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Putting discrimination in context
1. Liquid racism
Fernando Rey Martínez
Professor of Constitutional Law. University of Valladolid
Ex-chairman of the State Council for Racial Equality.
I.
Is there racism in Spain?
Despite all of the advances made, despite the fact that
Spain’s co-existence model between social groups is
better in many aspects than in other European coun-
tries, why is there still powerful resistance to ethnic
equality? The reason is that the victories are in the fight
against the consequences of the problem, not its caus-
es. And that is because in Spain racism is very powerful
but is hardly perceived as such; often not even by the
victims. The reason? The main form of racism in our so-
ciety is unconscious and accepted as something normal
or natural; it is low intensity. It is a type of racism that,
with the permission of Zygmunt Bauman, I’ve chosen to
call liquid racism in juxtaposition to the classic “solid”,
violent and conscious racism.
We Spaniards are scandalised of even the thought
of racism which is prohibited in the daily diet of po-
litical ideas. That explains why there are no expressly
racist parties. In other words, when one speaks of rac-
ism the idea that comes to mind is Martin Luther King
or Mandela, i.e. something foreign to Spain. Moreover,
some indicators show that the situation of ethnic mi-
norities in Spain is better than in other countries. This
has prompted our political leaders (not generally adept
at deep analysis) to believe that racial discrimination is
not a serious problem here and that we can even be
proud of our track record. The pressure to fight against
racist discrimination which comes mostly from Europe,
leads us to conceal racism even more by means of an
insincere politically correct discourse (the disease per-
sists while the symptoms are camouflaged). It is hard to
solve a problem that is not acknowledged.
Of all the hate speech, the racist kind, closely related to
the rest, especially xenophobia (and in Spain Islamopho-
bia), is the one with the darkest historical pedigree. It
is based on the old social system of slavery and is at
the core of ethnic cleansing such as that advocated by
the Nazis and is, together with homophobia, the most
degrading of all hate speech because it not only entails
the exploitation of a group of people in benefit of oth-
ers but also, on a deeper level, is “the murder of the soul”
of its victims (F. Douglas) to the extent that it calls for
their dehumanisation. In the eyes of the racist, people
of other ethnic groups are not fully human. In fact the
etymology of the word “race” (radix or root) indicates
original caste, lineage, and that refers back to animals,
but not to all, only those that can be domesticated. In
other words, the word “race” refers back to slavery:
slave (inferior race) as a type of domesticated animal
for the purpose of pleasing his master.
It is strange that racism even exists today because in
historical terms it was first based on theology and then
on pseudo-science, but today we know that there are
no human races. In other words, the concept of race is
not scientific. There are no races but there is racism. It
is surprising that some people continue to believe that
there are races, bearing witness to their profound ig-
norance. Worse still is the belief that some races are
superior to others and the most surprising thing of all
is that racists (despite all evidence to the contrary) au-
tomatically include themselves among the members
of the superior race. This is what I call bomb-proof
self-esteem.
However, this old-school racism is not mainstream in
Spain (but cannot be underestimated: Internet is teem-
ing with it, neo-Nazi groups, etc.); the main racist cur-
rent has mutated and is found under a different guise. I
will now try to paint a picture of it.
II.
What is liquid racism?
Classic racism, the old sort, was founded on the (false)
biological doctrine of inequality between races. It re-
ceived a major doctrinal boost in the 19th century as
justification for European colonial conquest during that
period. In that century, this old slave-based racism mor-
phed into “scientific” racism. Pierre-André Taguieff (
La
couleur et le sang. Doctrines racistes à la française,
Mille
et une nuits, 1998), points to two argumentative strat-
egies that explain this shift from slavery-based racism
to “scientific” racism: the negation of reality (racism was
not racism) and rationalisation of reality, both religious
(inequality between races as part of God’s plan and