MADRID – A new campaign by the Spanish Postal Service to condemn racism has backfired, offending many people with a series of stamps in skin tones – the lighter the hue, the more valuable the stamp.
The Equality Stamps were issued this week to mark the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, the black man whose murder by a Minneapolis police officer fueled outrage on the American streets and led to widespread calls for the fight against racism in the United States and America Furthermore. The release of the stamps also coincided with the European Diversity Month.
Moha Gerehou, the author of a new book on racism in Spain, said on Twitter that he understood the postal service was well meant – but said it was badly fired.
It is “a huge contradiction”, he wrote, “a campaign that launches stamps with different values depending on the color to show the same value in our lives. The news is an absolute disaster. “
The cost of the postage starts at € 0.70 (85 cents) for the darkest color, and as the hue becomes progressively lighter, the value for the pale color increases steadily to € 1.60.
The postal service said on Twitter that the pricing was aimed at “reflecting an unfair and painful reality that shouldn’t be,” and that it had hoped the campaign would “give a voice to a generation committed to equality and diversity starts “.
However, some critics said that message was easily lost and that the campaign played into the hands of Vox, the far-right party that became the third largest group in the Spanish parliament after the elections in late 2019.
Mr Gerehou, the author and a Spanish native of Gambian descent, said the postal service had joined an anti-racism push that had spread from the United States to Spain. But he said such efforts “must be accompanied by profound changes”.
The campaign was designed with the help of SOS Racismo, an anti-racism organization, and promoted in a video by El Chojín, a rap artist.
SOS Racismo defended the stamps as “a very visual way of denouncing the racism that affects thousands of people in the Spanish state”.
The group said the campaign also highlighted broader issues such as the rise in xenophobia in Europe and the plight of migrants preparing to make the dangerous journey from North Africa and the Middle East across the Mediterranean to Spain.
