrols to identify and address cases of racism and racial intolerance. Additionally, the state's public ministry has established a dedicated prosecutorial team tasked exclusively with pursuing cases of bigotry.

Ewbank and Gagliasso declined to be interviewed or provide written responses for the article published by The Washington Post. The couple has become outspoken advocates for racial justice, frequently criticizing structural racism in a society where the majority population is Black or mixed-race, yet economic and political power remains largely in the hands of White elites.