Human rights and people living on the streets: reflections from a slave-owning Brazil

Abstract

To discuss human rights and homeless people – predominantly black – in Brazil, we must delve into the anti-black legal crime that has been rooted in the legal apparatus since the colonial period. Additionally, we must employ critical, racialized readings to break with the fallacy of Brazilian racial democracy, the commonplace of equality and universality between black and non-black people in equal conditions of enjoying rights and accessing public policies. This essay seeks to provide elements that help us address the following question: does the notion of human rights, constructed from the perspective of a universal subject – implicitly referring to the European white – which underpins public policies directed at the homeless population in Brazil, contemplate the racial issues that condition and determine the lives of the black population? To this end, we will take as a basis for reflection the discussion on colonialism and coloniality; Brazilian social formation; the historical violation of the human rights of the black population; the approach to human rights present in major international and national frameworks; and epistemologies that contribute to the debate in a committed way when speaking of the place of (re)existence.