Decisões do TRF4 sobre comissões de heteroidentificação: epistemologias e moralidades em disputa?

Abstract

In Brazil, affirmative actions are questioned by allegations of fraud in the occupation of quotas reserved for black people, in a context where epidermal racism prevails in Brazilian society. The vigilance of the Black Social Movement has contributed to the advancement in the policy monitoring, with elements that refute self-declarations of candidates without a black phenotype who try to improperly access the policy. However, even after the standardization of heteroidentification as a criterion to support self-declaration, which gained traction from 2016 onwards, the debate remains heated. In this scenario, the southern region of the country, composed of Paraná (PR), Rio Grande do Sul (RS), and Santa Catarina (SC), stands out with the peculiarity that, in 2017, it concentrated most of the heteroidentification committees existing at that time in federal educational institutions in the country. In turn, in the federal judiciary of this same region, under the jurisdiction of the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4), a significant portion of decisions in favor of self-declarations rejected by the responsible committees was detected. But, how explain that people without a black phenotype are allowed, by judicial decisions, the right to occupy reserved affirmative action vacancies? This is the guiding thread of this investigation, which, from the perspective of public competitions and selections, examined the epistemologies and moralities that surround the senses of justice given by TRF4 judges in decisions on heteroidentification during the window from August 2016 to August 2021.Based on these markers, in the empirical field, 30 decisions were catalogued, in conjunction with the biography of the 11 subjects researched (judges of TRF4), creating a dataset that indicated the following findings: i) the existence of two main argumentative axis in the TRF4 decisions, named the theory of commission autonomy/legitimacy and the theory of the gray area/zone of reasonable doubt; ii) the presence of racial backlash in the TRF4 judicial decisions on heteroidentification that allow the improper occupation of racial quotas, in a logic delineated by the epistemological particularities of Brazilian racism.