Maybe it’s just me, but when you’re busy repressing an entire region and running a police state, maybe focus on your domestic equality issues instead of jumping on the George Floyd bandwagon to lecture about a social problem from another country you can’t relate to, but that your country was historically responsible for.
And if you insist on doing it anyway, I can’t think of a worse possible way to do it than the Spanish approach.
Spain’s postal service is feeling a backlash from its attempt to highlight racial inequality.
The postal service calls them “Equality Stamps” and introduced them on the anniversary of George Floyd being killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. It said the stamps “reflect an unfair and painful reality that shouldn’t be allowed” and that every letter or parcel sent with them would “send a message against racial inequality.”
Despite a whole lot of immigration, Spain doesn’t have very many black people. So I’d view this as another lame European attempt at exploiting an American problem with some virtue signaling.
But it was some very misguided virtue signaling.
State-owned Correos España this week issued a set of four stamps in different skin-colored tones. The darker the stamp, the lower the price. The lightest color costs 1.60 euros ($1.95). The darkest one costs 0.70 euros ($0.85).
Who could have guessed this would offend anyone?
The main thrust of the public criticism was that the darker stamps have a lower value, giving the impression that a light skin color is worth more.
Moha Gerehou, a 28-year-old Spanish author and a former president of SOS Racismo Madrid, said that was “an insurmountable contradiction.”
“At the end of the day, an anti-racism campaign has put out a clearly racist message,” Gerehou told the Associated Press on Friday.
Most anti-racism campaigns do.
Leave a Reply