When I only read the headline at first, I thought: the object level decision sounds good, but I'm worried this went via the judges, not lawmakers.
Funny enough, when I open the article, I see that Brazil's President of Senate had exactly the same complaint.
Something curious from the article:
> Brazilian drug law states that it is a crime to buy, keep, transport or bring drugs for personal use, in this case with a light penalty. Each judge can decide what quantity or amount of marijuana is consistent with personal use or drug trafficking. According to top judges that vote in favor of the decriminalization, this perception reinforces bias, especially against poor and Black people.
I would like to see the original quote from the judge here. I doubt the original talked about 'Black people' the same way that (translated) phrase would be understood by an American audience.
EDIT: https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-supreme-court-decriminalizes-m... gives the name of the judge.
> Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said these existing laws disproportionately harm "young people, especially Black people, who are treated as drug traffickers for possessing small amounts."
So let's see if that's enough to dig up the original quote in Brazilian.
Another update: https://www.poder360.com.br/justica/leia-frases-de-moraes-so... has was it likely the source of the English phrase:
> Ao defender sua posição, o magistrado escreveu, por exemplo, que “os jovens, em especial os negros (pretos e pardos), analfabetos, são considerados traficantes com quantidades bem menores de drogas (maconha ou cocaína) do que os maiores de 30 anos, brancos e portadores de curso superior”.
The important bit here being 'negros (pretos e pardos)'. A literal translation for 'negros' would indeed by 'blacks', but I wonder what the exact connotations in Brazil are.
Wikipedia has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Brazilians
The whole article is interesting, but here's something relevant to US cultural influence:
> According to Edward Telles,[22] three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum are used in Brazil.[23] The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: branco (White), pardo, and preto.[23] The second is the popular social system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term moreno (literally meaning "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion").[24] The third is the Black movement, which distinguishes only two categories, summing up pardos and pretos ("blacks", lowercase) as negros ("Blacks", with capital initial), and putting all others as "whites".[25] More recently, the term afrodescendente has been adopted for use,[26] but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" associated with the United States.
> Sociologist Simon Schwartzman points out that to "substitute negro for preto, suppressing the pardo alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which would not be true."[41]