"I say what's on my mind," McCarthy, who identifies as half Black, said in an interview. "I'm a polemicist." Her comments reflect a controversial stance on freedom of speech and racism.
The severe sentence, the longest ever meted out by the Brazilian justice system for the crime of racism, illustrates a mounting willingness in Brazil and across much of the world to criminalize racist speech.
Seven years after her bigoted attack on the Black girl, a federal judge in August convicted McCarthy, 35, of the crime of racism and handed her the type of penalty traditionally reserved for violent offenders and drug traffickers.
In recent years, South Africa sent its first person to prison for racist speech... and Spain gave eight-month prison sentences to three men who yelled racist taunts at a Brazilian soccer player.
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