Dear all,
This week’s blog entry is on the problem of racism or xenophobia in Spain. My interest in this topic has been stimulated by a discussion of the attitude of the Spaniards towards other races in my Spanish oral class. I am going to be using an article which was published in the Spanish newspaper, El Pais to shed light on the present situation in Spain, which can be accessed here:
The article is titled ‘Racism enters classrooms’. The main focus of this piece is on the integration of foreign children in Spanish schools. In summary, the writer describes the intolerant behaviour that Spanish children show towards other races, particularly Moroccans and gypsies. In a survey of 23, 100 secondary school students, conducted by Spain’s Ministry of Education, it was found that two-thirds of Spanish students in secondary schools would not be willing to work with Moroccans or gypsies in the classroom. More than half of these students said that they would have a problem having a Jewish person as a classmate. When it comes to working with Latin Americans, there seems to be a bit more tolerance but 46% of the students said that they would not want to be involved with them, even for minor tasks. The only foreigners they said they could see themselves interacting with were other Europeans and people from the U.S. Funnily, these Spaniards do not realise that one third of the U.S population is classified as a racial minority with many of them being Hispanic immigrants from Latin America.
From my own experience of working in Spain, I did not notice any actual racism from students towards other students. Nevertheless, it was easy to observe how some teachers treated Moroccan children differently to Spanish ones. In one instance, a teacher took a Moroccan boy of eight by the arm and swung him out of the room. To someone from Britain, this kind of physical contact is nothing but violent and inappropriate. To this 55 years old Spanish teacher, there did not seem to be anything wrong in the way he treated the child. Observing things like this makes one inevitably wonder what fuels their behaviour and whether it will ever change. If a teacher is treating one child differently from the others then surely the children will observe and learn from their teacher and adopt the same attitudes.
I would like to end this entry by raising a few relevant questions: Where do these children acquire the attitude to be xenophobic or racist? If children learn from others then are they simply reflecting the attitude of their parents acquired at home or the attitude of their teachers? Is xenophobia in the classroom representative of a bigger problem in Spain?
This is very interesting Hossay. You're right to ask this important question - where do children acquire nasty, negative and prejudiced attitudes? From what I've seen of children, they tend to naturally get along with everybody and anybody. So I don't think prejudice and discrimination is natural at all - it must be socially created. But also, of course, young people are subjected to a lot of other influences other than just their parents, teachers, uncles, aunties, siblings etc - what about television for example? Or newspapers? Or the world-wide-web? What role do these media sources play in the formation of attitudes?
ReplyDeleteYou've given a lot of food for thought in this post of yours!!
Hi Martin,
ReplyDeleteYes, I was thinking that perhaps the subjects shown, or hidden, through the media affect people's attitudes. I mean, are other races depicted on Spanish television? Besides the news, I did not actually see any programmes on other races except for when the area of 'Lavapies' was being portrayed as a place where immigrants/delinquents gather. Perhaps it is the lack of the representation of other races in the media and also the lack of their positive representation that constructs such attitudes. I also think that xenophobia and such things may arise from a fear of people. Sometimes when you do not know something, it is easier to hate it and class it as the 'other' rather than actually get to know it. An example of this is perhaps the attitude of some people from my own country. Some of their negative attitudes come from the fact that they have not been exposed to certain races and so their lack of knowledge makes them avoid these races and dislike them. Well… we can only hope that the new generation will be less ignorant.