The Spanish Are Not Racist

The Spanish are not racist. The dominating ideology among our citizens is not consistent with Lévi-Strauss´ description of racism, which I already summarized somewhere else.

In Spain, we don´t believe that any meaningful correlation can be established between genetic heritage, intellectual capacity and moral disposition. Rather, we embrace an environmentalist model, seeing education as the essential factor in the configuration of the human being. That´s why the educational model is a source of perennial frictions between the different political factions, who try to impose their favoured social model, along with its characteristic moral values, by hijacking the schools for their ideology. Both genetics and individual responsibility in the management of freedom tend to fall into the background.

The Spanish tend to believe that the races account for relatively closed and homogeneous groups which share a common genetic heritage. In our country, we tend to pigeonhole individuals into one race or another, ignoring the Anthropological findings that disqualify the validity of a racial categorization. However, this criterion by itself doesn´t suffice to establish a racist ideology.

There are also some people among us who believe that races can be ranked according to the quality of their genetic heritage, but they are a small minority.

Regarding the last postulate of racism, the idea that superior races can, in justice, dominate, exploit or destroy the inferior ones, I believe it to be clear that this is not accepted in our country. On the contrary, just mentioning it causes scandal and rejection.

Thus, I reckon we can state that the Spanish are not racist.

The Spanish are not xenophobic. We don´t reject what is different, what comes from abroad, just because of its origin. Actually, we tend to accept acritically whatever idea, practice or technology coming from the rest of Europe or from the United States. We take it in wholesale, without stopping to think how to adapt it to fit in the singularities of our country. For example, in the last years of Franco´s dictatorship and in the first ones of our democracy, tourists from the North of Europe started coming to Spain to get undressed in our beaches. They sunbathed during their holidays, enjoying the sunshine they couldn´t find in their countries. We copied that without taking our circumstances into consideration. In most of the Spanish territory, solar radiation throughout the year is far higher than what can be found in Northern Europe. Thus, it becomes necessary to be mindful of the damage that an excess of solar radiation can cause on our skin.

What we actually are, the Spanish, is intolerant. We think there is a single right way to do things, even a single right way to be, and we find it difficult to accept any deviation from that standard. Back in the XVII century, we squandered our empire in wars of religion with which we tried to impose Catholic orthodoxy in all of Europe. Nowadays, our values are not those of the XVII century, but we defend them with a similar intolerance.

The rejection towards some human communities whose culture differs from the dominant models in our environment stems from this intolerance, not from racism or xenophobia. Migrants from certain countries might find a rejection that relates with our assessment of their culture, not with their genetics. This rejection is more intense if their economic situation is precarious. When these immigrants adopt our generally accepted cultural norms, and remarkably, if their economic situation is buoyant, rejection disappears.

Our intolerance is not limited to foreigners from certain countries. It´s easy to find it focusing on autochthonous minorities, whose members have suffered it for centuries.

In fact, there is not a single canon of acceptable values. There are two. The two opposing Spains face each other from similar intolerant stances, and consider approaching the points of view of the other as baseness

In some cases, the expression of intolerance and rejection stemming from the narrow interpretation of some values gets stifled when the opposing view dominates the public discourse. Then, some ideas are hidden and excluded from the social dialogue for fear of being criticized. Thus, they get exacerbated until they explode violently or trigger a swing of the pendulum. In these last cases, the dominating values can switch, while the intolerance with which they are supported remains.

The Spanish need to learn to better tolerate the ideas we don´t share, which doesn´t mean reaching the extremes of relativism.  We need to dialogue more and to understand the need to include in the public space other points of view. Thus, we could live together more easily and help ideas ripen. We better wise up after centuries of holding the same intolerant spirit that supported the Inquisition.