Racism of the twenty-first century
March 21 is the international day to end racial discrimination. That day, 21 March 1960, we recall the massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa, in which the police fired at a demonstration against a regime of racial discrimination. 69 people were killed and hundreds wounded. Known as Apartheid (between 1948 and 1990), this separation system was designed and developed to ensure the supremacy of a privileged and savage white minority, with the aim of dominating the black majority of this territory that was not recognized as a person.
The achievements of independence in 1961 and the end of apartheid three decades later, however, did not lead to the disappearance of all variants of structural domination from Europe. On the contrary, they intensified adapting to the changes derived from the new times, building more innovative and complex mechanisms to ensure the continuity of the domain. The imposition of this model of civilization begins with the colonial era and does not disappear with the end of its administrations, it lasts in time, reaching the present day. This kind of relationship, this process, we know it as colonial.
Meanwhile, on the one hand, we “export” the liberal democratic model to intervene in the sovereignty of different peoples and control their resources. On the other hand, we inevitably spread the dogmatic vision of our being and of what surrounds us, crystallizing every inch of land and the desire of the natives in the gigantic continent that the people of origin call Abya Yala. Our civilization has been built on a two-legged system, a capitalist economy that steals goods and oppresses the working class and the popular sector, and another model of epistemological imposition.
Within the reality described, if the people who migrate today manage to reach Europe and us, avoiding death, but going through all kinds of harsh situations during the journey, they are forced by unsustainable situations in their places of origin: wars of imperialist character, political persecution, absolute lack of hope, hunger, misery, climate change, etc.
"The global North, of which we are a part, looting has grown and developed at every historical moment by tightening the raw materials of the rest of the nations and states of the planet to the maximum."
Sometimes this violence appears to us crudely: the destruction of the Libyan State, the betrayal of the Saharawi people, the genocide against the Palestinian people, the attempts at permanent destabilisation and the imperialist intervention in the policies of various leftist and progressive governments across the Atlantic (directly participating in this gigantic robbery of the lehendakari Urkullu and appearing as an accomplice of multinationals).
On other occasions, violence is presented to us as much more subtle: lawfare; predatory tourism; economic colonialism called "grants for development or reconstruction" through the NGOs operating in these areas; pontose celebrations and praise, even in the Basque Country, praising the conquerors and their great acts, etc.
All these practices and forms of supremacy relations are based on the aforementioned epistemological imposition of the West. It is the story of all our Stories, written and told to us: the Renaissance, Modernity, the Great Revolutions, the world wars and the "discoveries." There are no other realities or perspectives different from ours.
"If all these situations are not the majority, they are a direct consequence of the enormous violence we deploy from the West against the other countries, their population and Nature"
Therefore, if the keys that allow us to see and understand that the upper part of the planet lives behind the lower, the finding is clear: the Basques live in a situation of oppression under the Kingdom of Spain and the French Republic on the one hand; but, on the other hand, we are an oppressive country, insofar as we benefit and continue to take advantage of our privileges as European citizens. This double condition runs through us all.
"Racism, therefore, belongs to our political and cultural system, and goes hand in hand, closely linked to our well-being and our dominance position in the world. We are material and culturally racist. And our main goal is clear: to stop being racist at once."
We Basques today are not responsible for all the actions our country takes over the centuries, but we are aware of what we are going to do and do now and in the near future. From there, we will be able to start thinking and seeing a different reality, based on justice, equality and solidarity, for our beloved people.
Maite Aranalde Ijurko and Asier Bengoa Lopez de Armentia
Anti-racism activists
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