"Only I and my family know what I went through."

247 - Journalist Heraldo Pereira finally spoke publicly about the legal dispute he had with blogger Paulo Henrique Amorim since he began being discredited by his colleague for terms like "black man with a white soul" on the blog Conversa Afiada. This was in an interview about his career in journalism with the magazine. Race BrazilHeraldo says he was satisfied with the court decision that forced PHA to retract his statement, despite some "hickles" -- "my offender made other comments along with the retraction on the blog instead of simply publishing it as the court decision ordered."

"What I sought with a conviction, I achieved. He had to retract his statement," Heraldo told the magazine, in an interview that can be read in full by clicking [here]. hereBelow is the most compelling excerpt from Heraldo Pereira's account of the case:

Race Brazil - How did you receive the news about the conviction of journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim, who had to retract his statements and pay R$ 30 in damages? What did this episode represent for you?
Heraldo Pereira - To be precise, before the civil judge ruled on the compensation claim for moral and reputational damages, the defendant accepted everything I demanded as a form of reparation for the great injury I suffered: payment of R$ 30 to a charity, a full retraction on his own blog, which will remain archived for more than two years, and the publication of the same retraction, whose terms speak for themselves, in the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and Correio Braziliense. All paid for by him.

Race Brazil - Were you satisfied with the conviction?
Heraldo Pereira "What I sought with a conviction, I achieved. He had to retract his statements. It's a final sentence. Of course, there were setbacks. Despite signing the agreement in which he denies everything he had stated for three long years, my offender made other comments alongside the retraction on his blog instead of simply publishing it as ordered by the court decision. My lawyer, Dr. Paulo Roque Khouri, immediately informed Judge Daniel Felipe Machado of the 5th Civil Court of the TJDFT (Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories), who ordered the comments to be removed. This didn't happen in Correio Braziliense. And in Folha de S. Paulo, the retraction was only published late and in the São Paulo edition. All of this was still sent back to the judge to examine whether the agreement had been honored. In any case, I believe that the justice I expected in the civil area was largely done. And now, I await the outcome of the criminal proceedings, initiated by the Nucleus for Combating Discrimination of the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Federal District and Territories." I believe that in the criminal sphere, the offense will be doubly and appropriately punished as crimes of racism and racial slurs.

Race Brazil - What did Paulo Henrique Amorim's racism represent to you?
Heraldo Pereira - In today's world, no one can be offended, as I was, simply for being Black. The aggressor doesn't make a professional, political, or behavioral analysis of me. He makes an intolerant interpretation based on race. He always highlights the color of my skin as the distinguishing factor and demeans me in a cruel gesture. We Black people know very well what the defendant's intention was when he said that I, with more than 30 years of journalistic career and a master's degree in constitutional law, have "no attribute to be so successful, besides being Black and of humble origin." These are racist expressions that were followed by the ultimate jargon of intolerance: "he's a Black man with a white soul." It's something abhorrent, which I cannot accept, especially coming from someone who should make communication an ethical and democratic profession and not a tool of intolerance. Besides the other racial aggressions he made directly and admitted in the form of comments on his blog in his role as moderator. I am Black, and I have always been committed to fighting prejudice and intolerance since I was a boy. I come from a family of factory workers, domestic servants, people living in public housing complexes, and we have always suffered racism firsthand. I will not allow an individual who promotes what it means to be Black in his circles of late converts to leftism, all raised in the lap of luxury, to tell me what it means to be Black. In my veins runs, with great pride, the blood of those who were enslaved and helped build this country. We demand respect for the history of those who built Brazil. Therefore, I could not let this filthy campaign, tinged with envy, pass as if nothing had happened. It would not honor my past, nor the struggle of Black and white people who fight racism. My aggressor even said, in his legal defense, that he considers himself an exponent of the fight for racial equality, in a gesture of excessive arrogance. And he received a firm reprimand from the criminal judge of the TJDFT (Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories), Márcio Evangelista Ferreira da Silva, who stated that only those who see differences between races, a fact already refuted by genetics, support Lula for racial equality. In one of his defense arguments, the defendant even said that when he used the expression "black man with a white soul," he did so to compliment me. Can you believe that? Only my family and I know the pain I suffered reading all that garbage in written form. It's something indescribable and, deep down, will never be repaired, I know that well. Judge Daniel Felipe himself said this during the civil trial. However, I have always believed in Justice and I continue to believe.

Race in Brazil - What do you think about quotas and black movements?
Heraldo Pereira - I am frankly in favor of quotas, however, I respect those who think differently. Increasing the participation of Black people in the public sphere is a challenge facing those who envision a national project for Brazil. I have always defended this point of view. I am not an opportunistic propagandist. It was former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso who convinced me of the need for a tool to increase the representation of Black people in key positions in our society. During a break in one of my trips with the former president, when I was covering the presidential routine, we discussed the topic. He, in a professorial tone, spoke at length about the inclusion policies that should have been implemented since the First Empire. Now Brazil has shown maturity for such action and has made quotas a reality, with the approval of society. From now on, we need to implement practices stemming from this. I always think that any measure that can bring more education to Black people is positive, and education is everything. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the defense of quotas, which is widespread today, and the need to encourage any movement that aims to end racism.

In this aspect too, we must all be united, all of us, white and black citizens. I am against radicalism, something that, to be fair, I don't see in certain organizations that masquerade as black movements and that could not act freely to further propagate forms of intolerance disguised as hatred. Our challenge is to establish human rights as the backdrop for building a mature citizenship that, by rejecting all forms of racism and intolerance, can admit increasingly significant participatory inclusion practices in a public sphere that we all dream of. To conclude this episode of discrimination that involved me, I would like to mention prominent figures of Brazilian intellectual life such as Sueli Carneiro. She says that "a Black person can be corrupt, can act against the interests of their people. What we can do, in the face of this, is lament and fight them politically, never attributing this characteristic to their racial condition. That's where racism lies, in trying to find the reason for the "flaw" in the person's Blackness or in the supposed absence of this Blackness in a rule, as the phrase "Black person with a white soul" proposes." Ana Maria Gonçalves, when referring to this episode, summarized: "Paulo Henrique Amorim used Heraldo Pereira's skin color to attack him. It's racism, period. It's in the law. Those who disagree should fight to change the law, not so that Paulo Henrique Amorim is above it. Let them defend him because they consider him a good friend, a good journalist, a good human being; but let them understand that people like that can also have racist attitudes." I agree with both of you!