Spain has, helpfully, suspended its inherent racism to accommodate Michelle Obama's visit.
The Obama administration faced an embarrassing diplomatic blunder today after it was forced to pull a warning about racism in Spain - just as the First Lady arrived in the country for a summer holiday.
Staff at the U.S. State Department removed the contentious advice to travellers, which included the phrase 'racist prejudices could lead to the arrest of Afro-Americans who travel to Spain,' from its website on Monday.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1300240/Michelle-Obama-goes-walkabout-Marbella-racist-Spaniards-gaff.html#ixzz0vjxL0OfG
2 comments:
How long had the advisory been in place?
How strong was the evidence supporting the advisory?
I know that many Spanish have prejudices against North Africans (Arabs/Berbers) dating back to the Reconquista (and complicated feelings about Spain's Moorish architectural heritage). I had not heard that they had any significant prejudice about Sub-Saharan (i.e. black) Africans.
It appears that the answers to my question are (i) 15 months & (ii) a single, apparently isolated, incident.
I think that it would probably be a more intelligent question to ask whether the advisory should have been put up in the first place, particularly given the US's less than spotless race relations history.
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