The Asociación de Familias Adoptantes en China promotes itself with a picture of slitty-eyed chinkies

But is the prevailing Spanish refusal to distinguish racism from multiculturalism actually more sensible than the Anglocabrón approach?

Trebots @ Sunday March 15th 2009 19:04

AFAC office at Fraternitat 15, Barcelona" />

The AFAC office at Fraternitat 15, Barcelona More photo-posts here.

It is only in the last decade or so that Spain has experienced the mass immigration which northern Europe underwent starting in the 1950s. I think that in consequence racism and the multiculturalist reinvention of the same underlying philosophy--that humanity is divided into discrete (quasi-)racial blocks, and that a recognition of this is both natural and healthy--constitute for many Spaniards imported cultural phenomena.

I also think that in borrowing these twin ideologies they may have failed to import with them the elaborate system of signalling that in the UK creates the impression of a stark dichotomy, of an epic battle underway between good and evil, marshalling the forces of dear old Ken Livingstone, with his gospel of a cultural Bantustan-centre in every neighbourhood, against those of dear dead Enoch Powell ("Keep 'em out!").

This is all explicable in terms of a strategic error on the part of Comrade Lenin, as he struggled to build a coalition to achieve whatever mysterious goals he had in mind:

Developing capitalism knows two historical tendencies. The first is the awakening of national life and national movements, the struggle against all national oppression, and the creation of national states. The second is the development and growing frequency of international intercourse in every form, the breakdown of national barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, of economic life in general, of politics, science, etc. ("Critical remarks on the national question", quoted in Black World/Negro Digestion)

As can be seen both from the importance attached to folk-dancing and dialectal variation in formal politics, and from the relaxed attitude with which news of football trainers' problems with their niggers is received, Spain is clearly still very much focused on phase one. While all this may puzzle and amuse foreigners, it is at least intellectually coherent.

The UK on the other hand appears to be marooned in a gauzy limbo, believing perhaps mistakenly that it has superseded phase one, but unprepared to accept the implications of accession to phase two, when we will all become free individuals with broad interests and rich identities, clad of course in Lenin suits kindly made available by Gazprom.


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  1. boynamedsue
    March 19th 2009 16:50

    Very similar to the official French line on multiculturalism, my neo-jacobin chum.

    I do agree that "administering" 21st century Manningham like it was 1930s Kafiristan is perhaps a little anachronistic, but without the quasi-racialist ideology of the Home Office we might have a situation like that in France.

    The Republic makes no distinction between between it's citizens, whether they are employed (pink) or unemployed (beige to dark brown).

  2. Trevor
    March 19th 2009 17:28

    ... leading to triumphs in places like Madagascar, where the French killed up to a million basically because they couldn't understand how anyone wouldn't want to be a citizen of the republic. So what are we to do?

  3. boynamedsue
    March 20th 2009 18:15

    Ban the phrase "community leaders" from any official use, choosing conservative old foreign born men to be your intermediaries with angry young UK-born people is a recipe for disaster.

    Return more power to local authorites but reduce their area, so more decisions affecting citizens can be made at a local level.

    Stop using (often dodgy) local Asian businessmen as candidates, in order to deliver a guaranteed community vote based on village loyalties in the old country (Liberals and Labour do this all over England, Respect have done it in London, Lancashire and Birmingham).

    Pursue a draconian equal opprtunities policy, but one that provides opportunities for individuals not ethnic groups; if ethnic groups are treated as soveriegn the power devolved to them usually ends up in the hands of "prominent" community members (prominent means Male, Rich and well-placed in family/tribe power-structures inherited from abroad).

    There you go, proposals not bitching for once.

  4. Trevor
    April 21st 2009 11:16

    Here's another take: inverting the moral valuation of different forms of racial classification is not the same thing as dismantling the system of classification itself.

  5. Trebots
    September 21st 2011 14:56

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8778820/Nordic-confectionary-giant-redesigns-racist-logo.html

 
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