Spain Introduces Racist Stamp To Help Fight Racism

It appears as though Correos de España may have inadvertently included stamps of a racist nature in set of stamps designed to, of all things, combat racism.

https://www.watoday.com.au/world/eu...-p57vxz.html

What a bizarre way to approach racism. Making stamps less valuable the darker they are almost sounds like a joke you'd see on 'Saturday Night Live,' not something a postal service would do. I have no doubt the intentions were good, but this seems a little mixed up to me. Sensitivities about racism are at a pretty high level recently, understandably, so I'd imagine this is going to get panned by a lot of the media as many people wonder why the well-intentioned message comes across as so demeaning. Segregating things by race, even postal stamps, just seems like a poor idea to play around with anymore.

Which should I pick?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

OR

No good deed goes unpunished.




The quick fix in my opinion would to issue sheets of twenty, forty or other number which is a multiple of four, with one each of the skin tone stamps with the entire sheet the same denomination. Repeat for each denomination desired. Problem of misinterpretation solved.

If Correos had done the exact opposite, there would have been someone criticising them for that.

First of all: take away the numbers in the article. They are not on the stamps and are very suggestive. These are inflation stamps. (NVI in the UK, Forever in the USA)

The intention was to show how people of colour are treated as less valuable. You may wonder if the average stamp user will be aware.
At the same time, the A-tariff is the most used stamp, paying the basic inland letter rate (70 c.). So that stamp will see most use.
A2 is the second weight step tariff (80c). It will be a rare occasion that someone would use a black stamp and a 10c stamp, if at all you can find one.
B is the European basic letter rate. Tourists would not give a toss what they put on their postcards and most send or post selfies. At €1.50, you would need two A-stamps and a 10c stamp.
C is the rest-of-world basic letter rate. At € 1,60 you could use two A2 stamps, but you will need an academic degree to solve the maths.

What is left is a black stamp with the first letter of the alphabet that is the most commonly available and used stamp.
The lightest stamp is the last of the alphabetical letters and used infrequently.
Do not expect to see many of these stamps in post offices, as they sell packs of five stamps that have been around for some time.

Had Correos done it the other way around, someone would have called them racist for making the least used stamp black; for sending the black stamps to the Americas as they did with African slaves; and for issuing stamps that further are mostly used by tourists from countries that do not even consider racism, but just put other people in re-educational camps.

The intention is to raise awareness. These stamps are categorised as protest stamps by Correos. Maybe it was not the best solution, but any solution would have been criticised.

@ParcelPostguy

No other person than a collector buys four stamps of tariffs A, A2, B and C. Most post offices sell packs of five of a single tariff. At some post offices, staff are helpful and will sell the exact amount. In big cities they may tell you to buy five stamps if you need one. Four A-stamps would be just four dull stamps.

In my opinion the topic of racism has become weaponized and is now being used as a political warhead to divide society. As an 'old hippie' our generation made significant progress in treating everyone equally; anti-discrimination laws were introduced in many countries throughout the world by the 1970s. Discrimination laws leveled the playing field because the most a society can do is address observable behavior. Racism, on the other hand, occurs inside of someone's head and is not controllable by society. No society or authority can really control what a person thinks or feels.

The best society can do in changing how folks think is education. There is always more educational work to do on any topic and of course racism is no exception. But for the topic of racism we are now going backwards, teaching division and that we are all not the same.

As a person who is in a minority in my community (which for the last decade has been a medical community), I can tell you that everyone is the exactly same color; below is stamp which would have simply made the point.

I see the color of everyone's blood every day and I can confirm that it is all the same as shown above (depending upon whether it is oxygenated or deoxygenated).

Anyone who is being racist, such as saying that one race is privileged and/or one race is being victimized, is driving a destructive narrative. According to the 2020 US census, the population identifying as 'multiracial' is the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group between 2010 and 2020 by far, this group grew by more than 36 percent in these 10 years alone. So what exactly is the message that we are supposed to tell our mixed race children (like my family)? "Gee sweety, your white half is privileged and your black half is being victimized"? What kind of crazy, confusing message is that to teach a mixed race child?

So that is not what we are teaching the children in my family, we are teaching that we are all the same. We are teaching that we are all human and that we all bleed the same color and that every life matters. We are teaching them to recognize politicized topics and how they are being used to divide people. We are teaching them that feeling morally superior to another person or group is always wrong and has often led to some of history's greatest atrocities.

So I disagree with the issuing of stamps which emphasize the different skin colors; in today's demographics this difference is (thankfully) becoming moot. How inane that kind of message is today in a multiracial society. What is next? Stamps emphasizing the size or shape of someone's ears? Or someone's height? The message should be that we are all human and that we should treat others how we would like to be treated.

The sooner that society recognizes how topics are being weaponized by some for political gain the sooner that we can start moving forward again.
Don