Law 1,390, sanctioned on 3 July 1951, classified certain acts motivated by racial or color prejudice as criminal contraventions. The law followed public exposure of discrimination, including the exclusion of Black American artist Katherine Dunham from a São Paulo hotel. It was an important legal acknowledgment that racism existed, but it treated specified acts as lesser offenses and had limited reach and enforcement. Black activists’ documentation and pressure were central to making denial of racism harder to sustain.
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How did the Afonso Arinos Law classify certain racist acts in 1951?
The law criminalized specified acts of racial or color prejudice as contraventions, a limited legal category.
The 1951 Afonso Arinos Law made every form of racism a fully implemented constitutional crime.
It defined specified discriminatory acts as contraventions and had limited scope and enforcement.