The invention of racism

Editorial Revista Convit/e No. 1.

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The world was emerging from a horrific war and these standards were intended as a response to the barbaric acts committed during World War II. Their adoption recognized that human rights are the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.

The UDHR was a milestone. For the first time, the world had a globally agreed document stating that all human beings are free and equal regardless of sex, color, creed, religion or other characteristics. What was happening in the world at the very moment such an important declaration was adopted? Europe was acting as a colonial power and imposing its logic of exploitation and racism on Africa and Asia. In the United States, Jim Crow laws were in full force, imposing a racial segregation that lasted until the 1960s. In 1948, the system of social, political, economic, cultural and territorial apartheid came into force in South Africa, which would last until the early 1990s. Women had barely been granted the right to vote and their public participation was extremely limited. Homosexuality was persecuted and was listed as a mental illness by the WHO until 1990. It was a world where only the white heterosexual male counted.

The logic behind the policies of social hierarchization and economic domination of colonialism, the delirium and tragedy of apartheid and the laws of racial segregation are, unfortunately, not fully overcome. Anti-racist norms and values are recent and not sufficiently integrated into people's attitudes and sentiments. Old racist ideologies are still embedded in mainstream discourses.

How can we change our imaginary? We are the fruit of the past and, as such, bearers of a culture that was built on racism, sexism and homophobia. Validated by the science of the time, for centuries a paradigm was imposed in which people who, supposedly, did not have the same aptitudes could not have the same rights. We must have the courage to question our own prejudices and understand the mechanisms by which racism is constructed. We must be vigilant both personally and with our environment.

We are all educated by narratives. The school is the place where the history of the country is told to the next generations. How much do students and teachers know today about the barbarities committed by Spaniards and Catalans in Equatorial Guinea? The present discriminations are built on these forgetfulnesses.

Frantz Fanon said: "Racism is not born, it is invented and each country invents or recreates those mechanisms that allow it to justify a system of oppression, discrimination and exploitation". It harms some and favors others; it also expresses the failure of social relations by losing the possibility of interaction between different groups and cultures living together in the same territory.

It is up to us to cultivate the art of encounter, mutual knowledge and crossbreeding. To promote shared knowledge and overcome a single model of thought. To make room for other views, other voices, to accept and value plurality, the richness of diversity. We need new perspectives to understand the mechanisms of discrimination and thus be able to act to overcome them.

In the combination of the struggle for social justice in demand of full rights and equal opportunities and the defense of cultural identities lies the key to finally converge the principles of the UDHR with our everyday reality.

Welcome to the Convit/e!

Martin Habiague

Sol Bela Photography